A Chinese college student whose foreign teacher is from Madagascar:
During the time of our grade one, the major commission of the class leaders is to help her translate, select goods, place orders, and pick up Taobao packages. Our Madagascan teacher had already bought for her families in Madagascar all the clothing and shoes. Just for herself, she bought over 20 colors for the same style pants. She loves herself looked different everyday in a month. Sure enough, it was because things are too cheap on Taboao.
A Korean student studying in China:
The first time I met Taobao, to be honest, nothing special, after all there are many online shopping websites in Korea. However, after I knew how to negotiate for free shipping, after I found a tempered film which just costs 9.9CNY, after I searched out some even sell excreta on Taobao, after I saw a seller came up with a war with his buyer who gave him a negative review, after I received cashback when I sent a screenshot of a positive comment to the seller, after all of these, I suddenly realized Taobao seems is not only a shopping website.
A German IT employee works in Shanghang:
Hello I’m German, and I want to give u a quick review how my first time with Taobao was…
The first time I heard of Taobao it sounded like the Chinese Amazon to me, to I expected to have an English website which I can use because Amazon is available in any language.
Quickly I figured out that the website is just in Chinese and I even have problems to signup and fill in my profile, so I gave up my first try. After asking a college to help me things where ready and I could even pay with my Foreign credit card which was awesome at that time, all my other foreign college were always wondered how I was able to use Taobao. They always asked ‘how can you use a Chinese website without speaking Chinese?’
Trick for me was to translate the words in Google translate, for example if I wanted to buy milk then I translated milk to Chinese and searched it. Luckily the buying process in just 2 or 3 steps so its super easy even when you are not able to understand Chinese.
Where the problems starts: Returning products is a bit more effort and until today I avoid that.
That was my first order
Today I buy way more on Taobao, because I have Alipay and that makes things even more convenient, the shipping is most of the time not that fast but its okey. In Germany Amazon also does not delivery so fast, so I’m used to that speed.
Feel free to ask me further questions.
A Chinese young guy:
I have a Canadian friend told me, the main reason for him not want to return to Canada is Taobao, because things in Canada are expensive and less to choose. He has a nickname that Taobao prince. He know Chinese well, every time he shops on Taobao, he definitely bargains with the seller. And once another friend of us told him that she spent hundreds of dollars on buying a PC camera from USA, the next days, he searched throughout Taobao, and found a similar PC camera which just costs dozens of Chinese yuan, when he received the camera, the camera seems no different from our friends’.
A Chinese foreign trade runner:
As a runner of foreign trade business, I know some tips to reduce shipping cost when ship things from China. Actually, foreign friends can find some freight agent, they have international transit centers, you can call that warehouse. Once you place orders on Taobao, just ship them to their warehouse, they will help you ship from China to your country. The price will much lower than normal and the delivery time is fast also. For example, shipping things bellow 2kg, they may suggest you to use EMS or DHL, the fee would within 150CNY( under the situation that without discount), and this shipping way will be faster(around 3-7 days, it might cost longer such as 15 days for remote countries). Most importantly, freight agent have shipping experience, they know how to avoid tariffs( but it still depends on your luck).
One more Chinese college kid:
We have a foreign teacher who is from France, he can speak and read fluent Chinese as he studied Chinese in Beijing University. That is to say there is no difficulties for him to shop on Taobao. When he first came to our university teaching students, many of us didn’t know him well. And then one day, he became famous among us because of Taobao.
The story went like this:
Each class when he finished all the teaching content, he would asked students to learn by themselves at the rest of time in the class. That day we were having a class in a computer classroom, each of us had a computer on the desk, and the computer for teacher to use was connected with all the computers in the class, all the students can see the sharing screen from the teacher. Then that day while we were studying by ourselves at the rest of the time, various types of Zhongshan shirts occurred on our screen, and there a mouse expertly choosing the shirts. It was the foreign teacher shopping on Taobao, he was so enjoyable that didn’t notice all of us were watching him shopping, and knowing his waistline.
