Taobao Field Guide

Shopping online in Chinese might seem like an impossible task to many foreigners, but a new website taobaofieldguide.com looks set to make life alot easier. In their own words the website is “a guide for English-speakers to use the Chinese-language online shopping service, Taobao. We are useful if you are living in China, or if you want to buy something through the Taobao website.”

And in case you are worried that the people at TFG are just trying to part you from your money they also state:

“We are not affiliated with Taobao or any of the Sellers promoted here. We post about products for three reasons:
We have bought it before, and think it rocks.
We think they would be useful for you, our lovely laowai readers.
They are super crazy and we think you would like to take a little look.

They go on to say “Some of the links on the site earn us a commission. A ridiculously tiny commission. But that is more of an experiement than a profit plan. You will recognize those links from their ‘alimama’ domain name. We evaluate all Sellers from a ‘would we buy from them’ perspective.”

Some of you not familiar with Taobao are probably wondering why any of this would be useful to you, but the fact is you can find almost anything on there, and often at a much cheaper price than the high street.

Finally, if you’re still not convinced I’ll leave you with one last snippet from the Field Guide
“Taobao has been crazy useful for us for several years. We’ve bought a ton of stuff, and discovered a ton more crazy stuff. But we discovered that our friend’s lives were not filled with Taobao. They were, in fact, filled with sadness.
That’s why we set out to rid the world of this terrible sadness by sharing the gift of Taobao.”

Have you used this website? Leave your reviews in the comments section.