Buying from Taobao for Foreigners

If you are going to stay in China for awhile and you want to know where to buy the best and most affordable items, then do what the locals do...buy them on Taobao. Think Ebay's local but better version. Although you could ask your Chinese friends to help you buy them, wouldn't it be nice if you can purchase them by yourselves? One hour is not enough to scour the items as Taobao has so many fabulous finds.

1. Open a Taobao account using Google Chrome. Make sure you have your complete address written in Chinese. I suggest asking a friend to help you with this.

With google chrome you can have everything translated in English easily.

2. Open a bank account and make sure to have the epayment facility activated.

You can use BOC or ICBC. At the moment I'm happy with my ICBC card, it's really secure and their website is in English. Please take note that these banks' security measures work on IE browsers only.

3. To get started transfer money to your Zhifubao (or Alipay account) using Internet Explorer. Simply go to your taobao account, click on your username and it goes to your alipay account. Better have somebody who's familiar with Taobao help you with this.

4. Know your daily and transaction limits. Sometimes they only allow 500 rmb per transaction and a total of 1000 rmb per day. A simple visit to the bank can help you increase this limit. Usually they would ask you to register your cellphone number with them.

5. Shop away! I usually use Google translate to translate the items I am looking for then I paste the Chinese characters on Taobao's search box. Also when I shop for stuff I can use Google Chrome. Also it's better to ask the sellers first whether the items are available because sometimes their sites are not updated. Again, I use google translate in talking to the sellers.

6. Once everything is in the cart, I simply click on pay. If you didn't put money on your Alipay account first then you have to do this on IE browsers. Once you click on pay it will show a link to your bank and a new window opens and you can pay directly.

If you have money on your Alipay account, then you can already pay straight from Google Chrome browser.

7. That's it. Give them 3 to 5 days for delivery or ask the seller.

Pretty easy right? Enjoy!