My first three years in Shanghai, I lived in three different apartments. I never put much thought into decorating my home, because I never imagined I'd be living in China longer than a year (how many times have you heard that?).
In year four, I finally accepted this wasn't a short-term stay, and decided to put some "me" in "home". And one thing about me is that I'm a massive Game of Thrones geek (books, TV series, even the board game). But where the hell would I get Game of Thrones paraphernalia in China?
The answer, of course: Taobao. My Chinese friends and colleagues had told me I could get anything and everything from Taobao. And sure enough, I got my Game of Thrones posters, which are still hanging on the wall today:
But actually getting those posters was no easy task. After hours trying to set up Taobao and Alipay, and stumbling through translations to find what I wanted, I gave up and had to bother my Chinese colleague to basically do everything for me, from searching to paying to receiving delivery.
But one thing the experience showed me was that Taobao was pretty awesome, and could fulfill a TON of my shopping needs, if only I was able to use it.
Most of my friends here felt the same way, and one day we started to ask ourselves, why not? Could we build the technology, the platform, and the service model to actually make this happen?
Fast forward to 2016, and you have baopals.
No longer will the treasures of Taobao be out of reach. Us laowai might make up a miniscule fraction of the population here in China, but we have needs too! We want our Pepperidge Farm cookies, Pulp Fiction vs. Star Wars iPhone case, and Coffee-Themed Sofa Pillows.
We want easy ways to pay. We want English customer service. We want flexible delivery options. And we want to browse and find things on Taobao without actually using Taobao. Seeing as there wasn't a way to do this, we created our way.
So sit back, leave your colleague alone, and buy whatever you want to buy on baopals.
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