On-line shopping started late in China but has exploded to become the biggest on-line market in the world. Everything and anything, almost, can be bought on-line and delivered to your door. Service is normally fast and reliable - and often the cheapest prices available. Especially watch out for November 11th each year, which is the peak sales time with some amazing offers.

The largest platform is Taobao, part of the Alibaba Group. With over 1 billion products on offer it attracts almost 600,000,000 visitors a month. It caters to a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) market, meaning that  it is for individual users and small traders to sell to each other. There is very little English on the site, but see below. Payment is made through Alipay. Click on the logo above to visit the site.

T_Mall is a sister site to Taobao and is for businesses to sell brand name goods directly to consumers. (B2C). Again, very little is in English

Baopals is an independent company started by three expats in Shangai. Their site translates both Taobao and T-Mall pages into English, giving a platform for non-Chinese speakers/readers to buy.  Access and payment have also been simplified. Again, click on the logo to visit the site.