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Introducing Your New Best Friend; Baopals

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The trouble with being self taught in Chinese is there tend to be gaps (read “gaping holes that could swallow a star”) in the vernacular.

In my case, one of them is reading comprehension, meaning, despite having lived in China forever and a day, means I am unable to truly live life to the full, i.e. by using China’s online shopping behemoth; the mezmorisingly good Taobao. That is, until now.

Urban legend has it that a bunch of expats in Shanghai became so incensed that Taobao did not have an English version that they decided to do it themselves. Except that in the process they also incorporated T-Mall into their website/app which extracts data from that and Taobao, before presenting it in a translated user interface that is also more organised toward western tastes. They call it Baopals. 

Whereas the service really shines in so far as it frees the confused expat of the necessity to have a Chinese reader place orders for you and handle the payment; Baopals accept both WeChat and Alipay, the downside is that you should still ideally use the mobile number of a Chinese speaker on the delivery details, in case the courier gets lost, etc.

That said, having used the service twice so far, the Chinese speaker turned out to be not needed; on the first occasion, when the order tracking showed my package to have been delivered I messaged Baopals on WeChat and they took care of it instantly, and on the second, whereupon my package arrived a couple of hours later than reported.

Minor quibbles are always having to enter your email and password anytime you use the Wechat interface to access your account, and not being able to see the user reviews of merchants. None of this, nevertheless, detracts significantly from Baopals being a stellar invention created with the aim of helping the hapless helpless in China.

According to a China Daily article published in May of this year, to set up Baopals cost the three founders half a million renminbi from their own pockets, and those of friends. Therefore, how do they make any money? By charging us, the end users, five percent of the item price, plus ¥8 per item type. So for major orders, be prepared to still grease the palms of Chinese friends.

Find Baopals at www.baopals.com or on WeChat @baopals.

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