Feature image of Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

3 mins read

3 mins read

Feature image of Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

Today on Twitter, we explore the very strange world of Deep Taobao.

For those who don’t know, Taobao is China’s leading e-commerce platform, specializing in the sale of secondhand goods and new (sometimes pirated) merch sold by third-party vendors. Bigger brands will have official stores on Tmall, a related e-commerce site operated by the same parent company, Alibaba. But for most purposes, Taobao is the eBay-and-Amazon-in-one for sourcing everything from toupees to toothpaste.

One ardent class of Taobao’ers is the Maker community, who can source even the most esoteric bits and baubles they need to feed their 3D printers and wildest soldering dreams on the platform. Naomi Wu, probably Twitter’s most prominent Chinese Maker, recently came across this sweet find on Taobao, a set of Mahjong tiles with cheats only visible by someone wearing special contacts:

Cool! Spy shit.

Speaking of eyewear, if you have 1,598RMB (about 240USD) to spend, you too can rock the magnifying power of ex-Chinese President Jiang Zemin, whose signature frames have earned him meme immortality:

Taobao can get very meta at times. A few months back, one reader let author Duncan Clark know that he found a counterfeit version of his book on Taobao. The ironic part is that Clark’s book is Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, a profile of Taobao’s parent company and its charismatic founder that includes an entire sub-chapter about the lengths to which Ma has gone to address piracy concerns.

“Interesting, let me know how it goes when you inform Taobao,” Clark replied. We’d be curious too!

What else… oh here’s some fizzy Pokemon juice:

That’s all I’ve seen in the last few days but Taobao is full of this stuff. Go to the site itself and search around on your own, you’ll land on a weird rabbithole to Deep Taobao in no time. Or just scan the #taobao hashtag on Twitter, always a reliable source of surreality.

If you wanna jump straight to the weird, you can also follow the Taobao Media tumblr run by Shanghai-based artist Kim Laughton. I interviewed Kim a few years back, and he said then about the Taobao experience:

As far as Taobao in general is concerned, it’s really hard to pick out some items that are stranger than others; you can browse for hours trying out different keywords and finding what a factory in Guangdong has made. It’s also about the presentation; a fairly normal product can be presented in amazing and bizarre ways.

Many, many examples of those “amazing and bizarre ways” here. Some highlights:

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/163061905341

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/164896064031

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/162031607406

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/160218839496

Cover photo: Screenshot of Taobao Media tumblr

NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox.

NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox.

RADII NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox

Feature image of Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

3 mins read

Today on Twitter, we explore the very strange world of Deep Taobao.

For those who don’t know, Taobao is China’s leading e-commerce platform, specializing in the sale of secondhand goods and new (sometimes pirated) merch sold by third-party vendors. Bigger brands will have official stores on Tmall, a related e-commerce site operated by the same parent company, Alibaba. But for most purposes, Taobao is the eBay-and-Amazon-in-one for sourcing everything from toupees to toothpaste.

One ardent class of Taobao’ers is the Maker community, who can source even the most esoteric bits and baubles they need to feed their 3D printers and wildest soldering dreams on the platform. Naomi Wu, probably Twitter’s most prominent Chinese Maker, recently came across this sweet find on Taobao, a set of Mahjong tiles with cheats only visible by someone wearing special contacts:

Cool! Spy shit.

Speaking of eyewear, if you have 1,598RMB (about 240USD) to spend, you too can rock the magnifying power of ex-Chinese President Jiang Zemin, whose signature frames have earned him meme immortality:

Taobao can get very meta at times. A few months back, one reader let author Duncan Clark know that he found a counterfeit version of his book on Taobao. The ironic part is that Clark’s book is Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, a profile of Taobao’s parent company and its charismatic founder that includes an entire sub-chapter about the lengths to which Ma has gone to address piracy concerns.

“Interesting, let me know how it goes when you inform Taobao,” Clark replied. We’d be curious too!

What else… oh here’s some fizzy Pokemon juice:

That’s all I’ve seen in the last few days but Taobao is full of this stuff. Go to the site itself and search around on your own, you’ll land on a weird rabbithole to Deep Taobao in no time. Or just scan the #taobao hashtag on Twitter, always a reliable source of surreality.

If you wanna jump straight to the weird, you can also follow the Taobao Media tumblr run by Shanghai-based artist Kim Laughton. I interviewed Kim a few years back, and he said then about the Taobao experience:

As far as Taobao in general is concerned, it’s really hard to pick out some items that are stranger than others; you can browse for hours trying out different keywords and finding what a factory in Guangdong has made. It’s also about the presentation; a fairly normal product can be presented in amazing and bizarre ways.

Many, many examples of those “amazing and bizarre ways” here. Some highlights:

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/163061905341

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/164896064031

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/162031607406

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/160218839496

Cover photo: Screenshot of Taobao Media tumblr

NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox.

RADII NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox

RELATED POSTS

Feature image of Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

3 mins read

3 mins read

Feature image of Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

Today on Twitter, we explore the very strange world of Deep Taobao.

For those who don’t know, Taobao is China’s leading e-commerce platform, specializing in the sale of secondhand goods and new (sometimes pirated) merch sold by third-party vendors. Bigger brands will have official stores on Tmall, a related e-commerce site operated by the same parent company, Alibaba. But for most purposes, Taobao is the eBay-and-Amazon-in-one for sourcing everything from toupees to toothpaste.

One ardent class of Taobao’ers is the Maker community, who can source even the most esoteric bits and baubles they need to feed their 3D printers and wildest soldering dreams on the platform. Naomi Wu, probably Twitter’s most prominent Chinese Maker, recently came across this sweet find on Taobao, a set of Mahjong tiles with cheats only visible by someone wearing special contacts:

Cool! Spy shit.

Speaking of eyewear, if you have 1,598RMB (about 240USD) to spend, you too can rock the magnifying power of ex-Chinese President Jiang Zemin, whose signature frames have earned him meme immortality:

Taobao can get very meta at times. A few months back, one reader let author Duncan Clark know that he found a counterfeit version of his book on Taobao. The ironic part is that Clark’s book is Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, a profile of Taobao’s parent company and its charismatic founder that includes an entire sub-chapter about the lengths to which Ma has gone to address piracy concerns.

“Interesting, let me know how it goes when you inform Taobao,” Clark replied. We’d be curious too!

What else… oh here’s some fizzy Pokemon juice:

That’s all I’ve seen in the last few days but Taobao is full of this stuff. Go to the site itself and search around on your own, you’ll land on a weird rabbithole to Deep Taobao in no time. Or just scan the #taobao hashtag on Twitter, always a reliable source of surreality.

If you wanna jump straight to the weird, you can also follow the Taobao Media tumblr run by Shanghai-based artist Kim Laughton. I interviewed Kim a few years back, and he said then about the Taobao experience:

As far as Taobao in general is concerned, it’s really hard to pick out some items that are stranger than others; you can browse for hours trying out different keywords and finding what a factory in Guangdong has made. It’s also about the presentation; a fairly normal product can be presented in amazing and bizarre ways.

Many, many examples of those “amazing and bizarre ways” here. Some highlights:

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/163061905341

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/164896064031

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/162031607406

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/160218839496

Cover photo: Screenshot of Taobao Media tumblr

NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox.

NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox.

RADII NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox

Feature image of Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

3 mins read

Today on Twitter, we explore the very strange world of Deep Taobao.

For those who don’t know, Taobao is China’s leading e-commerce platform, specializing in the sale of secondhand goods and new (sometimes pirated) merch sold by third-party vendors. Bigger brands will have official stores on Tmall, a related e-commerce site operated by the same parent company, Alibaba. But for most purposes, Taobao is the eBay-and-Amazon-in-one for sourcing everything from toupees to toothpaste.

One ardent class of Taobao’ers is the Maker community, who can source even the most esoteric bits and baubles they need to feed their 3D printers and wildest soldering dreams on the platform. Naomi Wu, probably Twitter’s most prominent Chinese Maker, recently came across this sweet find on Taobao, a set of Mahjong tiles with cheats only visible by someone wearing special contacts:

Cool! Spy shit.

Speaking of eyewear, if you have 1,598RMB (about 240USD) to spend, you too can rock the magnifying power of ex-Chinese President Jiang Zemin, whose signature frames have earned him meme immortality:

Taobao can get very meta at times. A few months back, one reader let author Duncan Clark know that he found a counterfeit version of his book on Taobao. The ironic part is that Clark’s book is Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, a profile of Taobao’s parent company and its charismatic founder that includes an entire sub-chapter about the lengths to which Ma has gone to address piracy concerns.

“Interesting, let me know how it goes when you inform Taobao,” Clark replied. We’d be curious too!

What else… oh here’s some fizzy Pokemon juice:

That’s all I’ve seen in the last few days but Taobao is full of this stuff. Go to the site itself and search around on your own, you’ll land on a weird rabbithole to Deep Taobao in no time. Or just scan the #taobao hashtag on Twitter, always a reliable source of surreality.

If you wanna jump straight to the weird, you can also follow the Taobao Media tumblr run by Shanghai-based artist Kim Laughton. I interviewed Kim a few years back, and he said then about the Taobao experience:

As far as Taobao in general is concerned, it’s really hard to pick out some items that are stranger than others; you can browse for hours trying out different keywords and finding what a factory in Guangdong has made. It’s also about the presentation; a fairly normal product can be presented in amazing and bizarre ways.

Many, many examples of those “amazing and bizarre ways” here. Some highlights:

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/163061905341

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/164896064031

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/162031607406

https://taobao-media.tumblr.com/post/160218839496

Cover photo: Screenshot of Taobao Media tumblr

NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox.

RADII NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox

NEWSLETTER​

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox

RADII Newsletter Pop Up small banner

NEWSLETTER

Get weekly top picks and exclusive, newsletter only content delivered straight to you inbox.

Link Copied!

Share

Feature image of Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

Twitter Bits: Deep Taobao

PULSE

Unpacking Chinese youth culture through coverage of nightlife, film, sports, celebrities, and the hottest new music

STYLE

An insider’s look at the intersection of fashion, art, and design

FEAST

Titillate your taste buds with coverage of the best food and drink trends from China and beyond.

FUTURE

From hit video games to AI, flying cars, robots, and cutting-edge gadgets — enter a new digital world

FEAST

Titillate your taste buds with coverage of the best food and drink trends from China and beyond

STYLE

An insider’s look at the intersection of fashion, art, and design

PULSE

Unpacking Chinese youth culture through coverage of nightlife, film, sports, celebrities, and the hottest new music