If you don’t live in China, you will need to check out our guide to buying on Taobao from overseas. If you do live in China, be sure to sign up for Taobao and add money to your account. When that is done, you are ready to start shopping with the guide below.

Yes, just type in English! You will find the stuff you want 95% of the time.

More search tips:

Scroll down into your results and click on the products that look good. On the product page, look here and make sure that the Seller is highly rated. A good rule of thumb is at least 99% feedback on more than 500 transactions. (In the image below, the seller has 99.44% feedback on 716 transactions.) More on Evaluating a Seller

As seen above. There is now also a Blue Shopping Cart button which is useful if you are buying multiple things at once.

Click the button circled in green below to enter your shipping

address. Use Chinese for the street address if you can, but English (pinyin) is okay here too.

Kuaidi 快递 is usually the preferred option — a delivery person will come to your door with the package. For details on the alternatives, check out our detailed guide to buying.

Sit back and wait for your package to arrive. When it does, you should check out our Guide to Receiving Stuff. … if you’re not too busy playing with your new treasure.