Electronics, appliances and anything branded: JD.com — buy the self-operated listings and you get genuine goods and famously fast delivery. Everything else: Taobao — the widest selection in the country, and the place to find the odd, the custom and the cheap. Pay through Alipay or WeChat, send it to your hotel, and give it a few days. For a traveller ordering to a hotel address, JD is the safer default for anything you care about.
JD for electronics — and why the word "self-operated" matters
JD's advantage is that a large part of its catalogue is stocked and shipped by JD itself — the listings marked self-operated . Those come from the manufacturer or an authorised distributor, arrive in JD's own packaging, usually within a day, and can be returned without an argument. That is worth a small premium when you are buying a camera, a lens, a laptop or a power bank, and it removes the counterfeit question almost entirely.
Filter for it rather than trusting the price. It is the single most useful habit on this page.
Taobao for everything else
Taobao is a marketplace rather than a shop: millions of independent sellers, endless variety, and prices below what you would pay in a store. The trade is that authenticity varies by seller. Two defences. First, Tmall — the verified-brand tier inside the same app, where an official flagship store is what it says it is. Second, the numbers: a shop rated around 4.8 or better with heavy monthly sales has survived a lot of customers, and that is a better signal than the marketing copy.
Taobao's best feature for a visitor is image search. If you saw something — in a shop window, in a hotel, on someone's back — photograph it and let the app find the listing. It works when you cannot name the thing in Chinese, which is most of the time.
Setting it up
Both platforms use real-name verification, which for a visitor means your passport, and both work best if you have a Chinese mobile number at sign-up — some screens will accept a foreign one and some will not, so if you hit a wall, doing it with a local SIM is the reliable answer. Payment is the easy part: you pay through Alipay or WeChat, from the card you linked there. Neither platform takes a foreign card directly.
There is also a route for buying from abroad — JD's international site, Taobao's overseas shipping, forwarders that consolidate parcels — but if you are in the country, ignore all of it and ship to where you are staying. It is faster, cheaper and vastly simpler.
Delivering to a hotel
Address it exactly as the front desk gives it to you, in Chinese characters, with the room number, and expect a phone call when the courier arrives — they will not speak English and they will want to hand it over in person. Larger hotels take parcels at reception as a matter of routine; tell them you are expecting something and they will hold it.
Do not cut it fine. Ordering something you need for a flight that leaves in two days is a gamble I have watched people lose.
Two things that catch people out
Sizes run small. Chinese clothing and shoe sizing is smaller than European or American, so read the measurements table rather than trusting S, M and L. If you are tall, this matters more than the price.
Read the ratings, not the price. The cheapest listing is usually cheap for a reason. A mid-priced item from a high-rated shop is the better purchase almost every time, and it is the habit that separates a good experience here from a bad one.
Questions I get on this one
Can I pay with my foreign card?
How fast is delivery?
Is Taobao safe for a foreigner?
Can I return things?
What about buying camera gear specifically?
From buying equipment and everyday things this way here for years. Platform rules and seller tiers change — verify before you rely on a detail. Related: reviews and where to look · all the apps · taking drones in · all essentials