E-beggars on Taobao, China’s biggest e-commerce site
Alia | April 5th, 2011 - 1:40 am
People are no joking when they say you can sell and buy everything imaginable on Taobao. But sometimes, unimaginable, too. For example, online begging – “It is neither a shame nor a crime to beg”, as the Taobao online begging slogan goes.
Usually, an e-beggar would make it clear in the “product description” that they are beggars and briefly tell the story why s/he is reduced to begging. The price tag ranges from 1 cent to several yuan. Many of these e-beggars are actually for a good cause, but many others are not at all charity related. Either way, they hope to harvest empathy as well as money through Taobao.
If you key in “begging” (乞讨, qi tao) in Taobao product search, you will find pages of results posted by e-beggars.
The picture below is one who claimed to be an unemployed fresh collage graduate with no job, no money and no background. Similar to him, there are also young couples begging for wedding money.
This is a guy begging for money to buy an apartment so that he can get a wife. (He got an amazing 750,000 yuan in 30 days)
This is a Taobao shop owner begging for living expenses due to 0 profit.
This is a father who claimed his son got leukemia begging for healthcare expenses.
This is for helping rural children.
This is for education
Bet everyone is nervous to comment on this one.
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