Twenty-four-hour Taobao – A Self Experiment

Rent a Boyfriend! Really?

But now, it’s time to plan my afternoon and evening. Maybe I should take a short nap in the office after my canteen lunch? For the unbeatable price of RMB 35 (€ 4.70) Taobao offers a stylish, self-inflatable polyester couch, ready to use in eight to 10 seconds. It is particularly popular among attendees around China of open-air music festivals. Maybe I should combine it with a six-pack of the cult orange-lemonade brand “Arctic Ocean” (Beibingyang) in the traditional retro-glass bottle, priced at just RMB 33, around € 4.50, delivery included.

And to ensure a genuine whoosh of gas upon opening one I should buy the trendy Suarez bottle opener, invented by a canny Chinese businessman after the biting incident in a match during the 2014 world cup involving Uruguayan soccer player Luis Suarez and Giorgio Chiellini of the national Italian team. It was wildly popular only a few days after this scandalous incident on the football field.

I have to admit that, so far, Taobao has put up a good show, and inwardly give it a nod of respect. But my evening entertainment could be a tough nut to crack. Let’s see how you deal with this, dearest Taobao!

I have read several times in past media reports of unmarried Chinese women who, as preparation for the big Chinese Spring Festival family reunion, rent temporary boyfriends on Taobao. These rent-a-beaux play the role of loving prospective son-in-law over the holidays, the point of the exercise to fend off questions relating to matrimony from solicitous relatives and friends. It’s the perfect way to avoid these annoying enquiries from family members, friends, neighbors and other barely known people on visits to the old home.

I also have no wish to spend the end of my Taobao-day as sole singleton among my friends. So now, Taobao is your chance to show your almightiness!

I keyed “rent a boyfriend” in Chinese characters into the Taobao search engine. The result: no matches. I gave it another try with the Chinese word for “companion.” This time some recommendations popped up: The intelligent domestic robot “Future Night Smart,” remote-controlled by app, which not only sings, dances, and realistically approximates human motion patterns, but is also capable of remotely controlling many home appliances and protecting your home from burglars. The price: RMB 2,800, around € 380. However, this is not exactly what I had in mind for a romantic evening for two.

So I kept browsing. But nor are the other “companions” Taobao recommends – a high-tech smart phone-stand with integrated webcam for smooth video-chats – perfect for keeping in contact with loved ones, a premium-package of discounted senior-diapers, or an oversized cuddly toy hippo – terribly tempting.

From German style breakfast to sea-cucumber, Taobao proves to be a gourmet paradise.

I clicked forward a few pages and finally found a slightly more “humanistic” offer, although the companions available are not real-life but online ones: The shop provides male and female counterparts for romantic conversations, like a virtual version of holding hands via text or voice-messages, phone calls or chat-sessions. The service ranges from a 30-minute unburden-your-heart talk (RMB 5 or 70 cents) to a virtual one-month relationship (RMB 600, € 81). The “Golden Medal All Inclusive Week” promises an even deeper exchange for RMB 300, € 41, but does not carry a detailed product description.

You should avoid sensitive topics with your rented pal, the vendor warns potential clients. Besides, these employees have the right to reject video-calls as they see fit. Furthermore, the provider advises making any actual contact with the rented boy- or girlfriend through means other than the platform. Should such advice be taken, the platform washes its hands of any responsibility for financial losses as a result of demands for cash-filled red envelopes (hongbao), or of an actual offline relationship that develops from an online one.

However, on clicking the comment section for this product, I found: zero entries. Not a good sign!

Therefore, I decided to give Taobao one last chance, and started browsing for a life-size cardboard stand-up model of Christiano Ronaldo as a substitute for a rented boyfriend. But all I could find is a plastic inflatable David Beckham doll. In the end, I plumped for the cuddly toy hippo. And I also found a self-heating outdoor-survival-version of the classic Chinese dish Kung Pao Chicken as a substitute for the originally planned candle-lit-dinner. Sometimes a girl has to make compromises.

I don’t want to be a whinger or overcritical. So my conclusion after this theoretical 24-hour self-experiment: Taobao is nearly almighty, and for good reasons the most popular shopping-tool of a whole generation of Chinese youth. There is almost nothing you won’t find on this mega-platform, which offers a good mixture of eBay and Amazon features. Between you and me, in the end I did order a pair of shoes. And if they don’t fit, I’ll simply send them back.