We are in the search of a chinese speaking/reading member to help us hopefully order some items from taobao. We are planning on making a group purchase but we need a translator to make sure we are doing it right...
I might be wrong, but I think you need a Bank of China account as well as some other form of ID to use that. Not sure if it's mandatory, but at the very least many sellers will refuse to communicate/sell unless you have a valid Bank of China account. I'd suggest looking at alternative places before going through the trouble. I did notice that lots of cheap places started cropping up, like DealExtreme and Quality China Goods, which tend to stock a large gambit of cheap stuff. Also, if for some reason you had to use some kind of marketplace, I would think comparable places like Ruten would be much easier to get into because Taiwan is much more open and international. Well, at least getting in anyways. Getting sellers to ship outside of the country to you if you happen to meet all the banking requirements is another story.
What we want, we have only found in taobao, its very hard to find stuff in the chinese web scene, more carrying around a translator.
You'll probably want to find someone locally who can speak/read Chinese and hit up some Chinese forums like CFC (http://www.comefromchina.com/) and ask around. I'm sure trying to order stuff when you don't have a valid government ID or bank account isn't new, and since the whole community is made up of people who live outside of China your much more likely to find someone who can help, as well as speak English.
