After living for years, or even decades, in the US, many Chinese immigrants seem to maintain a lifestyle of buying consumer goods and services from websites operated by Chinese companies.
They shop on Taobao, instead of Amazon. They stream Game of Thrones on v.qq.com, instead of HBO Go. They listen to their favorite singers on Migu, instead of Spotify.
Are they the kind of immigrants who live in the US but then again aren’t really living in the US? Not if you ask them. In an article by the tech site Pingwest, some of these people told the author that they are just consumers going after good bargains made available to them no matter where they live thanks to a blessing called the internet.
In Silicon Valley, many Chinese software engineers and their families continue to use Taobao as their default online shopping platform, according to the article. While, handled individually, shipping costs will make a purchase too expensive to be worth it, they manage to get a good deal by bundling their orders for one shipment of 21 kilograms of goods or more.
A baker, who goes by the name Windy in the article, said she joined the group buyers in the Valley when she found the same cake boxes on Taobao were six or seven times cheaper than on Amazon. And it wasn’t just confectionary packaging, too. Many other goods, from clothing and makeups to condiments, cost only a fraction of their price in the US if purchased from China — deals that are too good to pass up.
Many use VPNs (virtual private networks) to visit Chinese video streaming sites for Chinese dramas or Hollywood hits to which these sites have obtained the copyrights. “After all, with the same amount of money that buys one month of the Netflix membership, you get a discount gold card that gives you access to content on the Chinese sites for a whole good year,” read the article.
While a typical American user is willing to pay US$18 a month for Amazon’s two-day delivery service, a Chinese immigrant who has tasted how things work back in China sees fast delivery as something you take for granted and not something you have to pay extra for, said the article.
Windy and people like her in the US have two lives, said the article. They call an Uber when they need a ride. They go to Kayak to book a flight. They turn to Yelp to find a good restaurant. “But they have found a magic door and when they open it, cheap but good quality products and services are just a few clicks of the mouse away.”
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