Recently, Zhong Xiaoli, a 29-year-old white-collar in Beijing, sold her 35th item on Xianyu (literally translated as Idle Fish), an online platform for secondhand items owned by Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group. Since she first started using the app seven years ago, she has earned more than 3,500 yuan ($479) from the sale of items she had used or left unused, ranging from cosmetics and clothing to electronic devices and home appliances.
The most expensive item she ever sold was a camera—which she’d originally purchased on the app. “I had bought it for 800 yuan ($109) and sold it for more than 900 yuan ($123) more than a year later,” Zhong told Beijing Review. “The ‘trade’ was both a surprise and a lot of fun.”
