*This is an in interesting wrinkle in the evolution of pop-stars. I wonder if they ever bother to sing or dance. Do they have their own fragrance yet? via @raykwong
"The hottest thing on Taobao these days isn’t cracked iPhones or knock-off LV bags, it’s a little pepper that’s hard to swallow. Qiangkou xiaolajiao (呛口小辣椒, sort of like the Chinese equivalent of wasabi) are a set of identical twin girls who are tearing up the Taobao ranks leading the charge of a new class of online celebrity–Taobao daren (达人)–masters of the Taobao universe.
"As of May 2010, Taobao.com boasted 2,418,069 shops, 13,431 malls and was adding about 30,000 shops per month. That’s enough to make it the world’s largest online retailer. The Mall of America in Minneapolis, in the US, by contrast, has only 522 stores. If Taobao were offline, it would cover an area 10 times the size of Minneapolis and be all but impossible to navigate.
"Chinese consumers find their way around Taobao based on a combination of instinct, research and trust, facilitated by Taobao’s wangwang (旺旺) messaging service. But it’s not as simple as checking a vendor’s “HEART” rating. There are certain key users – Taobao royalty – who’ve become genuine powerbrokers in this multi-billion dollar community by obsessively buying stuff, documenting every purchase and recommending their favorite shops.
"The Wasabi Twins got their start a few years ago with a blog before graduating onto Taobao. It wasn’t long before they’d risen through the daren ranks and now they rule over Taobao’s Celebrity Shopper Street (名人导购街), boasting 5,763 followers and a million fans. They were featured on the cover of a Vogue (China) fashion supplement in July 2010 under the header “From Taobao Girls to ‘It’ Girls.” In November a Korean fashion house flew them over, took them shopping and photo-documented every stop along with way.
"Chinese netizens dug up their real names (尉丹 and 尉青), their birth date (they’re Aries) and a startling amount of info about their family background (they’re not exactly fu’erdai–trust fund brats–but they’re not far off). In a lot of ways, they’re China’s version of the Olsen twins, but they’re less celebrities-gone-shopping and more shopping celebrities.
"But experienced Taobao shoppers remain wary of the hype..." (((If you're a pop-star, and some demographic fraction of geezers doesn't hate, fear and distrust you, you're not a pop-star at all.)))
