Swapping, the new shopping

Online bartering has changed a lot since an American guy swapped a pin for a year in a villa some time back. It has become so common that people will trade almost anything, including wait for it used handkerchiefs!

And in the current icy economic climate, Chinese "huanke" - people who trade things online that they rarely use - have found that it isn't just fun but a way of slashing unnecessary costs.

"There have been about 30,000 visitors to our website every day since October, twice the number of previous months," says Su Mingxian, founder of www.huanke.com, a popular online swap site. "We have 200-300 new huanke subscribers every day, and 50-80 successful deals.