If you need it, it's there on Taobao

You may think that mom-and-pop stores are gradually dying out, giving way to chain stores and big business, but you would be wrong. The online shopping platform Taobao is a game changer and has quietly revolutionized the way we buy and sell.

Taobao, or "treasure hunt", recently became the largest e-commerce website in terms of traffic, surpassing Amazon. It has 190 million registered users and serves the biggest marketplace in the world. Half of China's Internet users go to Taobao, either to browse, buy or sell, according to Web information company Alexa.

While Taobao borrowed its original business model from eBay when it started up in 2003, the student soon became the master. Just three years later, eBay shut down its Chinese site and now Taobao controls about 80 percent of the country's online shopping market.