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.
"You can see the influence of the financial crisis. People realize they can save a lot by swapping instead of buying, and for them, saving is making money on some level."
Su reckons the 18-30 age group makes up nearly 70 percent of the huanke community, and more than half are women, who tend to be keener about swapping things, ranging from expensive products like cameras and MP3 players to small items like handkerchiefs. Men, on the other hand, typically consider it degrading to swap second-hand goods.
People often swap different skills and products - a huanke might teach someone how to build a website and receive singing lessons in return. Naturally, though, such exchanges require people to be in the same area, since they need to be face to face.
