Hi from Shenzhen, China

Came to this thread just to see which Milla we would get. Haven’t seen this one before :smiley:

Welcome. I like the views in your pictures. Is that from where you live? (I will be jealous then).

Yes, I have an apartment facing the South China Sea about 80 km from downtown Shenzhen. I’m a huge fan by the way – I learned all my info about emitters from you and a few others on this site.

Welcome Fogofwar, if you love flashlights you’re in the right place, here in the BLF and in China, it will be awesome to have your point of view and to know about the brands sold in China.
Hope you enjoy the BLF

The two budget brands that I highly recommend if you can buy directly from Taobao are Starfish (海星) and Jin Heng (劲衡).

I guess you can call Starfish a “Convoy clone” but they offer some interesting options such as C8s with 21700 tubes and XHP 50.2 in a S2+ sized body. The C8s start at 80 yuan for an Osram CSLNM1 emitter and the XHP 50.2 costs 70 yuan. The driver is only 5 amp regulated but it is the most sustainable small light I’ve seen given the efficiency of the XHP 50.2.

Jin Heng is ran by a guy nearing retirement - I’ve chatted with him several times and encouraged him to sell internationally. He says his children don’t want to take up the family business though and he doesn’t seem to want to learn how to sell on AliExpress. The JKK90 sold by his shop is probably the cheapest Luminus SBT 90.2 flashlight available - I got mine for 342 yuan with the standard free shipping in China. Although, Starfish has the S8 and S9 for almost the same price.

Interesting insights, fogofwar

Do we have to join Tao Bao as a member before we can place orders? And will the sellers ship their flashlights overseas?

Thanks! I don’t really EDC - I usually only have a phone in my pocket and don’t even carry a wallet in China.

My original motivation to get into flashlights was to light up people who set off fireworks too late at night at the beach. I also like small pocket rockets that can light up the beach when walking the dog at night.

I don’t think Taobao will ship internationally. I hear some people forward their orders through SF Express or some other third party.

I do recommend people to download the Taobao android app. I think the webpage is not fully featured if you connect from outside China. However, the app has the same experience even from a non-Chinese IP.

I have heard that Taobao will ship internationally.

The site, of course, is in Chinese, but if you use Chrome as your browser, you can easily translate a good portion of it.

I suspect it is up to the individual sellers. Certain sellers will know better than others on how to ship internationally. There is also the barrier of payment since AliPay runs the show on Taobao.

Taobao is essentially just a platform that connects a bunch of sellers (oftentimes a manufacturer will have their own flagship store) with the rest of the population.

Welcome to BLF fogofwar!

Good reason to join regarding no one else around you appreciates flashlights like we do. :+1:

Hi!

This scenery is very, VERY Shenzhen. High-rises, waterways, mangroves, and an ancestral hall in the middle. Haha.

welcome~ we have a taobao store too, wechat, Welcome to exchange in Shenzhen

I bought a few lights on Takbao a few years ago. None of the sellers would ship to the US themselves. Right now I forget the name, but I used an intermediary. A company in China someplace that took delivery of the shipment from the Taobao seller and forwarded it to me in the US. The payment had to go through the intermediary as well. Of course there fees for both the money exchange and payment as well as handling and shipping. But in the end the total cost was acceptable and I got lights that were otherwise impossible to get.

If I recall the name I will post it.

Welcome to join BLF, same new here fogofwar

Hey fogofwar, I saw your introduction on Reddit the other day. I didn’t recognize most of your lights, cool to see an unrepresented side of the hobby.

Are there any Chinese forums or review sites that you recommend? Even with Google translate, I haven’t been able to find a runtime graph for the jkk90, for example.

Yep cssbuy.com They still have my account records. I have ¥20.27 credit with them; about 3 USDollars. Wonder what I can buy? :wink:

Thanks, Lumintop is also in Shenzhen Longgang District and I think Mateminco is in Dongguan. I have several of your lights in my Taobao shopping cart.

I didn’t really join the Chinese flashlight community. I’ve taken a quick look at the Baidu Flashlight Tieba (somewhat like reddit): https://tieba.baidu.com/f?kw=�ֵ�&fr=ala0&tpl=5

People seem to post newly received lights and discuss sales but not much in depth content.