NANJING, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Every day, Tian Qianchun drives his speedboat shuttling between Mudun Island and the mainland 10 km away to transport goods.
The 27-year-old islander is an online shopping agent, serving around 2,000 residents on the island, located in a lake in east China's Jiangsu Province.
In the past, it took residents four hours to buy commodities from the nearest town as they had to travel first by boat and then 75 km by road.
In 2015, Alibaba recruited villagers as partners for its "Rural Taobao" program, which enables rural residents to buy things online without leaving their homes.
Tian, then a fresh graduate, joined the program as a representative for his island.
His duties include helping villagers buy daily necessities and sell their own products on the Taobao e-commerce platform.
To facilitate the process, Tian bought a speedboat and named it "cuntao," which means "village Taobao".
He makes at least five trips every day, each time carrying a full load of products ranging from toothbrushes and toothpaste to furniture and home appliances.
In the service center, Tian receives all kinds of shopping requests and sometimes even helps villagers pay their phone bills online.
The small island has a daily transaction record of 500,000 yuan (about 74,000 U.S. dollars) and annual average transactions amount to over 5 million yuan.
Wang Jianxun, vice president of Alibaba Group, said the rural Taobao is now available in 29 provincial-level regions and over 30,000 villages across China.
Some 4,000 online stores have been set up in Sihong County where Mudun Island is located, providing 30,000 jobs. In 2017, the county's total online shopping transactions reached 16 billion yuan.
Across China, online trading reached 1.24 trillion yuan in 2017, up 39.1 percent year on year, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Statistics also show there are 9.86 million rural online stores, creating job opportunities for 28 million people.
"I don't know how to use the internet, but I've bought food and drinks online," said Sun Yiming, 62, a resident of Mudun Island. "The service center helps us order online, so we can have food from different parts of the world delivered to our doorsteps."
"Online shopping has made this remote island more lively and prosperous," said Tian, "I am delighted to be able to help my fellow villagers and improve our lives."
Tian said he is thinking of ways to sell the island's aquatic products through e-commerce platforms.
"Almost everyone on the island is involved in fisheries," Tian said, "I hope I can carry more of these products on my speedboat one day."
