I would personally love to see someone put out an “Essential guide to electronics NOT in Shenzhen” for those of us who want to keep things more local or at least avoid outsourcing entire hardware builds to China. Does such a thing exist?
Ditto. Even alternatives to jlcpcb and PCBWay that are EU or US only would be great. Outsourcing everything to China has become a detriment for learning and exposure to technology. The west has shifted to software first, which I think is a bad thing. At least Raspberry Pis are made in the UK.
I'm curious why anyone who needs to deal with an in-person market unless they needed something same-day - or you need a specific part fixed. I feel most things described are best done over Taobao.
Navigating Taobao, determining product quality, and haggling with sellers of Taobao's chat is a whole artform. There are a lot of subtleties but you can get all sorts of crazy stuff done. Parts customized, special orders etc. Just a matter of asking sellers directly and negotiating a bit. They're generally very patient. I don't know if there is "Essential Guide to Taobao" though
"Until you see how your Chinese contacts use emojis or get the chance to ask what they mean, it’s best to stick with just text and a simple smiling face"
Errr... This should be updated to be " :) ". Because the "simple smiling face" in Wechat is meant has the connotation of being a sarcastic smile (b/c he's smiling with only his mouth and not his eyes). It's virtually never used
It’s basically a U+1F642 Slightly Smiling Face. Almost universally considered passive aggressive nowadays (you can of course make it more obvious with the upside down version, U+1F643).
