Ordering Chinese Books from Jing Dong

When my son started eating solids after turning 6 months old, it was really difficult to find books that catered to a Chinese diet. At home, we mainly use ingredients commonly found in Chinese households: sweet potatoes, bok choy, winter melon, pumpkin, pork neck bones, and so on. None of the Western baby food books used these ingredients, and honestly, I did not want to buy ingredients we would not use. Then I came across a Chinese book about cooking for infants in my library, and I loved it so much so that I wanted to buy it so I could make notes and keep it longer than the loan period.

My local Chinese bookstore did not carry this book, so I had to order it directly from China. With no experience doing this, I turned to ChatGPT to come up with ideas. This was how I learned about Jing Dong, a massive Chinese online retailer.

I learned a lot about ordering from China in my quest to buy this book, so I’ll share how I placed an order, how long it took to receive them, and the most nerve-wrecking aspect—the cost of shipping.

Getting started with shopping on Jing Dong

The global site (https://global.jd.com/) for Jing Dong could be accessed by desktop or mobile. On mobile, it’s really easy to create an account with Wechat. Otherwise, you could also use Apple ID. To toggle the language to English on mobile, tap on the globe at the top.

I will preface that I started using Jing Dong in Chinese because I did not know about the English setting. This meant a lot of Google Translate on Google Chrome and scratching my head figuring out how to navigate the site. It was only after I placed my first order did I notice the English option.

Placing an order on Jing Dong

Instead of buying just one book, I thought it made sense to place a large order since shipping was going to be high anyways….a few nights of browsing through the app, my order snowballed to 75 books 😅 In addition to baby food, I was also looking for Chinese board books. Placing this large order was a perfect chance to get reading material for my baby.

Here’s what my order looked like in Canadian Dollars:

• Books: $170.43
• Shipping $175.52
• Customs fees: $33.43

This brings the grand total to $379.38.

Shipping covers two parts.

1. Domestic shipping from seller’s warehouse to JD’s
2. International shipping when the order leaves China

My initial order calculated shipping, but I didn’t realize it was domestic. After some the books arrived in JD’s warehouse, they were packaged into one parcel and it was ready to leave China. Then I was hit with notification to pay for international shipping. Of the $175.52 I paid for shipping, about 35% went to international shipping. So honestly, it wasn’t so bad. I probably could have avoided paying so much for shipping if I bought from JD’s own stores which are already sitting in their warehouses. Maybe about a third of my order came from third-party sellers, so those took longer to arrive.

Customs fees only hit me when the order arrived in Canada. UPS handled the last-mile shipping and after I paid those, I received my order within two days. If it wasn’t for these surprise costs of shipping and customs, I was expecting to pay ~$280 for everything—so I saw about $100 in additional, unexpected costs 🥲

Initially, ChatGPT suggested I order books through Superbuy, a forwarding service. You can order from various stores online and Superbuy will consolidate them in one package and send it to you. However, ordering this way forgoes in-app offers. Jing Dong regularly discounts items to encourage purchases. My books saw a range of 10-12% off the original price.

Payments made to Jing Dong are in RMB or HKD. It will be most cost-effective to pay using something like Wise to save on exchange fees.

Jing Dong Shipping Times

This is what the timeline looked like from placing my order to receiving it:

• July 16: Placed order
• July 20: Batch 1 was ready to leave China, paid international shipping fees
• July 22: Batch 2 was ready to leave China, paid international shipping fees
• July 22: Batch 1 arrived in Canada, paid UPS custom fees
• July 23: Batch 1 delivered
• August 17: First part of batch 2 delivered
• September 2: Last part of batch 2 delivered

To summarize, the order was split into two. The first batch arrived from China in six days, and they were all “Sold by JD”. Shipping is prioritized for purchases made directly from JD’s stores with delivery ranging from 5-11 days. The calculation for shipping is complicated as it depends on the weight and your location, so it’s easiest to see the total on the page before confirming the order.

The second batch arrived in two parts and were sold by third-party retailers. The first part arrived in four weeks and the second part in about six weeks.

Overall, I was quite happy with the time the order arrived. I had no idea that this was how it would play out. You can imagine my surprise when I saw a box from JD within a week! It’s quite amazing what’s possible in 2026 that I can order from China and get them so quickly.

Buying one book from Jing Dong because why not

One of my books got mixed up. They sent me a duplicate of another book I already received. It made no sense to try and go through customer service over this mistake, but I still wanted the book that was missing. For the thrill of it, I ordered one book just to see what would happen. Turns out, it was painless.

The book cost about ~$10 and shipping was ~$15—$25 in total. It arrived in 12 days because there was some handling error that caused delays, but still quite fast. Before I ordered on JD, I asked my local Chinese bookstore if they could help me buy this book. They said they could; it would cost $23.99 + tax, which comes to $27, and that delivery would take two months. Although shipping cost more than the book, it isn’t that bad considering buying locally would have cost about the same and take much longer to arrive.

I would order from Jing Dong again

Prior to ordering on Jing Dong, I checked if Temu or Alibaba carried the book I was looking for—and they did not. Stores like Jing Dong and Taobao both had them in stock, but ChatGPT recommended Jing Dong over Taobao for some reason, and I’m glad it did because the shopping experience was positive. I am bummed at how expensive the order became, but it came to about $5 per book, so it wasn’t too bad. And these books will be used for many years to come.

If you’ve been thinking about using Jing Dong, I suggest giving it a try for yourself. Expect to pay about double the cost of the items for shipping and custom fees. And don’t forget to buy directly from JD if possible to get them sooner and take advantage of discounts.

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