To Temu, or not to Temu, that is the question…

It’s probably impossible to have escaped knowledge of Temu over the last couple of years. The site that (apparently) lets you “Shop Like a Billionaire” became the darling of the younger Gen Z and the oldest Gen Alpha, amid concerns abouy Viruses, data protection, poor products and forced labour.

For a while I was somewhat sceptical – I’ve bought my fair share from Chinese sellers on Ebay, with mixed results, though Ebay pretty much always sides with the buyer and refunds pretty fast. I am also aware of the amount of utter utter tat that is sometimes shipped over and the concerns over chinese data protection.

In the end it was this article from Which that made me dip my toe in. Broadly their assesment is that if you are a bit savvy abput making sure you know what you are buying, and use the website, rather than the app, and pay via Pay-Pal, it’s probably no less safe than any other large multinational retailer.

What it is good for is getting your hands on some art materials that are Chinese made, and while a lot of cheap tat is made in China, the country also has a proud artistic tradition and with that there are of couse some good products.

I jumped in an bought a pad of Baohong Watercolour Paper. This is availible from a couple of UK sources but if you play Temu right (tip – look at something, close the page, go back later and you may get a cheaper price) you can get a cracking deal.

This is basically pretty damn good 300GSM rough paper. It’s internally sized, a good white colour and can take a heck of a soaking. It comes in interesting sizes such as super landscape formats only availible from Arches, for example.

Here’s a couple of pictures I have used it for.

This is from a tutorial video by Paul Clark (worth checking out for inspiration) using my main watercolours and some pigment sticks for details.

This is part of an idea I am playing with, (loosely) based on a photo I found online – this deep and vibrant sunsent obviously needed quite a lot of wetting and shows how this paper stands up to quite some abuse.

Having tested the water, I thought I would try some of the more esoteric materials. There’s a lot of interesting paper lurking on Temu and I love a bit of something new. I was very interested in the so called “Cicada Wing” Paper. This is an alum sized paper from the bark of the qīngtán tree – it feels like tissue paper in it’s weight and transparancy, but it is strong and takes wet media very well.

I used watercolour to make these miniature season pictures, it’s quite amazing how the paper does not simply dissolve, it seems so thin.

I also bought some rice paper. This was interesting, as it came in a plastic document wallet, rather than any normal packaging – one of the oddities of Temu I guess.

Here’s a little picture I made on this.

This was painted with the Gansai Tambi watercolours. You can see how this is more absorbant,

I also got some mulberry leaf paper – another traditional Chinese manufactured paper.

You can really see the construction of this paper if you look closely – it is almost like a gauze with fibres impregnated into it. This is very soft and absorbant, giving this faint and almost ephemeral look to the pictures.

Overall, everything I ordered came, and was what I expected. My bank account does not seem to have been emptied, no do I have a virus on my computer, so I think that I will, when needed shop with Temu again. While I can – It seems that the EU is getting pissed off with this (under the guise of preventing poor quality imports) so as even this may not last, as though we made a big fucking fuss about leaving the EU we seem to still tag along on many of the more irritating aspects. I intend to stock up a little I think.