Computer dealer offers electronics for sheep

A leaflet of the promotion shows how many sheep some electronic products cost. [Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Residents of Kashgar in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region can leave their wallets at home when they want to shop for a smartphone or tablet computer.

Instead, they just need to take their sheep.

A smartphone can be had for a sheep, and a laptop costs four sheep, according to leaflets handed out by Huang Jie, a local computer dealer.

The 29-year-old decided to run a special promotion to give people a better idea of the value of his products and encourage them to use their sheep to buy his roducts.

Huang has been handing out leaflets in villages around the city during weekends to promote his idea.

"The demand for computers in the villages is very high. Some children even carve keyboards on their desks," he said.

"Many believe computers are very expensive, I want to show them that electronic products are actually quite affordable by comparing their values with their most familiar commodity — sheep.

"I often found people selling their sheep for less than market value because the villages are far from the city. But they can trade their sheep with me, and I help them sell the sheep at a fair price. I will return the money to them if it's more than the price of the product they purchased," Huang added.

Huang said on June 2 that some people have shown an interest in trading sheep but he hasn't made a deal yet. Some villages still don't have Internet connections, which makes the sales of computers there difficult, he added.