Sales of special Tibetan products on the Internet, such as the Nagqu Chinese caterpillar fungus and dried Tibetan yak meat, have been becoming popular both in Tibet and elsewhere in China.

A man surnamed Wang who works in Lhasa, capital of Tibet, said he would always buy special Tibetan products for his relatives and friends whenever he went home in inland China.

"Special Tibetan products, such as the Turquoise with ethnic features and the fragrant highland barley liquor, are favored by my relatives," he said.

When he suggested buying them this year before going home for holiday, he was declined by his relatives as they found that they could buy the products in online shops.

On popular electronic commercial websites, such as taobao.com, eachnet.com and paipai.com, stores selling such products can be found easily. Most of the shop owners are based in Tibet, and some are in Beijing, Shanghai and other parts of China.

File photo shows special Tibetan products produced by a company in Tibet, photo from CRIonline.

Prices of such products in those online shops also vary. Take the price of the concentrated fragrant highland barley liquor for example. A bottle of such liquor sells at about 60 yuan in online shops based in Tibet, while a bottle sold by shops outside Tibet is priced from 100 yuan to 128 yuan.

"Excluding transportation costs, we can make more profits than those Lhasa-based online shops, " said a shop owner in Shenzhen. As the cost of buying the goods is higher than those in Tibet, the goods can be sold at higher prices.

"The high quality, highland characteristics and the regional culture of the special Tibetan products are a fundamental reason for the popularity of the products," said a man surnamed Shang, who has been selling the products online for quite a long time.

"Though a lot of people haven't been to Tibet, they still like to buy such products in the online shops," he said.

"With the rapid growth of the networks and the ever-growing number of Internet users, online shopping has been becoming a trend in Tibet," said an online shop owner in Lhasa. Though E-commerce is not as mature as that in other parts of China, it is still developing fast.