On any given morning Qingyanliu seems dormant. Restaurants and parlors are closed and once bustling streets are largely empty of people. The small village, which lies just an hour's drive away from the city of Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, and is famed for its small commodities trade, appears on the surface to be a sleepy hollow.

Yet what lies beneath the village seems to prove otherwise. In underground warehouses a small army of workers tape up cartons of goods, ready for express delivery collection and onward distribution around China. The dawn to dusk frenetic activity below the surface is due to the phenomenon of Taobao, China's largest online shopping platform, said Lin Xila, a Taobao trader in Qingyanliu.

Mecca for entrepreneurs

Qingyanliu, which is nicknamed "Taobao village," became well known due to its billion yuan annual trade volume on taobao.com. In 2010, the village's online transaction volume stood at around 2 billion yuan ($304 million), two and a half times that in 2009, according to Yiwu's local e-commerce association.

E-commerce has brought wealth and endless opportunities to the village, added Liu Wengao, Secretary General of the association.

With a monthly income of only 1,500 yuan ($228), Kong Weigang quit his job as a network administrator in northeast China five years ago. He then opened an online store for daily commodities in the village.

Kong is now the owner of a Taobao "golden crown" store, which has made over 500,000 transactions and has more than 20 employees. His store oversees the wrapping of about 1,000 parcels everyday, sent from a 200-square-meter basement to customers across the country.

However, Kong's story cannot be seen as a one-off fairy tale. Kong is one example of 1,800 Taobao traders who are getting rich from scratch in Qingyanliu. But what is the secret behind this level of success?