RIYADH - "I buy things on JollyChic many times, because prices are cheap, quality good and (home) delivery fast," said Lima Khalid, 25, a Saudi Arabian female employee at a local company.

JollyChic is not a Saudi Arabian online shopping site; rather, it is an online retailer operated by a Chinese e-commerce company named Jolly Information Technology Co Ltd based in China's eastern city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

JollyChic is so popular that it has become the top e-commerce company in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, with more than 35 million registered users by the end of 2017.

Chinese and Saudi people interact at JollyChic's office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. [Photo by Wang Bo/Xinhua]

"JollyChic is popular across the country, and nearly every online buyer here knows it," said Abdu Lahman, a student at King Saud University.

JollyChic is just one example showing the footprints of Chinese e-commerce companies in the Middle East, where online shopping is a fast growing market.

Manufacturing is rarely based in the Middle Eastern oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - they largely depend on imports of daily necessities.

Through cooperation with local enterprises, Chinese e-commerce companies such as JollyChic have been successful in the recent years in building an online Silk Road linking China with the Middle East.

They have earned profits while benefiting the consumers in the Middle East, allowing them to buy inexpensive and fine products at home.

Typically, a JollyChic warehouse in the Saudi capital Riyadh houses commodities that are arranged for dispatch to households. These include Chinese-made clothes, shoes, bags, home decoration articles and appliances.

"JollyChic entered Saudi Arabia in 2013, and topped local online shopping market just in a few years. Besides advanced data process technology, warehouse establishment and cooperation with cyber celebrities is crucial to marketing," said JollyChic's CEO Li Haiyan.