Ma Xiaowei's husband likes telling people she is a used-car dealer.
Even in the mainland, with less than a decade of widespread private car ownership, this profession ranks alongside journalism as among the least trusted and most ignoble.
But Ms Ma and her partners are not just any fast-talking rust-bucket hustlers. They are the founders of IAuto, an online second-hand car portal that analysts describe as the holy grail of the technology industry - a profitable traditional business that can be reinvented and made more efficient with the help of the internet.
In a strange reversal from most other countries, the internet is actually older than the mainland's second-hand car market. That translates into huge potential for companies that can set up shop at the crossroads between the two.
After a few short years of explosive growth, the land of bicycles has overtaken Japan to rank No2 after the United States in terms of number of cars sold.
With sales of 7.2 million vehicles last year, including 3.83 million passenger cars, China now accounts for 10 per cent of the global market. Because it is still so new, as attested by the manic construction of roads, the gleaming fleets of brand-new sedans and the traffic havoc wreaked by all the first-time drivers, second-hand car sales are still relatively uncommon.