DashScope on Chen Kai Blog

Alibaba Cloud Full Stack (10): Bailian and DashScope — The LLM Layer

Thu, 07 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

When I first needed an LLM API for a production app in China, my options were limited and expensive. Most international providers had no mainland endpoint, billing required a foreign credit card, and latency from calling US-based APIs was 800ms+ before a single token came back. Then Qwen showed up on DashScope with an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and suddenly building AI products in China became as straightforward as anywhere else. Same SDK, same request shape, same streaming protocol — just a different base_url and a key from the Bailian console. I have been running production workloads against it for over a year now, and this article is the comprehensive walkthrough I wish I had on day one.

OpenClaw QuickStart (2): Install and First Chat in 10 Minutes

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The README claims five minutes, but I’d say ten. The extra time accounts for the common Node version mistake.

Prerequisites#

Node v22.16 or newer. The project is strict about this. Older Node versions will install, but the gateway will throw errors with optional chaining in some places. I run v24 because that’s the recommended track.
About 2 GB free RAM at runtime, more if you load big skills.
An LLM API key from one of: DashScope (free tier works), Anthropic, OpenAI, or the Aliyun Bailian Coding Plan (200元/month for eight models).

Check Node first:

Aliyun Bailian (1): Platform Overview and First Request

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

If you ship anything that touches Chinese-language users, sooner or later you will end up calling a Bailian model. Qwen-Max is the cheapest sane way to get GPT-4-class Chinese understanding, the Wanxiang video models are the only production-grade text-to-video API I can buy with a Chinese invoice, and Qwen-TTS-Flash is the only TTS that handles Cantonese and Sichuanese without sounding like a customs announcement. After about a year of running these in production for an AI-marketing platform, this series is what I wish someone had handed me on day one.