Strage DNS behavior in Chrome vs Firefox
I resolved the issue by clearing the browser data. Strange, but it worked. I went to Settings -> History -> Clear browsing data. With the defaults checked (clear following items from the past hour) it allowed me to visit http://taobao.com again. Creating a new profile didn't help. Nor did clearing the DNS cache from chrome://net-internals. I don't know if it's a bug in Chromium but I'm content to have resolved the issue.