If you live in Beijing and want to get around the neighborhood to discover good food to eat, sights to see, and places to visit, then you’ll definitely have heard of and probably used 大众点评 (DaZhongDianPing).
Offering one of the largest databases of all of the above-mentioned – from restaurants to parks and tourist destinations – DaZhongDianPing or simply Dianping, is one of the critical apps you’ll need to maximise your time in the capital city. I like to introduce it to my expat friends as “the Chinese Yelp”.
Dianping is simple and straightforward to use, allowing you to search for what you want based on your location or category of needs. Aside from the top three most popular categories – Dining, scenic / tourist spots, and hotels, one other category most utilized by parents would be family-friendly kids theme parks. Knowing your way around the app can help you seek out more authentically-Beijing places at better prices since the app also offers vouchers and discounts!
But the issue for most expats is that Dianping is almost entirely in Mandarin!
If you are unable to read Chinese characters, then the app will be rather difficult to navigate, let alone reading the reviews and asking questions to other users. That’s why Jingkids International has decided to help bridge this gap and start its own Dianping account where we will write reviews of such places in English!
As always, our focus will be on family-friendly destinations, whether they are restaurants, parks, or anything else we can discover around Beijing that will entertain and educate our readers with young ones! To ensure we provide a comprehensive overview of the place, we have decided on a few basic criteria when reviewing places. Here’s what we came up with:
Review Criteria for Restaurants: Kids menu or free kids meals, kids facilities (such as playroom, playground), kid-friendly amenities (such as diaper-changing station in the toilet and high chairs), cleanliness, kid-friendly service and atmosphere, then as usual quality and price of the food on a whole, as well as location.
Review Criteria for Play spaces: Cleanliness, quality of facilities, age-appropriateness, price, and location.
Review Criteria for Classes and/or Services: English-speaking capability, quality, age-appropriateness, price, and location.
Where possible, we will use a 5-point scale (1 being Poor and 5 being Excellent) to review places. Do note that our Dianping account states the opinions of our writers and contributors, which are subject to their personal experiences and biases. While we do our best to follow the criteria we have set to maintain professional standards, our reviews may be subjective.
Follow us on Dianping by searching our account – JingkidsInternational – and tell us where you want us to review next!
KEEP READING: Where To Go for Quality DIY Photoshoots
Images: Pexels, Vivienne Tseng-Rush
