When it comes to waimai, my platform of choice is always Meituan. It’s not that they’ve got more options than eleme or anything like that. It’s simply a matter of habit. Nevertheless, what began as a humble food delivery app has since grown to include shared bikes, grocery delivery, hotel booking, attraction ticket sales, medicine delivery, and my latest favorite feature – ride hailing. It seems like they’re trying to gain market share from Didi by offering cheaper rates for riders and not taking commission from drivers, an obvious incentive for any potential recruit.
Here’s how to use it
Go to the car icon at the top of your Meituan homepage.
Once it’s open, you should get a pretty accurate pin for your current location. If you need to change it, simply click on the blue location pin and manually input your address.
Then in the second line, input your desired destination. For most popular places such as Solana Mall, both Chinese and English are acceptable. However, if you know the Chinese name, I would highly recommend using it to avoid any mistakes.
Once you’ve put in your destination you can now select drivers from multiple ride-hailing apps, with estimated costs listed on the right.
Then click the black button at the bottom to call your car.
Some have said that the quality of drivers is not as great as those who work for Didi, but honestly, after using Meituan for a week, I haven’t seen any difference between their drivers and a Didi Express.
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Images: Mina Yan, Pexels
