With the Didi ridesharing app now available in English, I installed in and tried it in Beijing over the last 2 weeks, doing a total of 3 trips. Its been running in English for a short while now, so I wanted to share my experiences in Beijing.
I connected it to my Wechat pay (wei xin) account, but see it now also accepts non-Chinese credit cards. Some comments about it:
- The origin and destination entry is in English. If you drag the map to where you are, it will find the English name of a nearby landmark etc, which works well if you know the English name for somehere and (as in my case) can not read nor write Chinese.
- There are several types of service available, with surge pricing applied to all except taxis.
1. Premier (which I used) got me a black sedan twice (1 Passat, 1 Camry, both really well presented, leather trim, dark glass etc) and a Buick van the third time. All drivers were well presented and bottled water was offered to me.
2. Luxe is more expensive (in my case it offered rides more than 2x the price) and lists Mercs and other high end cars.
3. Express is lower quality and cheaper than Premier, I will try it next week.
4. Taxi allows you to use the app to call a taxi and show the driver the destination, price based on the actual taximeter in the taxi.
On two occasions the driver found me by following the map. On the third occasion the driver called me in Chinese, presumably to ask how to find me, but upon finding that we couldn't communicate well, he hung up and just drove to where I had dropped a pin.
As a non Chinese speaker, all 3 trips were much better than travelling in a meter taxi and were about the same price as a meter taxi. I find most Beijing taxis somehow smell of smoke and wet dog, so having clean cars with drivers who didn't spit out the windows was a welcome change. The payment was better than in a taxi, where it is generally cash only.
It also has given me a lot more confidence to be able to travel more independently and expect to get to my intended destination than I had before. For visitors to China, I would recommend giving it a go now.
It has the functionality that you can get an electronic FaPiao emailed to you, as well as a listing of trips. This can be handy for expense reimbursement - I did this last night as a trial and it worked well.
something went wrong with the upgrade system and my partner who is SG got upgraded at the gate and me as WP wasn't even on the list. So we both sat in whY but the crew did a fantastic job at looking after us!
