todd G.

TheBeijinger website has been around longer than any other in Beijing. The site is confusing and difficult to navigate but offers good content. While well read, the forum generates most of the traffic and that is dominated by indignant adolescents. Combined with their monthly magazine thebeijinger is a solid resource for those visiting or living in Beijing. The company hires full time staff to generate content and just recently began accepting user generated content.

This website concentrates on restaurant and nightlife in beijing. The content is 100% user generated and as far as I can tell the administrator keeps the reviews free of spam and or fake reviews. The site is easy to navigate and breaks down searches into just about anyway you can think - cuisine, location, occasion, price, wifi, etc. localnoodles also has an event section. Creative incentives like charity donations for your review make this one of the more interesting sites. Definitely a solid resource for those living or visiting Beijing.

Time Out (Beijing) both online and off is an absolute waste of time. Like the magazine they publish locally, it's both free and worth what you paid for it. The website is stuck in the stone ages. Reviews are written by paid staff only and unnecessarily verbose. Often the "newest" and "hottest" topics are neither new nor hot (anymore). The event section is sparse and unrepresentative of what is happening locally.
Would recommend using the local expat websites instead.

Cityweekend (Beijing) is generally a good website however many of the functions don't work well. Articles written by staff are seemingly driven by subjects that will get the most hits. Quality of writing is very poor however normally informative enough to get what you need quickly. Reviews are of nominal use. Because the format is very like a chat room the reviews sometimes read that way. Perhaps the best part of this website is the events section.