Easter is happening this weekend, and if you’re a parent on the hunt for delightful Easter activities for your kids, we’ve got you covered!

We’ve made a section on the Beijinger‘s events page that’s specifically dedicated to everything related to Easter. From events to themed pastries, whatever Easter-related stuff you’re looking for, you’ll likely find it here.

Check out our top picks:

Easter Weekend Family-Fun Feasts and Outdoor Adventures at Kempinski Hotel Beijing Yansha Center

On Apr 19 and 20, the hotel will host a weekend of Easter-themed delights, blending culinary indulgence with interactive fun for all ages. Step into the hotel’s private outdoor garden, nestled near the scenic Liangma Riverside, for the Easter Garden Family Fest. Breathe in the fresh spring air while indulging in a specially curated menu featuring Easter classics such as roasted lamb leg, honey-glazed Easter ham, and hot cross buns alongside fresh salad, homemade grilled sausages, and a decadent dessert spread. The celebration goes beyond food with a lineup of outdoor activities designed for making shared memories. Families can explore the charming mini zoo, where children can feed and interact with adorable alpacas and rabbits. Young guests can embark on an Easter egg hunt across the garden or unleash their creativity through themed handcraft-making, egg painting, and car painting sessions.

Jingkids will be selecting two lucky families to win FREE Easter brunch there on Apr 20. Click HERE to find out how to enter in just three simple steps.

Marché de Pâques – Easter Festival

Celebrate Easter in a festive and vibrant atmosphere at the Marché de Pâques at the Ritz-Carlton. Enjoy a delightful market featuring handmade jewelry, delicious Easter treats, Easter-themed gifts, and decorations. There will be activities for all ages, including an Easter egg hunt, games, Easter-themed arts and crafts workshops, and live music outside in the beautiful garden.

Images: Courtesy of organizers, Pexels

The first quarter of 2020 has been a strange time indeed. This year has been defined by quarantines, flight delays, mask shortages, e-learning, constantly asking the question “When will school reopen?”, and for some parents, more time spent with their kids than they could ever wish for.

While we keep those battling on the frontlines of the virus in our thoughts, we can also use this time for a little reflection and creativity.

We’re calling all artists and designers to take part in the COVID-19 T-Shirt Design Contest to show their support for all those fighting COVID-19.

Whether it’s a message of unity and solidarity, the importance of proper hygiene techniques, the power of social responsibility, or showing love and appreciation for the doctors and nurses fighting COVID-19, we want to know what this time has meant to you.

It’s time to unite and show our love and support for one another. Together we’ll overcome COVID-19!

Here is how the contest works:
1. Submit your work here before Mar 29
2. beijingkids readers will have until Apr 3 to vote for their favorite design
3. The winner will receive a set of T-shirts with his or her design, a set of beijingkids quarantine-themed parent/child T-shirts, free entry to all upcoming Beijinger events for the year, and unlimited bragging rights!

Rules:
1. Use whatever medium you choose. it can be watercolor, stick figure, pencil, oil painting, computer drawing and so on.
2. Please paint/design on white paper or background.
3. Participants need to scan or take a photo of their works. Please make sure photos or scanned files are between 1-3M JPG, PNG, or PDF format.
4.  When you’re ready, click here to submit your work.

See you on the other side of quarantine, Beijing! Until then, stay safe and remember to wash your hands!

Last year, delivery chains like Luckin and Coffee Box began to redefine the coffee market in China, but in Beijing, good old fashioned sit-down cafés have proved resilient. In response to the success of local chains like Metal Hands, independent shops and international brands alike have popped up, many of them striving to create surprising concoctions while also carrying specialty brews for the coffee purists. A number of pricy try-hards also popped up in the city’s hutongs, as well as plenty that are worth checking out. Here is our pick of the bunch.

Big Small Coffee expands to Qianmen and Dongcheng

Starting off the new year right, coffee and beer purveyor Big Small only waited one month to open yet another shop in Dongcheng after expanding into Qianmen in January. Though the new location was just off of the trendy Beiluogu Xiang, some questioned whether a coffee shop at the bottom of a hutong apartment complex could prove successful. Sure enough, however, the new spot quickly became a neighborhood favorite, charming visitors with a regularly updated art gallery, outdoor seating overlooking the ping pong table, and, in good weather, a farmers market held around back. Big Small isn’t much of a lunching spot, but specialty butters on toasted rolls make for a nice breakfast.

M Coffee and Alessia hit 77 Park

It has been a good year for caffeine-addicted artists. In April, 77 Culture & Creative Park welcomed M-Coffee into one of its aged brick buildings. The artsy folk in the neighborhood were drawn in by the carefully designed interior and their seasonal options, as well as the rarer coffees like Ugandan espresso. Meanwhile, French bakery Alessia La Boulangerie Française also cornered a tiny spot in the park next door to the George V Art Center, and in addition to the delectable pastries imported from the original bakery, this location offers sweet soufflés with a side of ice cream.

%Arabica brings its Japanese brand to Beijing 

Building off of immense success in Kyoto, %Arabica has now christened 20 outlets in China, with more to come. The coffee brand landed in Beijing with a splash in Sanlitun’s Taikooli North, selling their brews out of the circular windows of a cute, compact trailer. Later, when the new M Woods Longfusi gallery opened its doors, %Arabica nabbed prime real estate on the gallery’s ground floor. A third (non-trailer) shop is expected to open in Sanlitun next year.

Berry Beans tries its hand at wacky flavors

Summer 2019 saw the birth of a local coffee brand that decided to push the edges of creativity, both with their drink and with the interior of their three-floor shop. Berry Beans’ Dongzhimen location has made every effort to be an interesting spot to have a cuppa, and their iced coffees are one of Beijing’s must-tries with flavors like honey and watermelon. In the fall, they opened up another spot in the Sanlitun hole in the wall that was once Chunli Coffee, where they sell their cold brews to go in little, reusable glass bottles.

Cabo Coffee wakes up Bar Street with coffee and a side of flowers

Cabo Coffee opened its doors on Sanlitun bar street, sharing a space with a flower shop. The result is a small but beautifully decorated and fragrant café with mid-priced drinks – RMB 30 will buy you a Vietnamese coffee, and tack on an extra RMB 5 for coconut coffee or a dirty chai latte.

Duo Whiskey and Coffee wows with bizarre and beautiful design

Down in the CBD, this beautifully surreal shop/café/whiskey bar opened up this summer. By day, books decorate the coffee bar, but by night, a secret door opens up to a stylish whiskey bar. No matter which kind of brown stuff you go for, this may be one of the most unique openings of the year.

Elephant Grounds brings healthy and not-so-healthy options to the table

Another café brought exciting breakfast options to Sanlitun’s Taikooli. Elephant Grounds’ nature aesthetic goes nicely with their healthy berry and oat bowls, or opt for something a little heartier with their American grilled cheese sandwiches. More dairy is available at the shop’s ice cream bar. In terms of coffee, boundaries are not pressed at Elephant Grounds, but all of the most common options are on the menu, including a nitro brew and pour-over coffees.

Café Duet sneaks a cheeky shot into your coffee

On Chunxiu Lu, a quiet shop opened its doors this fall with an impressive autumnal menu that tempts customers to try a little booze with their coffee. The drinks are only slightly spiked and its quiet atmosphere is conducive to relaxed work or study. A winter menu has since replaced the pumpkin and osmanthus flowers, and now customers can try concoctions like the yuzu spirits with Japanese whiskey, Ethiopian drip coffee, and a bit of guava.

The Bake Shop tops off The Orchid

Settling into a brick-and-mortar location on the rooftop of the building connected to the Orchid Hotel, The Bake Shop has started selling more than just their famous bread and bagels. Their drinks are not the cheapest in town, but choices like the whipped tonic espresso sparkling pomelo cold brew are intriguing enough to draw customers up the spiral staircase and into their train car-like room. Hungry? The sandwiches and avocado toast are made with the aforementioned famed bread, and breakfast strata cake will fill you right up as well.

This article first appeared on our sister site, The Beijinger, as part of their 2019 Year in Review series

Photos: Joey Knotts, Kyle Mullin, Tautvile Daugelaite 

Time to start counting down to this year’s Beijing Burger Festival, the juiciest weekend of the summer! It’s also your opportunity to guarantee a place at China’s biggest burger-related event ahead of time. That’s right, early bird tickets for the Jun 22-23 festival are now on sale which are not only much cheaper but will also get you some awesome burger loot!

This year, we’re offering early birders two options:

• Pay RMB 50 now and get yourself a ticket, Beijing Burger Festival T-shirt, and bandana (this package will cost RMB 120 on the day) or…
• Pay RMB 20 for a ticket and a bandana (this package will cost RMB 60 on the day)

To buy your early bird tickets right now, click here.

This year’s festival will be bigger and better than ever, with 15,000 burger fiends scouring 50 booths for the best burgers, booze, and bites as well as two full days of music, entertainment, and competitions. This year’s Burger Festival will also be our most vegan and vegetarian-friendly yet so that you can come a gorge on burgers no matter your dietary persuasion.

Our trendy bandanas come in handy as headscarf… or as a napkin should you need it

Watch out for a full rundown of who will attend this year’s festival, but for now get your juices flowing with a look at some of last year’s highlights:

Excited? Grab your tickets now!

Photos: Uni You

When it comes to living the good life, it looks like Beijing still has a long way to go.

A new survey by Deutsche Bank Research, the eighth that the bank has undertaken, has ranked the Chinese capital in 55th place in terms of quality of life on a list of 56 cities from around the world. The only city deemed worse than Beijing in terms of living standards was the Nigerian capital of Lagos. Meanwhile, Manila, Philippines; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Jakarta Indonesia; and Mumbai, India were major cities to slightly outperform Beijing. Zurich, Switzerland topped the list.

Deciding factors used to determine the rankings were purchasing power, safety, healthcare, cost of living, property price to income ratio, commute time, pollution, and climate. Surprisingly enough (at least for those of us who gripe about Beijing’s gridlocked streets and increasing priciness) our city scored well on the traffic (38th on the list), and purchasing power (39th). As an indication of how much more you’d need to cough up if to live in Zurich, Beijing’s cost of living placed 18th whereas the Swiss capital placed dead last. Beijing’s safety (37th) and healthcare (43rd) numbers leave something to be desired.

Lagos was the only city on the list to rank worse than Beijing overall

It should come as no surprise to Beijingers that our city’s climate and notorious pollution levels dragged down our ranking. That is all the more discouraging when we consider the recent promising news about Beijing no longer being among the world’s top 100 polluted cities.

More alarming still, but unlikely a huge shock to anyone who has moved house recently: Beijing ranks last on the property price to income ratio, behind even famously pricey Hong Kong (which came 55th) and Shanghai (third worst at 54).

To add insult to injury, our Pearl City rival placed ahead of us on the overall ranking, in 48th place. Capital dwellers can only hope that our recent gains against pollution continue and that officials address housing and property prices so that Beijing’s standing improves on such lists going forward.

Yet, perhaps we shouldn’t take the report to heart just yet. On page four of the introduction, the report authors state that “most of our price data is collected from Expatistan,” and “there may be issues with data quality and consistency over time.” Expatistan is an online price-comparison tool, which uses crowd-sourced, unverified data submitted by users, and averaged out over time. While this tool is certainly useful for working out how many packets of salmiakki you can afford during a holiday in Helsinki on your Beijing wages, it may not be quite robust enough to prove the report’s claims.

READ: Monthly Rent in Beijing Soars to Skyscraper Heights

More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
Instagram: mullin.kyle

Photos: talkmarkets.com, worldradiomap.com

Coffee addicts were awarded a pleasant surprise last week with the arrival of star Japanese java brand %Arabica in Taikoo Li North.

While we dodged the morning rush, there was still quite a crowd on the afternoon we stopped by

The food-truck style stand immediately attracted – and has been unable to shake –  a line of patrons, thanks to the brand’s homegrown popularity, leading it to be recently dubbed as Kyoto’s most popular coffee shop by beloved American blog Travel Caffeine.

%Arabica founder Kenneth Shoji has also become a local celebrity for his singular dedication to serving great coffee: as Travel Caffeine reported, he borrowed a small fortune to buy a coffee farm in Hawaii and became the sole exporter of top-notch Japanese roasting and espresso machines. Shoji’s reputation, along with some savvy marketing and branding, has led the % logo emblazoned cups to become a fixture of Kyoto’s dining scene, and the %Arabica cafés to draw throngs of locals and tourists alike.

Expect to wait at least 20 minutes for your morning brew

On the downside, this success means that %Arabica is as renowned for its queues as it is for its coffee. Their new Beijing pop-up is no different, and you should factor in a wait of at least 20 minutes between placing your order to sweet, sweet caffeination. On a recent visit, the queue was full of chicly dressed Chinese, snapping pics of their beautifully poured RMB 30 espresso macchiatos, rich café lattes (RMB 30 for short or RMB 40 for tall), and pricier RMB 50 Spanish lattes, which is so thoroughly creamy you’ll want to savor every sip.

The pours are as masterful as you’d expect from this celebrated café chain

We immediately appreciated how focused %Arabica’s menu is, and the offbeat option to add shots of soy or oat milk (for RMB 3 or 5, respectively) will be a welcome to those who prefer their coffee non-dairy. The bright emerald matcha lattes and sparkling or still lemonade (RMB 35-55) are other highlights.

You’ll savor every sip of the (pricey) Spanish latte

%Arabica’s food truck setup is also charming, especially as summer looms and our hankering for ice coffee on the go grows. We also don’t have to worry about it disappearing on us anyone time soon, with management telling the Beijinger that they are here to stay, not only at this location but also at a brick-and-mortar café a few blocks to the south that is due to open in October.

Hopefully, that second location will ease demand and shorten the cumbersome queue, but judging by their delicious coffees and deft branding, we expect that %Arabica’s popularity won’t die down for a good while to come.

%Arabica
Daily 10am-9pm. 11 Sanlitun North Road, Taikoo Li North Plaza, Chaoyang District
朝阳区朝阳区 三里屯北路11号北区广场

READ: Eggee Hatches Sanlitun’s Hottest New Brunch Dishes

More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
Instagram: mullin.kyle

Photos: Kyle Mullin, Citihorn