On January 15, dianping.com holds its first-ever Food Awards in Beijing, recognizing the VERY BEST Beijing restaurants chosen by 700,000 Beijing food fans. CW sat down with Edward Long, one of the four founders of this million-headed army of critics.

CW: So what’s dianping.com all about?
EL: It was started five years ago by a guy who graduated from Wharton Business School at University of Pennsylvania. It’s completely based on our wang ming, our users, millions of them.
So is this like "power to the people"?
In Chinese we like call it 'bailing' [white collar].
So power to the 'bailing'?
Hahaha, yeah, 'bailing shenghuo' [white collar life].
Are you more food expert or entrepreneur?
I’m an amateur foodie, the real experts are our users!
Million dollar question: What’s your favorite restaurant in Beijing?
I like Chuan Ban. It’s Sichuan food.
How about Western? What was the last Western restaurant you went to?
I can’t remember….maybe Pizza Hut? [ed: Pizza Hut is currently the number one rated Western restaurant in Beijing on dianping]
CW: So I take it you’re not only a boss but also one of the 700,000 users?
Yes, yes, yes. I have a four star reputation on the website. I’ve received almost 1,000 virtual flowers!
Virtual flowers?
Yes, if you see a comment and you think it’s good you can give the commentor a flower ... As you can see we’ve learned a lot from Facebook. You can see what your friends are doing, which restaurants they went to recently.
So is 1,000 flowers a lot?
Ha ha, not really. We have users who’ve gotten 100,000 flowers! That’s diamond level.
Most Westerners tend to leave comments only when they are unhappy with a meal. What about Chinese users?
Most of them are good, but we get some bad ones … We get restaurants very upset with us calling us up saying, ‘You have to delete this review or I send my lawyer!’ Sometimes the shop owner will hire people to write good reviews for themselves or write bad reviews of competitors. We’ve run for five years so we have ways of dealing with this problem. And so far we’ve won most of our court cases.
So what’s the future for dianping?
Expand! We want to become the biggest city life guide in China, featuring everything from restaurants to gas stations. We've got everything you need.