Click, tap, hire home, have fun

Sophie Liu, one of my friends who works as a primary school English teacher in Beijing, booked a 50-square-meter apartment through Airbnb, a US-based vacation rental service provider, to celebrate her special birthday last year.

And what an unforgettable party it turned out to be! I know because I was among the invitees. The flat had a host of positives: simple design, soft couch, spacious balcony, clean kitchen, and so on, all of which were, well, party-enabling.

We played games, chatted, cooked dinner and sang birthday songs together. My other friends and I also baked a big birthday cake for Sophie, using the wonderful high-tech oven in the flat. We paid 520 yuan ($76) toward the flat rental for a day. Not a bad deal at all, considering the amount of fun our group of six had that day.