In 5 days, 200,000 visitors came to the IT exhibition for parents and children
A major IT exhibition for parents and children, The 4th Shanghai International Parent-Child Expo, was held in Shanghai in July 2019. The exhibition is called as上海親子奇妙日 in Chinese. In Chinese, 奇妙 means “brings curiosity" or "interesting and mysterious”. Over 200,000 people visited in 5 days and more than 100 companies including foreign companies such as Benesse, Toys "R" Us and Disney English participated in the exhibition. The event was organized by Meituan (美団), a popular app that allows to find playgrounds that parents and children can use along with reviews and大衆点評(Dianping),which is a subsidiary of Meituan (美団) that is also a popular app among a lot of people for sharing useful information. Each company had a booth set up to showcase their apps, and there was a section where you can try out the games and classes in the app offline, all for free.
Educational paid apps for learning English, music, reading a story are very popular
Shanghai's current child-raising generation experienced and suffered from the cramming education. The four-year college (equivalent level) enrolment rate in 2017, China was the lowest at 38.23% among seven countries. With a large population, the competition seems very intense.
Generations who have experienced exam wars are hoping that the next generation will have fun learning languages and finding what they are good at as a reaction to cramming education. That's one of the reasons why so many people now rely on apps for childcare information as well as education. Paid apps for learning English, music, drawing and reading are very popular. In 2018, the market size of the early childhood education sector exceeded 300 million yuan ($4.7 billion) and is growing 15 percent a year. In addition, many exhibitions in Shanghai have a B to C element to them, and it is common for parents and their children or friends to visit there as a leisure activity. Since tickets are sold on the same platform as in museums and such, parents and children even go to the business-purpose engineering exhibitions together. Furthermore, in recent years, the TV show "爸爸去哪儿", in which fathers take their children on trips, has become a hit, and places where parents and children can go to play together are attracting more and more attention. Therefore, events where you can play with your kids for free and experience the latest apps offline are very much in the spotlight.
