Below are 5 great China taxi tips that can be helpful for people visiting China:
1) Assume your taxi driver doesn’t speak English, doesn’t know anything about the city you’re in, and doesn’t read maps. If you need to, don’t hesitate to ask your hotel for help.
2) Before you leave home, print out maps of your hotel and the major destinations you want to visit. Print every map in duplicate, once in English and the other in Mandarin or Cantonese (click here for instructions on how to print maps in Chinese languages).
3) Print out lots of map variants (one at the macro level showing the entire route, one around your hotel or destination semi-zoomed in, one around any other areas of interest).
4) Make sure you have phone numbers for every place you want to visit so that your taxi driver can call if needed.
5) When leaving your hotel, make sure they give you a calling card so you can show a taxi driver how to get you back (many taxi drivers in China only know a few big landmarks).