Getting Around

Finding a specific place in Beijing is not the same as trying to find it in the States.

For example, let's say you are in New York and you are going to a store you have never been to before but you have the address.
You could
a) Look up the address on some online map program and not only check the directions, but also look at images of the actual streets you need to take. Admittedly, there could be mistakes, but sometimes you can find these by checking different sites.
b) Look on a printed map that you bought somewhere
c) Get in a cab and give the drive the directions and he will figure it out.

Occasionally this will not work and you'll get lost and annoyed, but that is the exception rather than the rule. And if it does happen, you can call the place up and generally they can talk you in.

Now lets look at Beijing.
To start with, there are no maps online or offline for that matter that show all the roads. In addition, many roads are not even named, so there is almost no way to reference them. To make things more interesting, there is construction and destruction going on constantly so there is absolutely no guarantee that landmarks will stay in the same place. (Did I say the 3rd left? Oops. Its now the 2nd left.)

This means that nobody really knows where everything is and that a simple street address is not adequate.
What does 'not adequate' mean? I hear you ask. It means that unless you are going to a very large and well-known landmark (i.e. Tiananmen Square), you need to say, "I am going to store X, it is near the Lidu hotel, off of NuRen street. There should be elephants out front". The address itself is sort of an afterthought for final verification - if the building has a number that is. And in this example, while almost everyone seems to know Lidu, there is still about a 10% chance that your particular driver will not and further instructions will be required.

Maybe you think this is not so unusual, after all, cabbies get lost in other big cities. So here is another example. We're going to restaurant that is outside of our cabbie's knowledge base. But he seems feel he can get there so into his cab we go. (Cabbies do not have to accept any fares they don't want to.) We get to generally the right area of town and now our guy lowers his window, drives slow, and flags down a cab coming towards us. The other driver slows as he pulls along side us and by shouting back and forth we are informed that we are heading the right way. Farther down the road we are beginning to worry we missed our turn, so the cabbie flags down a bicycle rider this time and asks for directions. And so on, and so on. What makes this particularly fun is that it is not unusual to get conflicting answers, especially if we are walking or driving ourselves around instead of being taken by a Beijing native. Finding someplace new is always an adventure.

Once you've been here a while, this doesn't even seem odd, but as a newcomer, it can be very disconcerting. We know of one visitor who was ready to panic when the driver starting asking for directions every few blocks while his American host was confused as what exactly was disturbing her guest. Ahhh, how quickly we forget.