Let’s say you want to get to the Garden Hotel, which currently does not have a subway stop (they are building one; hooray!). The closest metro stop appears to be Lieshi Lingyuan or “Martyr’s Park”, a mile or so away. Don’t forget your umbrella.
The Garden Hotel is notable for its excellent tourist maps of Guangzhou. I am a map connoisseur — I triangulate between my all-Chinese map (more detailed), my partially tourist map (some translations; available in book stores for about 10 yuan), and the less detailed (but helpful for finding museums and such) tourist maps. The Westin also has a good map, I hear.
The Garden hotel also has a beautiful lobby (www.gardenhotelguangzhou.com), and is across the street from the Baiyun Hotel and the Friendship Store (very high end merchandise). Finally, it is across and down the street from where the local hash house harriers meet on Saturdays. You can also find Starbucks here, etc. etc.
So, from the Martyr’s Park metro stop to the Garden Hotel:
First, the metro station has a marvelous map system that lists the notable places nearby each exit of the subway. Not only is there a list, but also a map showing you where you emerge out onto the street. I find this immensely helpful.
After passing Martyrs’ Park:
….I then turn right at the next arterial, passing a cell phone marketplace (heading North), and when I come to the next arterial, I cross it on the pedestrian overpass, turn right and walk East for just a bit until I meet up with the next arterial heading North again.
Don’t be afraid of crossing major arterials on foot in China (well, DO remember that pedestrians don’t ever have the right of way here, and nobody will stop for a pedestrian). Thankfully, arterials accommodate foot and bicycle traffic with very helpful pedestrian overpasses. This one (in the background) has nice flowers:
Then, it’s just a jog to the right once I meet the next big arterial where the Garden Hotel is located (Huang Shi Dong Lu).
East = Dong, West = Xi (pronounced “she”), North = Bei, as in Beijing, and South = Nan. Middle = Zhong
Road = Lu (pronounced “loo”) and other names for arterials are Jie (“geeyeh”, soft g), or Da Jie (“big street”).
Da = Big. There’s also Da Dao; another name for a major arterial.
Get to know your Chinese numerals, too.
Let’s say I turn the wrong direction. I know where North is because of the position of the sun on this blazing hot day, but the roads I’m on seem to be dead ending.
Then I start noticing the street signs. Blue street signs are especially helpful, because they point cars (and you) toward arterials.
Once I follow the arrows to a through street (and now I’ve lost the sun so I really am confused), I look at a detailed blue street sign. The top line labels the street in Chinese and below it in pinyin…”Dong Feng Zhong Lu.” (East wind middle street) OK. If I find that on my map, great, I’m good to go. But where on Dongfeng Zhonglu am I, exactly, and should I turn left or right?
Here’s where the street sign gets even more helpful. In smaller writing down below, the sign tells me which way to go (left or right) to get to the next intersecting arterial. “Jianshe Damalu” is toward the West and “Jianshe Liumalu” is toward the East. That’s literally, “Construction Big Horse Street” and “Construction Six Horse Street.” With a little poetic license, I’ll call these Big Workhorse Street and Sixth Workhorse Street. Here’s an example:
[This is a different street sign, saying you’re on Zhenhai street, and to your left you’ll meet up with Jiefang North Street, while to your right you’ll meet Xiao (little) North Street….the streets in the lower white part of the sign are perpendicular to the street in the blue portion.]
These parallel arterials have similar names because first, there’s Big Horse Street. The next small street over is Second Workhorse street. It’s a dead end. More parallel dead-end streets follow….Third Workhorse Street, and so on. The Sixth Workhorse Street is another helpful through-street that I can follow North to the Garden Hotel.
If you visit Shamian Island (posted previously), you’ll note the same numbering system for the North-South streets there. Don’t be confused by the numbers in the street names….they are not addresses, but indicators of sister streets parallel to a more well-known “big” street.
Hooray for nicely labeled street signs and detailed maps!
If you don’t know any Chinese, the default action is to have someone write down the name of your destination on a piece of paper in Chinese, and then when you get lost, you can pull out the paper to ask for directions.
If your Chinese is better than mine, go to www.zuoche.com, which is a nifty website telling you how to get anywhere (in major cities in China) by bus, taxi, or subway. You just type in your location and destination, et voila! It gives you an estimate of how long your trip will take and how much the fares are likely to be.
