Where the blue dot drifts: reading maps, addresses and metro exits in China

At Xujiahui (徐家汇, Xújiāhuì) station in Shanghai, the escalator delivers you to a concourse where the overhead boards list exits by number, and the numbers run well into the teens. Your phone says the noodle shop is four minutes away. It does not say that the four minutes start from one particular staircase, and that the others surface inside shopping malls or on the far side of a junction where five roads meet.

Which map to open

Two domestic apps carry most of the country's foot traffic: Amap (高德地图, Gāodé Dìtú) and Baidu Maps (百度地图, Bǎidù Dìtú). Both name the metro exit to take and, in many cities, show roughly when the next bus will arrive. Amap has offered an English interface in recent versions, though how much of it appears can depend on your phone's language setting, and place names often stay in characters after the menus have switched.

Apple Maps is the quiet surprise. Inside mainland China it draws on local map data, so streets and metro lines sit in the right place with English labels beside the characters. Google Maps needs a roaming connection or a VPN to load at all, its listings are thin, and the blue dot can settle a few hundred metres from where you stand. Mainland maps are drawn on a national coordinate offset that not every foreign app reconciles; switch to satellite view and the roads slide off the buildings.

Search in characters, not in English

English search is where most wrong turns begin. Type 'Zhongshan Road' and the app must guess: there is a Zhongshan Road (中山路, Zhōngshān Lù) in Qingdao, in Xiamen and in Nanjing. Pinyin without tones is only a little safer. In Shanghai, 'yuyuan' returns both Yu Garden (豫园, Yùyuán) and Yuyuan Road (愚园路, Yúyuán Lù), which begin with different characters and lie several kilometres apart.

Paste the characters instead. Hotels are the usual trap, because the Chinese name of an international chain rarely sounds like the English one, and a driver or a search box tends to recognise only the former. Copy the Chinese name and address of each place you are staying from the booking confirmation into a note before you fly. For restaurants, the listing on Dianping (大众点评, Dàzhòng Diǎnpíng), the review app many locals check before eating out, carries an address line that can be copied straight into the map.

How an address is built

A Chinese address runs from large to small: city, district, road, number, then building and floor. The characters to recognise are 路 (lù, road), 街 (jiē, street) and 号 (hào, the building number). Shanghai adds 弄 (lòng), a numbered lane off the main road with its own house numbers inside, so an address can carry two numbers and both matter.

Long roads are cut into compass segments, and each segment behaves as a separate street. Nanjing East Road (南京东路, Nánjīng Dōng Lù) and Nanjing West Road (南京西路, Nánjīng Xī Lù) are both stations on Shanghai Metro Line 2, with People's Square (人民广场, Rénmín Guǎngchǎng) between them. In Beijing, Jianguomen Inner Street (建国门内大街, Jiànguómén Nèi Dàjiē) and Jianguomen Outer Street (建国门外大街, Jiànguómén Wài Dàjiē) lie on either side of where a city gate once stood. Drop one character and you face a long walk in the wrong direction.

Floors count from one at street level, so 2F, or 二楼 (èr lóu), is a single flight up, and B1 is the basement where many mall restaurants sit. A pin dropped in the middle of a large building says nothing about which floor or which door.

The exit matters more than the station

Metro stations in the large cities are wide. Beijing letters its exits A to D and subdivides them into A1, A2 and so on; Shanghai numbers them; Guangzhou uses letters. The character to look for is 口 (kǒu, mouth): C口 is Exit C, 3号口 is Exit 3. Local map apps name the exit in their transit directions, and that one character is worth more than the walking time printed beside it.

The station is the neighbourhood. The exit is the address.

Guomao (国贸, Guómào) in Beijing, where Line 1 meets Line 10, sits beneath the junction of the East Third Ring Road and Jianguomen Outer Street. Come up on the wrong corner and the correction involves an underpass, a footbridge, or a wait at more than one signal. Before you tap out, look for the wall map of surrounding streets and the boards, often yellow, that list landmarks and road names against each exit. If they defeat you, staff at the service window field one question all day: qǐngwèn, C kǒu zěnme zǒu, excuse me, which way to Exit C.

请问，C口怎么走？

The last few hundred metres on foot

City blocks are larger than the map makes them feel, and main roads are frequently fenced along the median. On Chang'an Avenue (长安街, Cháng'ān Jiē) in Beijing, crossing often means finding an underpass, 地下通道 (dìxià tōngdào); elsewhere it is a footbridge, 天桥 (tiānqiáo), with stairs and occasionally an escalator. The walking route in a local app accounts for these. A straight line drawn by eye does not.

Residential compounds, 小区 (xiǎoqū), are the other obstacle. A café or guesthouse inside one shows as a pin in the middle of a walled block with two or three gates, and the listing usually names the right one: 北门 (běimén, north gate) or 南门 (nánmén, south gate). Beijing, built on a grid, gives spoken directions the same way, wǎng běi zǒu, walk north, so it helps to know which way you face when you surface. Mind the lane between pavement and traffic as you set off; electric scooters use it in both directions and make almost no sound.

Before you go, and the mistake to avoid

Install the apps at home, on your own wifi, and open them once. Some features ask for a phone number to log in, and what works without one varies by version. Download the offline map for each city if the app offers it, since a roaming signal tends to thin out in the deep interchange stations where you most need it, and carry your accommodation's address in characters as a screenshot rather than a link.

Fares, first and last trains and service changes are posted in the station and published by each city's operator; Beijing Subway and Shanghai Metro both keep official apps and sites, and those are the places to confirm them. Opening hours on a map listing are entered by the business or by users and go stale, so check with the venue itself, or ask a hotel front desk to phone. Weekday mornings and early evenings add real time to any interchange, so pad the app's estimate if you are heading for a train out of Shanghai Hongqiao (上海虹桥, Shànghǎi Hóngqiáo).

The mistake to avoid is small and common: leaving by the first exit you see because the street is visible and the phone can sort it out up there. Stop in the concourse. Find the letter or the number. Then climb.