OK, so it has bene WAY too long since I posted anything at all. Well sorry ok? I've been busy! Anyway, so what can you do now that you have a cell phone and you're in China? Well it is like I said, go to Google Maps and find China on the map. You can do that right? Find it and zoom in until you are over your city. Now figure out where in the heck you are living. How? Well someone can tell you your address in China surely. Ask a guard, or go out to the street and look at the sign. Hopefully it has some pinyan on it. Ok, just figure out your mailing address, then at the top of the page you start typing in the address. As you type Google Maps will try to help you by showing you what it thinks you are looking for. Watch it and see if it comes up with something close. Don't put in the No. or "#" sign or anything like that, just put in the 5 Xihu Road, Changzhou, China or where ever you live and see what comes up. Now zoom in and see if it looks like the road you live on and the shape of the area around you. If you don't know get off the computer and take a walk for crying out loud!
Once you find your house then save it to one of your favorite places. Be sure you are logged into Google on your account. Then from now on when you open Google Maps it will come up immediately as your default place. OK, now figure out where you want to go. Let’s say for a moment that you live at “5 Sutong Lu” in Suzhou China. I just found this address at random, it has no significance at all. Just go with it. Now start typing that in Google Maps. As you type you will type in “5 Sutong Lu Suzhou” but when you get to the “S” in Suzhou Googlemaps will come up with an entry that looks like this: “中国江苏省苏州吴中区苏桐路15号 “ Guess what, you’ve just found your address in China! The little squiggly thing after the 15 means “number” as in street number and the first 2 characters are “China” in that. Also the 苏州 means “Su” and “Zhou” , or Suzhou together. Also “路“ means “lu” which is Chinese for Street. See you’re learning junk already! Anyway, select the place Google is guessing you want to find, the first choice, and check it out.. you’ve found the right place!
OK, so anyway, now that you have the address where you live let’s find somewhere to go. Let’s assume for a minute that you want to go to the “Humble Administrators Garden”, a famous garden in Suzhou. How do you get there? Well first start by right clicking on the “5 Su Tong Lu” and select “Get Directions From Here”. Then notice the little Aà B thing pop up on the left. On the “B” part type in “Humble Administrators Garden” and then click on the “Get Directions” just to see what it does. In this case it finds it for you! If you have an address to find copy and paste it into the “B” part or just fiddle with it until you find the right place.
Now for the magic, once your “A” and “B” are right you can see just above it little icons for Walking, Public Transportation or Car/Taxi. The Default is Car and you can see on the path they outlined that it is 9.7 Kilometers away (about 6 miles). You can figure the cost in a taxi by knowing that it is 11 RMB to get in a taxi in Suzhou, plus another 1.8 or 2 RMB per Kilometer after the first 3 KM, plus some extra if there is a lot of waiting time due to traffic. At 2 RMB for the extra 8 KM though you can figure it will be about 11 + 16 RMB = 27 RMB, give or take. Also figure surface street traffic of about 40 km/hour means about a 15 minute cab ride.
Now click on the Bus Icon for public transportation. You have to be really careful with one thing here, the time of day. I just tried this at 9:39 PM and had at 10 PM. Well some buses stop running as early as 8;30 or 9 PM, especially on a Sunday, so I had initially a route that would take almost an hour. I selected 1 PM tomorrow for the route for during the day and found Bus 518 will go directly in about 44 minutes or any of 3 buses that will connect with bus 40 and take about 48 minutes, on average. Look at the 518 route sign right by where you will catch the bus and notice all the info it tells you, just click on the 518 icon on the map. It says: “Bus - 518路 - Direction: 火车站 Service runs every 20 mins 1:19pm Depart 苏桐路 Arrive 苏州博物馆” It tells you how often it comes by, what the name of the bus stop is, and what the stop name is to get off at. Now look to the left, it tells you everything, including that it is 12 stops away and that it is the penultimate (2nd to last) stop on the line. It tells you everything except the price (which is 2 RMB by the way). So now you can find that bus stop out in real life, follow the directions and find the place. All you have to do is copy the info on the left side into an SMS text in Skype to your Chinese cell phone and then look at your texts to refer to it.
Getting home is just as easy, just hop on 518 back in the opposite direction and get off where you got on. If you get lost at any point just be sure you have your home address in your phone text somewhere and maybe even a picture in your phone’s built in camera that shows the name of your apartment complex or other major landmark in case your cab driver doesn’t get it.
Armed with this ability you can now effectively get ANYWHERE in China via public transporation with a little know how and investigation.
Once you find your house then save it to one of your favorite places. Be sure you are logged into Google on your account. Then from now on when you open Google Maps it will come up immediately as your default place. OK, now figure out where you want to go. Let’s say for a moment that you live at “5 Sutong Lu” in Suzhou China. I just found this address at random, it has no significance at all. Just go with it. Now start typing that in Google Maps. As you type you will type in “5 Sutong Lu Suzhou” but when you get to the “S” in Suzhou Googlemaps will come up with an entry that looks like this: “中国江苏省苏州吴中区苏桐路15号 “ Guess what, you’ve just found your address in China! The little squiggly thing after the 15 means “number” as in street number and the first 2 characters are “China” in that. Also the 苏州 means “Su” and “Zhou” , or Suzhou together. Also “路“ means “lu” which is Chinese for Street. See you’re learning junk already! Anyway, select the place Google is guessing you want to find, the first choice, and check it out.. you’ve found the right place!
OK, so anyway, now that you have the address where you live let’s find somewhere to go. Let’s assume for a minute that you want to go to the “Humble Administrators Garden”, a famous garden in Suzhou. How do you get there? Well first start by right clicking on the “5 Su Tong Lu” and select “Get Directions From Here”. Then notice the little Aà B thing pop up on the left. On the “B” part type in “Humble Administrators Garden” and then click on the “Get Directions” just to see what it does. In this case it finds it for you! If you have an address to find copy and paste it into the “B” part or just fiddle with it until you find the right place.
Now for the magic, once your “A” and “B” are right you can see just above it little icons for Walking, Public Transportation or Car/Taxi. The Default is Car and you can see on the path they outlined that it is 9.7 Kilometers away (about 6 miles). You can figure the cost in a taxi by knowing that it is 11 RMB to get in a taxi in Suzhou, plus another 1.8 or 2 RMB per Kilometer after the first 3 KM, plus some extra if there is a lot of waiting time due to traffic. At 2 RMB for the extra 8 KM though you can figure it will be about 11 + 16 RMB = 27 RMB, give or take. Also figure surface street traffic of about 40 km/hour means about a 15 minute cab ride.
Now click on the Bus Icon for public transportation. You have to be really careful with one thing here, the time of day. I just tried this at 9:39 PM and had at 10 PM. Well some buses stop running as early as 8;30 or 9 PM, especially on a Sunday, so I had initially a route that would take almost an hour. I selected 1 PM tomorrow for the route for during the day and found Bus 518 will go directly in about 44 minutes or any of 3 buses that will connect with bus 40 and take about 48 minutes, on average. Look at the 518 route sign right by where you will catch the bus and notice all the info it tells you, just click on the 518 icon on the map. It says: “Bus - 518路 - Direction: 火车站 Service runs every 20 mins 1:19pm Depart 苏桐路 Arrive 苏州博物馆” It tells you how often it comes by, what the name of the bus stop is, and what the stop name is to get off at. Now look to the left, it tells you everything, including that it is 12 stops away and that it is the penultimate (2nd to last) stop on the line. It tells you everything except the price (which is 2 RMB by the way). So now you can find that bus stop out in real life, follow the directions and find the place. All you have to do is copy the info on the left side into an SMS text in Skype to your Chinese cell phone and then look at your texts to refer to it.
Getting home is just as easy, just hop on 518 back in the opposite direction and get off where you got on. If you get lost at any point just be sure you have your home address in your phone text somewhere and maybe even a picture in your phone’s built in camera that shows the name of your apartment complex or other major landmark in case your cab driver doesn’t get it.
Armed with this ability you can now effectively get ANYWHERE in China via public transporation with a little know how and investigation.