Originally Posted by
TinDrum
So if you do not speak any Chinese, how do you "lock everything down" and how do you prevent being taken for a ride quite literally? If a taxi driver delivers me to the Hilton with the meter reading a huge amount (say CNY 300 instead of the expected ~CNY 80), can I expect the hotel to intervene on my behalf?
I was speaking about touts or "black taxis"; these are the guys you need to negotiate with. If you don't speak Chinese or have somebody you can call who speaks Chinese, simply forget about this option. For those of you that do, key points to address are: 1) destination; 2) price -- inclusive of tolls; 3) specific location of car; and 4) that you will not be sharing the ride with anyone else. I actually use touts weekly at the border checkpoints in Shenzhen, and have had consistently great success by simply nailing down these four elements and not bending over with respect to #2 (it's a seller's market).
BUT, it sounds like you want to take a normal taxi. In this case, all you need to do is tell the driver (or dispatcher) where you want to go. Taxis are tightly regulated in Beijing, doubly so from the airport (dispatch system + CCTV). Airport to Hilton is really, really hard to screw up.