Originally Posted by underpressure
The front desk at every hotel I have been at in China had cards with the hotel address and phone number on it.
They also had destination cards that the front desk staff would write your detination on along with an estimate of the cost.
This system worked flawlessly for me every time.
Same here. The only problems I had were with taxi drivers (primarily in Beijing) who, literally, didn't know how to get to a specific location, or who confused the location name with something similar somewhere else. The situation was readily remedied by simply getting a different cab.