Map apps for China
 

I tried using iOS maps and Google Maps to help guide me to destinations while walking. I found both pretty useless as they were always displaying my incorrect position.

A Chinese colleague said install Baidu maps and voila it immediately showed me in the correct place vs. say in middle of the Yangtze river in Chongqing.

Of course I can't use that app easily as I am not nearly fluent enough in Mandarin.

How do others handle this problem?

I use:
1. Google
2. Baidu (far superior to #1, but Chinese only)

Hey moondog!

I found google maps to be slightly better than Apple maps, but still useless for guiding my way thru a Hutong in Beijing as an example. I would have been better off hiring one of the many locals offering a Hutong tour to help me find my destination.

Just get Baidu Maps. I promise you it's better than Google/Apple. It took me a long time to make the move, but if you want to see current subway lines, and Starbucks locations within 300 meters of you, Baidu is your friend.

I use Google maps, they work fine with me. i use them when driving and they are very exact, telling me to turn right 100 meters before the intersection and telling me to turn at the intersection. I have used them in big cities such as Shanghai or Nanjing and also in the Gansu province in small towns.
I am told that the satellite view is not very precise but I never use that.

As a Nexus user, I'm obviously a Google loyalist. But, for China, their maps aren't especially useful apart from providing information about streets/intersections (and, they even get this wrong a lot of the time).

I have heard that but never experienced it. I use Google maps mostly to drive. Depending what you use them for, they were also good to find the nearest Ikea or Metro supermarket or local police station, without providing an address. But China changes quickly so I guess they may not be able to keep up as well as Chinese apps.

Google Maps has often egregiously shown the incorrect location for Shenzhen addresses- in other words, they place the location in Hong Kong instead of China.

That said, I've only used Baidu elsewhere in China.

Incorrect locations are almost always due to GPS issues IME (I.e. if the reported coordinates are correct, any half decent map software knows how to place them). That having been said, the version of Baidu that Uber uses has some serious issues in this regard. The pin locations are usually quite accurate, but the map never fails to swap Nanjing Rd out for Yan'an Rd near JA Temple. This is possibly due to the fact that JA Temple is a highly policed area, but it is still annoying, nevertheless (Yan'an Rd is an awful place to meet your ride).

I use Google maps with a VPN on my (Nexus) phone and it works well. It might bounce around a little now and then, but I only use walking or public transit directions and have had no trouble. Strangely using Strava in Hefei last weekend it was almost impossible to get a GPS lock on my phone even open areas, but Google Maps got it in seconds.

An alternative that you might try is something like Gaia or OSMAnd+ which have maps that you pre-download and thus use 0 data. These use publicly sourced maps. I don't use them that much here, but they also have walking trails that the others don't cover. I use them for trail running in other parts of the world (and this coming weekend in Hangzhou).

Dr. PITUK

P.S This just reminded me to update my map for the weekend on OSMAnd+. It is possible to choose the language of street names and English (and Chinese) seem to work fine at least in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

On Android for offline maps, I've had good luck with MAPS.ME. Uses OpenStreetMap as its data source and the accuracy is good. No data connection needed, assuming you download the maps in advance.

I just tried maps.me now. Seems to work ok. You need to download an area map while online but then it works offline. Will be useful until I go out and get a SIM later today.

One thing iike about offline maps is they are good for tracking my flights. Google doesn't work for this purpose unless you can figure out how to download China maps (officially prohibited).

One downside of maps.me (for some) is that it is only in Chinese, no Pinyin. I also note that it is not populated with much information. I guess that Baidu maps are better if you can handle Chinese.

Hi

As mentioned above, OSMAnd+ (NFI) has quite a lot of information - including off-road trails! - and you can choose your language from a list of about a dozen for street and trail names. I have tried English and Chinese in Anhui and Zhejiang provinces in the last week and it looks pretty good. Sometimes you might get Chinese only, but for the most part it had lots of English when that was the chosen language.

It also uses similar (same?) underlying data.

Thanks

Dr. PITUK

English? You mean Pinyin? Most streets if not all have no English name.

Sorry, yes I mean Pinyin. In the few cities (not small towns or backroads) that I have been on the Pinyin is also displayed. This probably isn't universal, but might match where tourists might be without a guide.

Thanks

Dr. PITUK

English v pinyin when it comes to maps is a bit of a hair splitting exercise IMO:
-many, if not most, streets are named after cities (in which Pinyin=English)
-some maps translate lu as road, jie as street, Qiao as bridge, etc, but these words are simple enough to figure out
-directional words? I suppose it is generally useful when these are translated. The drawback is that non-Chinese speakers have a decent shot of being understood when spouting off "Nanjing Xi Lu" v considerably less if they say "West Nanjing Road".

Just to entertain you, here is the English translation of the Beijing subway stations: http://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/201...beijing-subway
There is indeed a section of Shanghai where most streets are names after a city or province but most streets have their own historic names and "men' is not translated to gate. Streets names are street names, it's the name of places that can be translated or not such as Temple of Heaven vs Tiantan. A map in Pinyin is fine for a non-mandarin speaking tourist. And Pinyin is preferable English when showing the name to a taxi driver or asking directions. Nearly all will have no clue what the Temple of Heaven is. Not all will figure out the Pinyin though.

Have you tried maps.me? One downloads maps in advance, and tracks your location via the phone GPS without using wifi or local phone service. Not that great for China, but amazing for some places. Probably OK for locating you on streets in China, but not many restaurants and hotels are on the map. On the other hand, lots of detail for Indonesia and Japan, for example.

I haven't used maps.me, but I'm now sold on offline maps. There was a thread on offline maps here a few months ago, and I didn't understand the benefits until I took the plunge myself; among other things, they are very good for following the progress of your own flights. I use baidu for China, and Google for everywhere else (in addition to China, there might be other areas in which Google doesn't support offline maps, but I've yet to find any).

I was in Shanghai yesterday and used Maps.me then I realized that I had downloaded the Jiangsu province but not Shanghai.
I find that the maps.me maps are not populated with much information. just a few hotels. If you are to use a map in Chinese, you may as well use Baidu that has tons of information including public transportation.

OSMAnd+ downloads all of China (about 250MB - a few minutes on wifi). You can also add the Wikipedia pages (which aren't that much use here!).

If you need that much detail and can't handle Baidu in Chinese (me, for example) then a VPN on your phone and Google maps will work. I have used this for getting around in the few Chinese cities that I've visited.

Dr. PITUK

As noted upthread, I was late to jump on the Baidu bandwagon because I didn't perceive the value of installing an additional--possibly intrusive--app. But, much like the offline maps concept, after I tried it, I was sold, hook/line/sinker.

Baidu has a small army working on maps, which blows Google out of the water. Public transportation is only one manifestation of this; I frequent a lot of unimportant neighborhoods in unimportant cities, and they typically have an amazing/current pulse on extremely unimportant noodle shops and 小卖铺 everywhere!

I can imagine that Baidu is somewhat challenging for people who can't read a great deal of Chinese, but am guessing that it is still more useful than Google for the vast majority of China visitors.

ETA: The new sections of SH lines 12 and 13 have been operational for almost a year, and Google/Bing/Yahoo still don't recognize them. I suspect that maps.me is in the same boat.

Maps.me have street names and station names in both Chinese and Pinyin. Merchant names depend. Western hotel chains likely have names in English.

I've previously use Google Ditu - now http://google.cn/maps

It all comes down to Chinese restructions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restri..._data_in_China

I personally would count on maps.me which I have used exclusively since end of Oct around BJ SH GZ and SZ vs google which is questionable behind the GFW.

My DW and other business associates had no problems with the English in maps.me.

Well try use Baidu Map then. Have no idea why they don't make a English since I believe won't be that hard.

1. 99.999% of the market understands Chinese
2. Making a decent English interface would be hard because Baidu maps are extremely local

Not sure that it is so simple. street names are easy, just go for the pinyin and not an English translation. I think that we would all agree on this one. But what about the name of businesses? Pinyin would not work for many places. Would translate Chinese to Yijia or IKEA?

It is easy, there is an app that will do it :D

http://d.justpo.st/media/images/2014...c1f34cb081.jpg

https://i1.wp.com/craphound.com/imag...rror.jpg?w=970

All kidding aside, demand for English Baidu is such a small percentage of their request that they will not invest in this

Google actually does a pretty good job (in English) with big stores such as IKEA, but a big problem with Google Maps in China is that they simply don't bother identifying smaller venues (at all). Meanwhile, Baidu attempts to show as many mom-and-pop places as possible, many of which simply don't translate well to English. Sure, they could be lazy and use terms like "noodle shop" as a catch all for numerous types of noodle shops, but this would do people who want ramen instead of mifen a disservice IMO.