Chinese Map Service Website?

I'm looking for a website that basically has the functionality of say, mapquest/yahoo maps, for Chinese cities. Anybody know of any?

Well maps.baidu.com and ditu.google.cn are a couple, no idea if they give directions though.

They both give directions. Baidu will even give you bus routes, something google does not offer. I would NOT reccomend using google, baidu and sougous are much better in terms of information and directions.

Does Baidu Maps have an equivalent in English or at the very least Pinyin, particularly street names?

Else I'm still lost ...

Anyone know if there's a good (or even a bad) Palm GPS mapping app? I use TomTom Navigator on my Treo in the US; haven't seen anything similar for any Asian countries.

I like Baidu 地图, it's the only service I've found that lets me check bus routes in Firefox (for both bjbus.com and sogou I have to use IE). It is only in Chinese, though.

Here's a nice pdf map of Beijing.

And a Google maps type, Sogou.

I tend to use Mapbar, although I've never compared it to anything else so I don't know if it's better or not. Not sure how I got into the habit of using it, I think because dianping.com use it a lot and I used to use that to find places to eat.

Posted elsewhere, but as this is the correct place ...

My fave map of Beijing, and pdf so you can save it to disk and use it on our laptop whenever you like :

http://www.mapmatrix.com/asia/02101.pdf

It's a very large PDF file (lots of detail) so you won't be able to print it out. You could zoom into the bit you want and use screen capture software to dump those portions out to a file though, which you could then print.

Oh, and there's no Chinese characters unfortunately.

Bear in mind though that the pdf map is quite a bit out of date - it's missing, for example, the #13 subway line which has been in place for a few years now running north of Xizhimen to Wudaokou, and newer tourist attractions such as the new capital museum. It also lists BLCU as Beijing Linguistics College and while I can't see a date on it it was made using Adobe Photoshop 2.5. Handy, but if you can't find anything on it that's probably why.

And looking to the east of the third ring road on that map - there's no way that's all green now. Can anyone take a guess as to how old this map is?

Edit: The fact that the Line 2 subway ends at Xidan puts it at somewhere between 92 and 99. Any advance?

I'm guessing it was created on the 18th of January 2000 at 09:57 Well, in any case, at least that's when Acrobat says the file creation date was.

Actually, this probably wasn't when it was created though, just when it was scanned in to make this pdf. The map mentions it was created on a Mac Centris 650, which according to this page was released in 1994 and discontinued in 1995. This page says it was both released and discontinued in 1993. In any case, that means the creation date is probably no earlier than 1993.

EDIT: Also, just noticed on the left-hand side, there is a note: Copyright 1993 Digital Wisdom Inc. additional painting by Weller Cartographic Services Ltd.

if u are living Shanghai, www.ddmap.com(丁丁地图) is your best choise. you can find a very detail pot and route to there.

Has anybody used bj.city8.com ? I haven't used it enough to work out how up to date it is , but if you go to any address in Beijing (or Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou or Shanghai) it gives you a 360 degree photo.

I just had a play around - here's a few examples as long as these links work. Some photos seem more up to date than others.

Silk Market

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid200582_4RID-ptz2.982_0.206_1.309-ctps-snundefined.html

Tiananmen/Forbidden City

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid200258_ESVG-ptz3.143_0.252_1.309-ctps-snundefined.html

Wangfujing night market

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid276668_HDG9-ptz5.267_0.206_1.309-ctps-snundefined.html

Airport

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid357343_DJ7J-ptz2.508_0.206_1.309-ctps-snundefined.html

Temple of Heaven

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid196582_YEE8-ptz4.487_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Financial Street

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid274948_MCD6-ptz4.715_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Zhongnanhai

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid200192_Z0M1-ptz2.897_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Dongzhimen

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid178430_LH3D-ptz2.520_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Houhai

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid238502_QU2N-ptz2.425_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Guomao

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid200642_UG3I-ptz2.936_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Qinghua

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid383009_AISV-ptz5.667_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

New Subway Line - Beixinqiao Station

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid273256_30K2-ptz4.993_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Tesco

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid247691_A9UZ-ptz0.144_0.252_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Rickshaw...

http://bj.city8.com/panosearch-pid178190_T447-ptz3.005_0.248_1.400-ctps-snundefined.html

Cool! I can see a bit of BNU on 新街口外大街.

Memories ...

Any live webcams of that area? I'd like to see the weather and crowds of people live ;)

Has anybody used bj.city8.com ?

Their pictures don't seem to be too old, either. Judging by a few areas I'm familiar with, the oldest I could find were from about half a year ago.

edushi.com

it provides a three-dimensional map for many cities, but not all of them.

for example, http://sz.edushi.com/ is for Shenzhen, and http://bj.edushi.com/ is for Beijing.

sooooo, anything new on maps? "the" bookstore here in town has two maps available.

the regular inside the city limits artist's conception of how the roads should appear,

and the 1:600,000 province map with the artist's conception of how the roads would

be laid out if he'd ever actually been to see them rather than rely on the description

from his brother's friend who knows someone who drove that way once.

i'm taking the opportunity to do some cycling within a 75 or so km radius of baise,

but no appropriate maps. noone in town goes to the outlying villages, any travel

if not on bus/train is on the superhighway (average speed 38mph), so no local

knowledge. i've got a general idea from the large-scale maps of where some roads

"should" be (but often aren't). asking directions/info in the villages is useless, when

the locals haven't been more than 1-2 km from home, occasionally don't even know

the name of the village they're in.

i'm avoiding asking yes or no questions like "is this the road to xxx village?" which

usually results in a firm "yes," regardless of which way i'm pointing. asking where

the road leads is of course useless, asking how to get to a specific small village

again useless. always end up being asked where my final destination is. baise?

oh, just take the main road you're on back the way you came. and of course

trying to explain i WANT to go the long way, down the dirt roads, doesn't compute.

so, anyone got any good map sources? online i can print off, or maybe mail order?

For Beijing, http://ditu.beijing.cn/. This includes public transport and car journey planners (it defnitely has the former, and at least used to have the latter).

Google maps has more and more detail each time I look. It now has street detail for, at least, Beijing and Shanghai, although most streets are un-named, but those named are Romanised.