Another note about visiting China.  Everyone told me to ask the
hotel clerk to write out where we wanted to go, and give the card
to the taxi driver.  Still, even after that, there was no promise
that they'd take you -- a good fifty or sixty percent of the time
they shook their head "no" and drove off.

I tried an experiment and pointed on a map to where I wanted to go
-- success!  My thought is that the taxi drivers were illiterate
and couldn't read the card any better than I could.

Eliyahu Shahar