Xiamen to Guangzho: Planning: Baidu Maps and Trip.com
I don’t now recall how I conceived of the idea to ride from Xiamen to Guangzhou. A colleague asked why, and I replied simply because of the weather. But it’s also true that the coastal area is well developed, meaning decent roads and plenty of amenities, especially hotels, and is also reasonably flat, unlike much of China’s interior.
I began planning with Baidu Maps, China’s version of Google Maps, with most if not all the same functionality, but in Chinese only. While being Chinese illiterate means I can’t take advantage of all the software’s many features, the design format makes the basics quite easy. Here is the opening screen of Baidu Maps. You’ll notice the search bar top left, as well as zoom and street view features bottom right. The blue dot in the center is current location. Yellow lines are highways and the red line is a subway.
I now enter my starting point, Xiamen. At this point, I need to know place names in Chinese. While Baidu Maps recognizes roman characters, it doesn’t know precisely where I want to go. China is a large country and there are often multiple locations with the same phonetic name. These are distinguished by different characters. This means I have to be able to recognize that Xiamen is 厦门. I can find these characters at the Wikipedia page of each location. Xiamen is here. A list of major cities is here.
The Baidu Maps search box shows two locations known as Xiamen:
I know from Wikipedia that the first set of characters is my destination and Baidu shows me there are 26 mapped locations within Xiamen. Clicking on that first result leads to the following screen in which I see a drop-down list of sites, as well as an image of Xiamen, the island bottom center containing the many red pins.
At this point I don’t yet know where I’ll be staying in Xiamen. I just want to use this as a starting point and see where I can ride from here. So I’ll choose red pin 1 and that reveals a directions search box.
Within the blue box, the arrow at top means Directions To, while the one below is Directions From. I’ll chose from and enter Guangzhou, which gives me several choices, all but the last including the same set of characters. If I check the name at Wikipedia, I can verify the characters as 广州. Note here as well the options for Public Transport, Automobile, Walking, or Cycling. Baidu will return results based on my preferred mode of transport. Because I don’t have a specific destination within Guangzhou in mind, I’ll select the first result.
Doing so results in the following screen, which shows me a route that is 688km long and that will take 2 days and 9 hours to complete on bicycle. I assume a day equals 24 hours and that route length is 57 hours (which is always longer than my actual time, often by 100%).
Considering distance, I imagine cycling 70km for 10 days is manageable. In fact, I have 16 days’ vacation, so there may be opportunities for non-riding days. What I need to know is whether there are hotels approximately every 70-100km along this route. To find that, I begin searching Trip.com, China’s own version of Booking.com.
Unlike Baidu Maps, Trip.com has a fully-functional English interface through which I can book flights, trains, rental cars and hotels for travel throughout China (as well as other parts of the world). Landing on the front page, I click hotels, enter my dates and destination, and entering Search I receive a list of available accommodations. Key to my research is the Show on Map function, which when clicked shows the following.
What makes this feature valuable is the ability to scroll. With a mouse press-and-hold, I can pull the map in the direction of the route suggested by Baidu Maps and look for areas with available lodging. The map doesn’t show distances, so I have to make a guess about how far to travel. Zooming in on the Trip.com map shows place names in Chinese and English. I can try typing the roman characters into Baidu Maps and check if what it returns is accurate. For example, I found a hotel in the town of Duxunzhen and want to check the distance from Xiamen. In the Baidu Map search box, I type Duxunzhen and find several returns, all of them sites located in Duxunzhen (漳州市).
I choose the first entry in the list and Baidu Maps returns the following.
Distance from Xiamen to Duxunzhen is 91km, which fits within my daily riding parameters, so this might be a good option. I’ll make a note of it and then start looking at the next possible stop. I start a table.
Moving town to town, city to city, I locate possible destinations, check the distances, and search for possible hotels. In this way I build an itinerary one day at a time. If I have special destinations in mind, I use Baidu Maps to plan routes to those locations and look for suitable nearby lodging. The first Xiamen-to-Guangzhou route suggested by Baidu Maps, for example, skirted the city of Shenzhen. As I wanted to visit, I simply rerouted to get there.
Once the route is complete, I need to decide about hotel bookings. As I prefer having a fixed destination at the beginning of each day and knowing that a room is waiting, I book in advance. Many hotels listed on Trip.com require no advance payment and allow you to cancel a booking as late as 24 hours before arrival, so booking in advance is nearly risk-free, guarantees a room is waiting, and gives you the added protection of help from the Trip.com help desk if a hotel loses your reservation or otherwise refuses accommodation.
It took several hours over a two to three days to plan out the route and make all the bookings, including flights into Xiamen and out of Guangzhou. Apart from minor changes to flights, moving departure times up or down 15 to 30 minutes, everything has gone swimmingly, and no hotels have cancelled or tried to revise my reservations. My final route plan looks like this.
I began planning with Baidu Maps, China’s version of Google Maps, with most if not all the same functionality, but in Chinese only. While being Chinese illiterate means I can’t take advantage of all the software’s many features, the design format makes the basics quite easy. Here is the opening screen of Baidu Maps. You’ll notice the search bar top left, as well as zoom and street view features bottom right. The blue dot in the center is current location. Yellow lines are highways and the red line is a subway.
I now enter my starting point, Xiamen. At this point, I need to know place names in Chinese. While Baidu Maps recognizes roman characters, it doesn’t know precisely where I want to go. China is a large country and there are often multiple locations with the same phonetic name. These are distinguished by different characters. This means I have to be able to recognize that Xiamen is 厦门. I can find these characters at the Wikipedia page of each location. Xiamen is here. A list of major cities is here.
The Baidu Maps search box shows two locations known as Xiamen:
I know from Wikipedia that the first set of characters is my destination and Baidu shows me there are 26 mapped locations within Xiamen. Clicking on that first result leads to the following screen in which I see a drop-down list of sites, as well as an image of Xiamen, the island bottom center containing the many red pins.
At this point I don’t yet know where I’ll be staying in Xiamen. I just want to use this as a starting point and see where I can ride from here. So I’ll choose red pin 1 and that reveals a directions search box.
Within the blue box, the arrow at top means Directions To, while the one below is Directions From. I’ll chose from and enter Guangzhou, which gives me several choices, all but the last including the same set of characters. If I check the name at Wikipedia, I can verify the characters as 广州. Note here as well the options for Public Transport, Automobile, Walking, or Cycling. Baidu will return results based on my preferred mode of transport. Because I don’t have a specific destination within Guangzhou in mind, I’ll select the first result.
Doing so results in the following screen, which shows me a route that is 688km long and that will take 2 days and 9 hours to complete on bicycle. I assume a day equals 24 hours and that route length is 57 hours (which is always longer than my actual time, often by 100%).
Considering distance, I imagine cycling 70km for 10 days is manageable. In fact, I have 16 days’ vacation, so there may be opportunities for non-riding days. What I need to know is whether there are hotels approximately every 70-100km along this route. To find that, I begin searching Trip.com, China’s own version of Booking.com.
Unlike Baidu Maps, Trip.com has a fully-functional English interface through which I can book flights, trains, rental cars and hotels for travel throughout China (as well as other parts of the world). Landing on the front page, I click hotels, enter my dates and destination, and entering Search I receive a list of available accommodations. Key to my research is the Show on Map function, which when clicked shows the following.
What makes this feature valuable is the ability to scroll. With a mouse press-and-hold, I can pull the map in the direction of the route suggested by Baidu Maps and look for areas with available lodging. The map doesn’t show distances, so I have to make a guess about how far to travel. Zooming in on the Trip.com map shows place names in Chinese and English. I can try typing the roman characters into Baidu Maps and check if what it returns is accurate. For example, I found a hotel in the town of Duxunzhen and want to check the distance from Xiamen. In the Baidu Map search box, I type Duxunzhen and find several returns, all of them sites located in Duxunzhen (漳州市).
I choose the first entry in the list and Baidu Maps returns the following.
Distance from Xiamen to Duxunzhen is 91km, which fits within my daily riding parameters, so this might be a good option. I’ll make a note of it and then start looking at the next possible stop. I start a table.
Moving town to town, city to city, I locate possible destinations, check the distances, and search for possible hotels. In this way I build an itinerary one day at a time. If I have special destinations in mind, I use Baidu Maps to plan routes to those locations and look for suitable nearby lodging. The first Xiamen-to-Guangzhou route suggested by Baidu Maps, for example, skirted the city of Shenzhen. As I wanted to visit, I simply rerouted to get there.
Once the route is complete, I need to decide about hotel bookings. As I prefer having a fixed destination at the beginning of each day and knowing that a room is waiting, I book in advance. Many hotels listed on Trip.com require no advance payment and allow you to cancel a booking as late as 24 hours before arrival, so booking in advance is nearly risk-free, guarantees a room is waiting, and gives you the added protection of help from the Trip.com help desk if a hotel loses your reservation or otherwise refuses accommodation.
It took several hours over a two to three days to plan out the route and make all the bookings, including flights into Xiamen and out of Guangzhou. Apart from minor changes to flights, moving departure times up or down 15 to 30 minutes, everything has gone swimmingly, and no hotels have cancelled or tried to revise my reservations. My final route plan looks like this.
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