[bone_frequency]

Didi drivers will very, very often call you. I deal with this problem by having a pre-baked message explaining that I don't speak chinese, and where do I want to go. As soon as didi assigns me a driver, I quickly send this message through the messaging feature of the didi app, then I use one of the predefined messages of the app (which appear in english on my end) to determine if my pickup location is correct, or if I want him to follow my GPS bead instead. Should the driver call me anyway, I just send him the aforementioned message through sms a couple times.

It is not perfect, but this method allows me to move around easily with didi without speaking chinese. I had no urban mapping problems, but I do test whatever address I want to go in baidu maps first, or any other chinese map app. That way, in case of problems, I can just show him the location or use whatever voice guidance, but I rarely needed this.