Getting site names in Chinese characters

[griz326]

I am preparing for my return trip to China in the spring.

This time I would like to have the well known names of the locations I want to visit written out in Chinese characters.

Ordering food, buying stuff, and booking a hotel is trivial stuff compared to getting a taxi driver to understand where you want to go. A co-worker of mine in Beijing wrote out the places I wanted to go on a piece of paper and the problem was solved.

This time, I want that piece of paper from the start. I am still trying creating my list of places, but once I get it, how do I get it competently translated into Chinese characters? I cannot asked my co-worker to do this - maybe I could - but it might be asking too much without a payment and that might be against company policy....

My other concern is that a tourist site might have an "advertised name" and a name the people in the community call it. So would a person living in Beijing know the correct name for a site in say Xi'an?

How would you go about having such a translation made?

My business computer can display Chinese characters, so that is not a problem.

TIA,

Griz

[Nibble]

Unless it's a huge list, the easiest thing to do would be to post your list here. You can also try looking the places up on Wikipedia and Wikitravel.

If a tourist spot has an 'advertised name' that is different from the 'local name', I expect that most taxi drivers would know both, since the advertised name will be the one that all the tourists use when they ask for a ride there.

[badr]

for Beijing, you can try cityweekend.com.cn

they have listings in characters and English. Other than that, I suggest writing down a list of places you want to go to and posting it here. I'm sure between all the members, we can write it out somehow:)