Thanks everyone for all for the help!
Knowing how to read pinyin is pretty much required for this map, at least for pronunciation purposes. Most cab drivers can't read pinyin so if you dont say it out loud, they wont know where you want to go. The reason they can't read it is because they are usually older (50+) and come from the rural countryside, so they never learned pinyin. Their education came from a time before China had standardized education (let alone one that included pinyin). The cab drivers end up in the cities because as farmers their land is annexed by the Chinese communist gov't (usually to make way for a city/road) in exchange for money. Having no skills, they head to the city (where all the money is), buy a cab and drive (no education needed).
That explains it a bit...but my default North America map has much more detailed info and is bigger. I think it's just cuz of the lack of any sort of urban planning in many cities in China. I live in China 10 months out of 12 and it's absolute chaos trying to find an exact location for a business. Highways and overpasses are literally built within a month, roads are demolished or blocked off completely due to construction....so take this map's accuracy with a huge grain of salt. When I saw no address info for this map I was wondering if something didn't transfer over, but rather this is all done using POI only.
ditto for the pinyin translation too. Some places are not quite don't quite use the right pinyin translation for that city (probably because of the slight accent inherent to the city). Good tip about adding/deleting spaces. Usually if 2 characters form a word then you keep the pinyin together (no spaces).
ie. Shanghai City has three characters: Shang + Hai + Shi. Because Shang + Hai go together to form a proper noun, there shouldnt be a space between the pinyin for it. That's why we write "Shanghai Shi" but this map has it as "Shang Hai Shi"
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