How does it work when the didi driver calls you to ask where you are (given the poor state of urban mapping)? This was extremely common in Beijing a couple of years ago, and I only got by because my Chinese was st the taxi level (able to tel them where I am and give simple directions). A foreigner using didi without any Chinese skills would be completely helpless in that context.
They now have a txt message system that should be relied on:
1. It has translation built in.
2. It has pre-canned responses
In practice, with #2, the most common pre-canned response you give is "follow navigation" and my drivers tended to just respond with the pre-canned "ok". Drivers don't call me -- their app even tells them I'm not using a Chinese language app.
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.
Expatriate in Shanghai since 201708, I don't speak Chinese and cannot use Didi for this reason. About half of the ~50 Didi rides I had (always accompanied by Chinese-speaking people) implied such a conversation with the driver, and nearly any of them speaks English. BTW this problem also arises with all apps I tried, as most are not available in English, and among the rest some are poorly translated and all display from time to time a slab of text and set of buttons in Chinese, leaving the ignorant me completely stuck.
