‘When I See a Foreigner Lost, I Want to Help’: Five Chinese People Speak

Liu Peng was already four minutes behind when he spotted the German man at the bottom of the escalator at Beijing’s Guomao subway station.

The man held his phone out at arm’s length and turned slowly in a circle — the posture of someone whose blue dot has stopped agreeing with the world. Backpack. A paper map he wasn’t using. The face of a person who has already asked three people and understood none of the answers.

Liu is 28, a delivery rider in a blue jacket with a phone that never stops buzzing. He had 40 minutes and three more drop-offs. He stopped anyway.

“I pointed at his map, he pointed at my phone,” Liu says. “So I typed the address into a translation app and showed him. He wanted a noodle place in a hutong. Wrong exit. Completely the wrong exit.”

Liu walked him 300 meters, pointed at the right street, then ran back for his bike. The order landed nine minutes late and cost him five yuan. He tells it like a joke, not a complaint.

“Five yuan. He got his noodles.”

More visitors, more wrong turns

China’s National Immigration Administration counted 26.94 million foreign entries in 2024, close to double the year before, with 20.12 million of those arriving visa-free. Citizens of more than 30 countries can now enter for up to 30 days without a visa, and since December 2024 transit passengers from 54 countries can stay 240 hours, entering through 60 ports.

Then there is the internet. “China Travel” became its own genre of YouTube and TikTok videos, and plenty of people who watched them booked flights with a phone, a plan, and no ability to read a single street sign.

More visitors means more people standing at the bottom of escalators, turning in circles. Which means the everyday question — what happens when a foreigner gets lost in China? — now has a lot of ordinary people with an answer. I asked five of them.

The delivery rider: five yuan, well spent

Liu Peng came to Beijing from Hebei at 19. He has been lost himself, in Shanghai, with no signal and no battery. “A woman walked me 20 minutes to the right bus stop. She was carrying two bags of groceries. I still remember her shoes.”

That is roughly his whole explanation. He does not claim to do this often.

“If I stop three times a day, I don’t eat. But if someone is standing there turning in circles, and I know the way, and it’s one minute — one minute. Why not.”

The shopkeeper: a stool by the door, and ten English words

Chen Xiulan’s shop is about 20 square meters, wedged between a noodle restaurant and a metro exit in Chengdu. She is 52 and has run it for eleven years.

For a while, she says, foreign cards didn’t work with Alipay or WeChat Pay at all, and visitors came in holding cash and waiting while she dug for change. That changed, and she noticed.

“Now a girl scans the code, pays, says 谢谢 in a terrible accent, and I say ‘okay okay.’ It’s faster for both of us.”

She keeps a red plastic stool by the door. It is for anyone, but she says foreigners use it more: to sit, catch their breath, rebuild the plan. She has learned about ten English words. She is proudest of “no change needed.”

The student: the language is fine, the phone is the problem

Lin Yuxin is 21, studies English at a university in Shanghai, and spends Saturday mornings in a park near People’s Square, mostly to practice. She has become an unofficial help desk.

“The language is rarely the problem,” she says. “Almost anyone under 40 can say hello, and how much. The problem is the phone.”

The questions she gets: how do I reserve a museum ticket with a passport, when the booking page expects a Chinese ID? How do I type a Chinese address into a ride-hailing app? Why doesn’t the QR code on the table do anything without a Chinese phone number?

Her solution is deliberately low-tech. She writes the destination in Chinese characters on a piece of paper and hands it over.

“A screenshot in English is useless to a taxi driver. Four Chinese characters and you’re home.”

The driver: “I gave them my phone number”

Wang Jianguo, 46, drives a ride-hailing car in Xi’an and has taken a lot of people out to the Terracotta Warriors, about 40 kilometers east of the city. His story involves an American couple in their sixties who had booked a one-way trip and had no plan for getting back.

“They assumed there would be taxis at the parking lot. There weren’t many. I waited 40 minutes, drove them back, and gave them my number.”

The couple added him on WeChat. A week later they sent a photo of their kitchen in Oregon. He is still slightly offended on behalf of his country by one thing:

“Foreigners think Chinese people don’t smile at strangers. Where does that come from? I smile all day.”

He also admits he doesn’t always stop. “If I’m on a clock, I’m on a clock.”

The retiree: no English, still walking people to their hotel

Zhou Meifang, 68, does tai chi in a Guangzhou park at 6:30 in the morning. She does not speak a word of English. She has walked lost foreigners to their hotel twice, and once flagged down a bus driver on their behalf.

Her method is pointing, smiling, and walking. When words run out, she draws on the back of a receipt: a line for the road, a box for the hotel, an arrow.

She also carries a small notebook. On each page is a name and a country, written by the person she helped.

“I can’t read most of it,” she says. “I just like having it.”

And she is clear about the division of labor: “Young people are better at this than me. But young people are working. I have time.”

The uncomfortable part

Not everyone stops. And every person I spoke to raised the same warning without being asked: be careful who you accept help from. Around the busiest tourist streets, a friendly stranger with good English may be steering you toward a teahouse with a memorable bill. That is real, and it is exactly why all five suggested the same shortlist — metro staff, a family, a student, someone in a uniform, or simply the person who did not approach you first.

What actually helps, according to people who do this weekly

• Ask someone under 40 first. Most have studied English since primary school, even if they claim they haven’t.
• Write the destination in Chinese characters. Ask a hotel front desk, a shop worker, or anyone with a phone. A Chinese address on paper solves more problems than any app.
• Metro service desks in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu have English signage, staff on duty and, in many stations, handheld translation devices.
• Alipay and WeChat Pay now accept international cards — the single-transaction limit for foreign cards was raised to $5,000 in 2024. Cash still works, and merchants are required to accept it, but a small shop may not have change for a 100-yuan note.
• If you’re stuck, hand your phone to someone with a translation app open. It happens thousands of times a day, and nobody finds it strange.

The short version

Liu Peng is back on his bike, still behind schedule. He says he does not think of what he did as kindness, which is the part that stays with you.

“In Chinese we say 帮一把 — give them a hand. It’s one small phrase. You don’t have to be a good person to do it.”

So if you get lost in China and someone waves at you, points down the street, and starts walking, expecting you to follow — that is what is happening. Follow them.