Taxi?

Mike and I are now in Lijiang- a charming city of winding cobblestone streets and rows and rows of buildings with tiled roofs slanted at the tips. We arrived yesterday and it was our first experience of being on our own in China. Annelise had kindly made us notecards with English phrases on one side and Chinese phrases on the other (eg where is the bus? we are vegetarian, etc). I got to use our handy phrase, "I don't understand" with the taxi driver in the first 5 minutes. Ah, for the beauty of pantomime (he commented that it was very rainy out through gestures). When we arrived at the airport, we took a bus to a station and needed a taxi to get to the part of the city we are staying in... there were tons of taxis waiting when we arrived and every passanger on the bus went into one and then... there was us.
We waited a bit, a few more taxis showed up, I showed them the biz card of the hotel of where we were going, and they all said, "No!" and drove away. It was so weird! We were not sure if we got the system wrong or if there was something wrong with where we were going (we are still not sure- but our hotel is nice). I was starting to wonder if we were going to have to camp at the bus station. It's the very first time I can think of arriving anywhere and we were actively avoided! We hailed a taxi on the street, showed him the card, he said he would take us, and pantomimed that we would have to walk into Old Town, as no cars are allowed (a very nice feature of the city). So, we have arrived! And are hobbling our way through our adventure with minimal Chinese and lots of smiles and some arm waving :) Tomorrow we start our trek of Tiger Leaping Gorge.