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China (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

by: DK Publishing

The DK travel guide helps you to get the most out of your trip to China, providing expert recommendations as well as detailed practical information. The opening chapter Introducing China maps the country and sets it in its historical and cultural context. Each of the seven regional sections is divided into area chapters that cover from one to three provinces each. Here you will find descriptions of the most important sights with maps, pictures and illustrations. Hotel and restaurant recommendations can be found in Travelers Needs . The Survival Guide contains practical information on everything from transport personal safety.

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Beijing and Shanghai (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

by: DK Publishing

These two fascinating cities reflect different aspects of China - Beijing is the traditional capital, the seat of political power and home to the ancient monuments of Imperial China; Shanghai is both a financial powerhouse and a city at the cutting edge of fashion with an interesting modern history. This DK Eyewitness Travel Guide provides in-depth coverage of these cities, including Beijing's Great Wall and Forbidden City, Shanghai's Bund and the French Concession, as well as the water towns of Suzhou and Hangzhou, graced with serene and timeless gardens and lakes. Explore China's cultural heritage through richly illustrated features - on everything from Beijing Opera to Confucianism, Chinese Gardens and the Cultural Revolution. Illustrated food features highlight the differing regional cuisines, and resident China experts have provided detailed listings of the best places to stay and eat. Specially devised walking tours take you easily to the heart of these bustling, enigmatic and ultimately bewitching cities.

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Lonely Planet China

by: Damian Harper, Steve Fallon, Katja Gaskell, Julie Grundvig, Carolyn Heller, Thomas Huhti, Bradley Mayhew, Christopher Pitts

The lonely planet China guides, for the two years that I taught in China, were indispensable for its general information about places that do not disappear overnight, e.g., train stations, large hotels and hostels. It is relatively useful in physically orienting yourself with cities and the larger tourist destinations. If you want a more informative guide on the history of places that you visit, I would suggest the Rough Guide. General information on what to expect when traveling in china is also useful however some of this is outdated as well.

Outside of this, the Lonely Planet essentially provides you with a tour of China without being on a tour. Everyone and their Grandmother that has a backpack will have this book. Do not expect to find little known attractions with this book, as when a site shows up here, it immediately becomes an overnight success. This is particularly true of all of the restaurant listings and entertainment venues as many of them actually vie to be mentioned in this book. I have also seen many a decent restaurant ruined by callous and hastey remarks.
[...]
No other guidebook remotely comes close to matching the utility of the Lonely Planet. Its an essential point of departure, that I would recommend augmenting with other resources, to discovering your own adventures in China.

Timothy Lamb, Glendale, AZ United States

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Lonely Planet Hong Kong & Macau

by: Steve Fallon

never go on vacation somewhere without first buying the Lonely Planet travel book on the destination. So it's been with some frustration that for the last three years, the Hong Kong book has been among the weakest of the series, at least among those I've bought. But the long-awaited update has some badly needed changes and updates.

The previous edition came out in January 1999, several months after Lonely Planet had released another, entirely different Hong Kong book titled simply "Hong Kong." The "Hong Kong" book was pretty skimpy, including a mere 10 pages or so on Macau. But it did have some helpful color maps at the back of the book.

When "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou" came out, it included some badly needed material on Macau, as well as the Chinese border cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Unfortunately, the book also lumped in about 90 pages on Guangzhou, and another eight-page supplement on "Hong Kong Film." For 99-plus percent of the people who are visiting the Hong Kong area, these pages were only dead weight. Virtually nobody visiting Hong Kong plans to visit Guangzhou, and why should they? It's a long trip, and by the book's own admission, there's nothing there for tourists anyway.

Even worse, this book was out of date from the moment it hit the streets. Both the "Hong Kong" and "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou" books gave the location of the Hong Kong Museum of History as Kowloon Park. But the museum had already moved when I visited Hong Kong in November 1998, when the "Hong Kong" book had just came out. And so I was more than a little surprised that "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou" repeated the same mistake in its January 1999 printing!

But what *really* annoyed me was that "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou" didn't have the easy-to-read, easy-to-find color maps of the earlier "Hong Kong" book. Instead, the larger book had ugly, hard-to-read black-and-white maps scattered willy-nilly throughout.

This has changed under the book's all-new author, Steve Fallon. (Damian Harper does not get credit in this edition, despite what Amazon says.) Fallon has dropped the Guangzhou section and other useless padding, making the book a lot more portable. The Museum of History's current address is in there now. And the color maps from the slim "Hong Kong" book also are in the back of the new "Hong Kong and Macau." The new book still uses the hard-to-read, hard-to-find B&W maps for the border towns and Macau's islands, but that's a quibble I can live with. Other general information throughout also seems to be current.

I've been looking over the new book for several days now, and overall, it seems that while the worst parts disappeared, the best stuff carried over to the new edition. For instance, I was glad to see that the map of Shenzhen still has the names of landmarks and hotels in Chinese, as well as English. Showing the Shenzhen taxi drivers the Chinese name of where you want to go is usually the only way for non-Chinese-speaking tourists to communicate their intended destination.

While the new edition is a great improvement, it was at least a year overdue. Three years is a long time to have to wait for an update when so much has changed here, given the change in sovereignty in both Hong Kong and Macau. The ninth edition came out just a couple of months after the Hong Kong handover, and *before* the Macau handover, for crying out loud.

I don't know if I could have honestly recommended the ninth edition of "Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou," but I certainly can do so for the 10th edition of "Hong Kong and Macau." Even if you don't plan on visiting here in the immediate future, it's an interesting read.
Gary Kirchherr, Erie, Pa., USA

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