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Nobody knows China like Lonely Planet. Whether you want to sip cocktails in Shanghai, trek Tibet’s holy Mt Kailash or contemplate history at Xu’an’s Army of Terracotta Warriors, our 11th edition will guide you through the best of this jaw-dropping destination – and reveal more of it than any other guide.
In This Guide:
All-new color chapters feature treks, iconic sights and culinary delights
Comprehensive activities coverage, including new cycling trips and unforgettable river tours
Expert trustworthy knowledge from resident and specialist authors
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Tom Reynolds
August 31, 2010 - 10:59 amThey say that everything you hear about China is true somewhere. Everything you read in LP China may also be true somewhere but unfortunately not always where you are. Originally published in August 2002 this book is well past its prime. It is still superior to the Rough Guide but could use a serious update. Speaking of which the overleaf promises guidebook upgrades on the Internet but they discontinued this in favour of user discussion.
Pricing – the cost of tea in China, you say? Like most things in China, prices are in constant flux and I question the value of including them. They are more misleading than helpful. Tourist attractions will generally be higher than what the book says but other prices will be close.
Locations – I live in the city of Wuhan and in the last two year it has undergone tremendous changes. There is simply no way for a printed book to keep up with them. For example, in the last six months the bus routes in WuChang have changed four times.
If you are going to travel around China be flexible! Expect that nothing in the guidebook will be where you expected. Expect to bargain for everything, hotel prices included. Remember that any guide book is only a starting place. As I have travelled around southern China I have used this book as a starting point and then asked the locals what they would do. Most have never been to the “tourist sites” but can show you a great street restaurant just around the corner.
This book is great for those thinking of going to China but who will never make the trip, or for those who are going on a package trip to fourteen cities in eight days. For those who want to explore China on their own I would advise caution.
Rating: 2 / 5
Timothy Lamb
August 31, 2010 - 1:51 pmThe 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.
I have good reason to believe that the Lonely Planet does not verify all that they publish from one edition to the next. While I lived in Chengdu, a new edition came out and listed several restaurants and bars that had been closed for over a year and a half- more than ample time for the Lonely Planet to verify their existence.
With all of this said, 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.
Rating: 3 / 5
Renee Thorpe
August 31, 2010 - 4:03 pmJust got back from China and used the latest edition as guide. That’s all it is… a guide. Tries to be your “insider” pal but fails on several fronts. China’s too darn big and changing too fast for any publisher to dare think a single “China” volume is sufficient. I mean, would you trust a single “USA” guidebook? Of course not, even if it’s as thick as a phone book (and this ungainly little brick is just that).
Many wonderful sights/attractions/wonders are not even mentioned… Did editor decide to excise them, or do researchers look only so far?? I, for one, would have liked to see more attractions mentioned. But if the LP people are going to keep up the chatty little comments with every such entry (a Lonely Planet hallmark), they will have to break up “China” into many volumes. For example, book does not even show on Wuhan map the fascinating, large Taoist temple there… cutting the chit-chat about Mao’s Villa there (worth visiting but the text on it is useless) could have made room. But if they want to keep the cute comments (surfing buddhas on a temple wall in Kunming, overrated herbalist in Lijiang, Europe in miniature in Chengdu), they are going to have to break the book up into at least three volumes.
Restaurant reviews could be chopped in half, that’s for sure. They are boring, outdated, sometimes wholly erroneous. Phone numbers have always been a joke in LP editions for any country I have used …I own some seventeen LP’s… but these numbers were wholly useless to me on my recent trip.
As other reviewers note, it is necessary to concede that China is always changing, and with growing speed. Perhaps LP just can’t send their researchers out fast enough. But there are enough expats living in Chinese cities to be tapped for updates. Incidentally, expats are a great resource for any traveller… already Shanghai and Beijing have weekly “what’s on” style tabloids in English that are very helpful to the visitor. Anyway, on the expat account alone, generally clever LP editors really have little excuse for not having a finger on China’s latest and greatest.
What’s good about Lonely Planet China?? Liberal use of Chinese characters and Pinyin romanization, for one thing. Made it super easy to communicate with taxi drivers. The Orientation section for each city is excellent… three paragraphs to prepare you for the layout and characteristics of the city. History section is good, too. I truly love the off-the-beaten path viewpoint that makes Lonely Planet so much fun… so I hope future editions retain this, while getting on the ball with useful / necessary details.
Using this book, traveller / reader will get a generally good trip, but will be led astray / waste time more than once by old info (where to catch bus to Buddha, where to find Muslim food, etc), and from incomplete phone numbers.
Rating: 3 / 5
Bobak Haeri
August 31, 2010 - 5:49 pmI’ve been using Lonely Planet guides for all of my travels in the past decade (and not finding LP, I go with Moon Guides). Luckily, the new edition of the LP China guide came out a month before my visit to the Middle Kingdom. I planned my itinerary inside China based off of recommendations in the book: Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Suzhou and Guilin –using the book as a reference everywhere. Here are my impressions after the trip, starting with the positive:
– The book is overall a good value for helping find which sites are worth visiting on a tight schedule. I found all of its site descriptions to be spot on and was not dissapointed by any of the places I visited based on suggestions from the guidebook.
– As ususal, the LP maps are tremendously useful when navigating major cities and towns.
– the advice on scams was tremendously useful in China, where being a foreigner makes you an instant target for unwanted attention. If anything, they should expand this section.
However, there were a number of minor quibbles that kept this book from being as useful as other LP guides (like Japan or Canada) which I will go over below:
– As noted by other reviewers, the prices on admissions are already out-of-date. The book was published in June ’05 and my trip was in August ’05, yet very few prices corresponded to those in the guide. All prices were higher.
– Often the hotel reviews were far too generous. After staying at many “mid-range” and “High-end” hotels recommended by the guide, my travel companion and I laughed at the wonderous descriptions given in the LP guide for most of them.
– Some of the slang used in the guide is unfamiliar to US readers. Granted, this point is a very minor quibble, but it’s annoying when you’re trying to get a feel for a place from the book and you can’t understand what it’s trying to say.
– Since many, many people go to China to shop, and nearly all stores involve serious haggling, I was disappointed that the book did not have a good section on how to approach shopping in China. For this I had to go to various forums on the web, but there’s really no reason to not include the universal rules in such a general guidebook.
– Finally, I was a little surprised that this LP guide seemed a little toned down in its editorial criticism of the enormous inequalities and visibile authoritarian elements within China. This is not to say I was expecting a political statement, but a charming aspect of many LP guides are their willingness to point out blatant or just-below-the-surface problems in the countries and cultures it covers. In many cases the China guide did point issues, particularly with minorities, but often it gave the Chinese gov’t a pass in areas where even a fairly oblivious tourist like myself couldn’t help but notice. With that said, I have a suspicion that this may have been a judicious choice by the editors, since bringing in books that are too critical to the Chinese Government is forbidden (as clearly stated on the customs forms visitors must sign when they enter the country).
Overall I found this book to be useful. I did side-by-side comparisons with a Frommer and Nat’l Geographic China guide before I purchased it and I felt that the LP guide was willing to make more editorial opinion judgments on what was really worth making time for.
Rating: 4 / 5
Patrick Jennings
August 31, 2010 - 7:07 pmChina continues to change at a hair-raising pace so I can almost forgive the fact that Lonely Planet can’t seem to keep up. Except that it should be able to catch up after three editions yet somehow manages to lag behind even that schedule.
I can’t forgive at all the snarky attitude of its writers who seem to operate on the principle, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, try at least to make it sound witty and superior.” The result is usually smug cynicism, which is an unattractive attitude in a traveller, and all the more trying when all you really want to do is find the hotel after 36 hours in hard class. Sometimes I get the feeling these guys don’t really like to travel…
Rather than simply being obsolete, or imprecise as another reviewer notes, Lonely Planet is often simply inaccurate. How do they do it? I’m not sure. I’ve had reports that the underpaid and tightly itineraried writers can’t always complete their assignments and sometimes rely on second-hand information from other travellers. I’ve met a German guidebook writer (not lonely planet) who admitted she’d done the same, so it’s not all that far-fetched.
China can be a frustrating country for budget travellers, particularly those with no other option than train or bus on long journeys. Not much english is spoken, even in the major cities and the whole country appears to operate under alien premises. (These happen to be two of the best reasons to travel there.) However, outdated, imprecise and inaccurate guidebooks just exacerbate the potential frustrations.
There are better guidebooks. Consider titles in the Cadogan Guide series, particularly “China: The Silk Routes” by Peter Neville-Hadley. Read the editorial and customer reviews on its Amazon page, which are bang on.
Oh, by the way, I took one star off for inaccuracy and two for being unpleasant. China’s a tough assignment but it’s no reason to get nasty.
Rating: 2 / 5