Customer Reviews

China: Including Hong Kong and Macau: The Rough Guide, First Editio (Rough Guide China)

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The book describes in detail almost everything one needs to know about going to China. From reccomending large 5 star hotels to Yurts in out of the way villages, the Rough Guide helps you get there the way you want to get there. The guide is so detailed that it even reccomended a small village in the middle of Inner Mongolia called Zhaohe. I went there and found it to be what the guide promised...out of the way and no tourists. Invaluable information such as this makes traveling in an already crowded China more rewarding and interesting.

I am a big fan of the Rough Guide series and of their philosophy of including socio-political commentary, to remind travelers that the world isn't just for show. And what the China guide does well it does VERY well, with great detail. But my wife and I took both this book and a competitor's guidebook for our monthlong China trip, and Rough Guide contained maybe 1/3 as many things to see and do, and left many places to stay off the list altogether. Worse, some maps were just plain wrong. A travel guidebook that you find yourself leaving in the hotel room is not a good one.

This is one of few guides to China whose authors seem to have a fair amount of understanding of, and interest in, the country they're writing on. This is reflected in a carefully crafted book with a lot of interesting footnotes that make it a good read as well as a travel companion. Something which reflects more the rapid growth of the PRC rather than the authors is the fact that even a mere 18 months after publishing, I found the guide to be accurate only about 50% of the time. You decide whether to shell out for it.