Frommer's China (Frommer's Complete Guides) [Paperback]

Simon Foster (Author), Jen Lin-Liu (Author), Sherisse Pham (Author), Sharon Owyang (Author), Beth Reiber (Author), Lee Wing-sze (Author), Christoper D. Winnan (Author)

Book Description

Series: Frommer's Complete Guides | Publication Date: March 15, 2010

• Our expert authors, longtime residents in and frequent travelers to China, share their candid opinions on what's worth your time and what's?not.
• Frommer's China takes you from the Great Wall, to the terracotta warriors of Xi'an; from hidden Buddhist caves along the Silk Road to mystical mountains in the East. Plus, you'll have everything you need to enjoy a cosmopolitan adventure in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.
• Learn strategies for when to travel independently and when to travel with a tour group. Our extensive transportation information and author recommendations help get you off the beaten path.
• Detailed maps have Chinese characters, pinyin spelling, and English;?supplemental chapters list translations of hotels, restaurants, and points of interest.
• Extensive and invaluable supplemental language and dining chapters help make sense of Mandarin for the traveler. Plus, useful Chinese characters throughout the book?make navigating the country easier.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Shanghai is China's most outward-looking, modern, and brash metropolis. See chapter 10 for details on exploring the city.

• Detailed maps throughout

• Exact prices, directions, opening hours,and other practical information

• Candid reviews of hotels and restaurants,plus sights, shopping, and nightlife

• Itineraries, walking tours, and trip-planning ideas

• Insider tips from local expert authors

About the Author

Simon Foster was born in London and grew up in rural Yorkshire. Family trips first kindled his wanderlust and after graduating in geography from University College London, he set off to seek what he had been studying. He started work as an adventure tour leader in the Middle East in 1997 and was then posted to India and China. He has contributed to several international guidebooks and magazines. Simon and his wife live in sunny southern Taiwan and lead adventure tours along the Silk Road, as well as in Taiwan and India.

Jen Lin-Liu is a food and travel writer based in Beijing and Cambridge, MA. She is the author of Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey through China and the founder of the cooking school Black Sesame Kitchen in Beijing.

Born in Singapore to a Shanghainese mother and a Chaozhou father, Sharon Owyang graduated from Harvard University, and divides her time between freelance travel writing and film projects in the U.S. and China. She is the author of Frommer's Shanghai, and has also written about Shanghai, China, Vietnam, and San Diego for Insight Guides, Compact Guides, the Los Angeles Times, and several websites. She speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and enough Shanghainese to be a curiosity to the locals. Most recently, she was the principal writer of the U.S.-China Media Brief produced by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Sherisse Pham was a Beijing-based freelance journalist for over four years, but recently relocated to New York to study Journalism at Columbia University. She has contributed to several Frommer's guides and has written for WWD, The South China Morning Post, People Magazine, CNN.com, and Zagat Survey among others. She hopes to return to Asia to continue reporting upon graduation.

Before she could even read, Beth Reiber couldn't wait to go to her grandparents' house so she could pour through their latest National Geographic. After living several years in Germany as a freelance travel writer for major U.S. newspapers and in Tokyo as editor of the Far East Traveler, she authored several Frommer's guides, including Frommer's Japan, Frommer's Tokyo, and Frommer's Hong Kong. She also contributes to Frommer's USA and Northstar Travel Media and writes a blog for the Japan National Tourist Organization's website at www.japantravelinfo.com. When not sleeping in far-flung hotels, she resides in Lawrence, Kansas, with her two sons, a dog, and a cat.

Lee Wing-sze is a freelance writer, translator, and avid traveler who hails from Hong Kong where she has been witness to the economic and ideological impact of China on the Eastmeets-West city since the 1997 handover. She studied English journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University and has worked for the city's English-language newspapers, the South China Morning Post, and The Standard, and has contributed to several Chinese publications in Asia. Music and basketball are her passion; but her dream is to step foot in every country on the earth, all the while bumping into people of different colors and collecting their compelling life stories.

Christopher D. Winnan's love/hate relationship with the continent currently known as China has lasted more than a decade. He has lived and worked in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and, unable to keep his comments to himself, has written extensively in both English and Chinese, most recently for Time Out and Intercontinental Press. Last year he bought a retirement house in Thailand, but even that cannot seem to keep him away from China, and he is currently residing in Dali, Yunnan Province.

Product Details

• Paperback: 896 pages
• Publisher: Frommers; 4 edition (March 15, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470526580
• ISBN-13: 978-0470526583
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #83,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > Travel > Asia > China

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A userful guide with some shortcomings, July 21, 2005

By 

Jordan Reiter "mugus" (Charlottesville, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Frommer's China (Paperback)

To begin with, readers should know that this guide was severly pared down, which explains why there are so few budget hotels and budget restaurants listed. Many section writers knew plenty of cheaper hotels and restaurants, but due to space limitations the decision was made by the publisher to list only the upper-level accomodations. This is partly because Frommer's really isn't geared towards the budget traveller.

The Beijing section is excellent, and you should go with their recommendation of staying at the Far East International Hostel, or the hotel across from it.

I am suprised by the review that felt that the authors had never been to China. In fact, all of the authors were actually foreign residents of China. While this means that they have a more intimate understanding of their region, it often means that they are less focused on the area as a travelling destination, which may explain why they don't go into the kinds of historical and cultural detail that a travel writer (who is experiencing the city differently) might.


Also, it means that much of the recommendations for certain sections of the book are not at all written from a traveller's perspective. In particular, the section on Chengdu focuses nearly all of its restaurants in the middle-south of the city. After hearing locations described in terms of their proximity to the US Consulate three times, it certainly makes me suspect that the writer of the section spent a long time there. In fact, 7 of 12 of the restaurants were located no more than half a mile from the consulate. Good luck finding a description of many places to eat within a 30 minute walk of the fairly popular Dragon Town Hostel (which, although offering pretty good accomodation, was not mentioned at all in the guide) located slightly northwest of center.

As other reviewers have noted, the section on Shanghai is pretty worthless. Even the editor of the book will tell you this. Against his recommendation, the publisher cobbled on a highly shortened version of the already out-of-date Frommer's Shanghai into the Shanghai section of the book. It is out of date and not all that helpful as a guide.

For those who travel to a new place just to try the food, you'll love this book. It has an entire section in the back listing common dishes, dishes unique to featured restaurants, and specialities. The listing includes Chinese characters and pinyin.

If your travel plans include Beijing, this book is a must. If you're going only to Shanghai, choose any other book.

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Woefully inadequate, November 4, 2004

By 

P. Callaway (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Frommer's China (Paperback)

We just took a trip to China, and brought this book as our primary guide. In the store it looked like the best of the bunch, full of details, lots of info to help us find a hotel and get prepped for the trip, but once we got there it was not useful at all.

Our biggest problem was the lack of Chinese characters for any of the places. We took taxis most places, and they would look at the pinyin (romanized) names and addresses in the descriptions section and either not understand or flat out refuse to take us. It was VERY FRUSTRATING not having the Chinese characters, and not having the Chinese addresses. We later realized that the characters for the names were on the map pages, however not all places were on the map, and the full addresses and Chinese street names weren't listed, so it still wasn't what we needed. Not only that but the maps were hard to find, as they were buried in the middle of the descriptions and we kept flipping past them. Even after I'd dog-eared them.

Secondly, once we got out of Beijing, most of the information was way out of date, or flat out wrong! For instance, we went to Kunming, and the first restaurant we tried to go to wasn't there anymore, and the other restaurant had the wrong address! Fortunately our taxi driver figured out it was talking about a vegetarian restaurant that was nearby. At that point I was extremely glad we had a Chinese speaker with us! Otherwise we would have never found it. Not only that, but when we tried to go to the Stone Forest, it recommended to take the train, but the train they mention apparently doesn't run anymore, and the ticket-seller told us that the other train (later in the day) was a really bad option, very slow, and that we should take the bus. We ended up hiring a car for the day.

The only thing we ended up using (successfully) from our trip to Kunming was the location of the internet cafe. It was China Telcom, and so not likely to change, and even so the only reason we found it was because it was near the post office, which (unlike the cafe) was listed on the map.

It's also worth noting that the hotel we stayed at in Beijing, which was absolutley wonderful, the guide said wasn't worth our money. Fortunately we had our friend to go scope out nice places ahead of time for us (we wanted something really nice, as it was our anniversary), and after looking at about six places, she decided the Grand Hotel Beijing, with a view of the Forbidden City, was the nicest, even though the guide didn't recommend it. That and the St. Regis, whose location wasn't as good for being a tourist. It turned out our hotel was one of "the" hotels to stay at in Beijing, and got all kinds of positive comments from her Chinese friends. Go figure.

All in all I was very dissapointed with this guide. We got sick of being led to places that either didn't exist or had the wrong address listed, and after a while our friend who spoke Chinese refused to even use it, and we went and found a local travel agency everywhere we went. I don't know what we would have done if she hadn't been there, since hardly anyone in Kunming spoke good English.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I think tenley peterson is looking at a different book, July 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Frommer's China (Paperback)

My copy of this title has the Chinese in large, useful characters right next to the maps. Only if there's no map for a small town is the Chinese listed in the back, with the information for each town handily grouped together in alphabetical order.

And like every other guide book, the map for a town is in the middle of the text talking about that town. So what's hard to find? The hotels and places to see are right next to the map in most cases. And since the towns only have one map, what's to guess about which maps things are on?

I don't know about the Beijing and Shanghai guides, but of course there will be a lot of repeated information. The sights don't change, after all. The best place to eat is the same. Bus 47 still runs the same route. Of course lots of the information is the same. What do you expect?

But what I do agree on is that this books is waaaaay more accurate than any other I looked at. I'm no fan of the usual schmaltzy Frommer's style, but this book really tells it like it is. It has the most extensive, detailed and accurate practical information of any guide I've seen, including the do-it-yourself budget guides.

And while we're on the topic of Chinese, note that for every recommended restaurant there are recommended dishes, and the characters for them are given so you can just point to them to order. There's also a good long list of Chinese favourites you can buy anywhere.

And while the major destinations are covered, this guide also scores with some remote rural destinations I've not seen covered anywhere else, including LP. Even if you don't want to go there, it's fascinating to read about the real China away from the regular tourist routes.

You know, the first thing you want to check out when you buy a guide is the author biogs. Most of the writers on this guide speak Chinese and have lived in China. It really shows. All the LP and Rough guide readers were borrowing my copy all the time and making notes.