Customer Reviews

Insight Compact Guide Beijing (Insight Smart Guide Beijing)

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I found this book quite good for general info about places to visit in Beijing. Beijing a little over 1/2 inch thick, it is quite thin. It primarily lists the 10 main sites to visit in Beijing. For each spot it lists quite a bit of info, history, pictures, operating hours, etc. It also lists what is nearby to visit each of the 10 sites, whether it be shopping centers or resturaunts.

In addition to the 10 major scenic sites, it also has a section called 'excursions' for detailing where to go outside of Beijing for nearby excursions, such as, the great wall, ming tombs, chengde, etc. It also has sections for resturaunts, nightlife, shopping, leisure activities, history, general everyday use info, getting around etc.

Overall, it is a good bare-bones book for use when going to Beijing. It is not as thorough as other guidebooks for example, Fodors china. But considering the small size of the book, it obviously can't go into tremendous detail about such a large and exciting city!

I was impressed by the vibrant photos and informative commentary and bought this Insight Guide before my second visit to Beijing.
I realized soon afterwards that while this book makes for captivating reading, it's really not that useful for planning activities and day-to-day getting about. There are no Chinese characters given for most place names and the romanization of names and addresses isn't pinyin, so you can't be sure how words are pronounced. This is a great book for background reading and vivid photographs, but you can't get by on this book alone once you're actually on your trip.

I used this on a recent trip to Beijing. Overall, it is reliable and helpful. It is fairly compact and easy to carry around, the road atlas is accurate, the pictures are great, and the descriptions are helpful. Things are changing so fast in Beijing that it is difficult for many of these guides to remain current year to year, and even then information on restaurants and other attractions often change before the guides are even published. A few places list therein were no longer in business, but overall it was reliable. I was able to use this to guide me to some places I might not have considered otherwise, and it gave a good overview of many of the attractions a new visitor to Beijing would want to see. I brought along a couple of other guides as well, including "Top 10 Beijing," which was also helpful. I find that one guide is never enough, so I always get a few. This one is recommended.

This book is very good in the sense that it has many detailed pictures of Beijing and provides lots of info about the city's busy lifestyle. It's many sections detail the history of the city, places to visit, cuisine, excursions outside of Beijing, maps, etc.

However, I wouldn't recommend it is as a sole travel guide to use while traveling in China. Mainly because it doesn't list enough detail about each site. It would be a nice supplement to a detailed Guidebook such as Fodors -China. This book gives good detailed insight and pictures of the city's highlights only, but doesn't provide enough of the city's numerous sites to see or resturaunts, etc and not much info is given on the hours of each site as well.

Overall, it's a great book for learning about Beijing's main scenic sites, culture and a little about the history. It provides many nice pictures and maps too. However, it is not really a guidebook to use solely while traveling there.