Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Shanghai

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A friend of mine and I visited Shanghai May-June 2004. Reading this book beforehand was incredibly useful. It does, however, seem to give the impression that the e.g hotels and nightclubs it enlists are the only ones at these price levels, but we found heaps more. Not unexpected in a city of 13 million people.

We both agreed the book is worth it's weight in gold. Traveling in China where hardly anyone speaks English or are able to read the western alphabet can be a tedious task. Getting this information on location might be feasible for Chinese speaking travelers, but practically impossible for forreigners. Read the book in total beforehand! Make notes! We had so much fun in China, and we owe much to this book. It should have included more on the Chinese language (pronouns, a short dictionary etc) and more extensive information on Hangzhou.

...and don't eat the ¥180 meal in the Oriental Pearl Tower. It's absolutely horrible and the service is below street-corner-eatery level.

- Peder -

Having just finished six months studying in Shangai, I think I'm in a good position to review this book. The sections on local food, excursions and the like are interesting and accurate - I have tried and tested Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing - but other areas like nightlife and the like are out of date (already!). For this sorts of things its best to check out ... which is the local expat magazine. There you can find better listings of restaurants, clubs, bars and the like. The best thing would be to contact a local once you get there.

I used this book for a 7 day trip to Shanghai in September 2004. It gave an excellent overview of the city: what to see, where to go, however, the maps and phrasebook were a disappointment. The maps lacked the Chinese characters for the street names (the book listed everyting in "pinyon", the Westernized lettering of Chinese words) and since very few people in Shanghai speak English or recognize the Western lettering, we couldn't just point to where we wanted to go. Instead, we had to get the hotel concierge to write down where we wanted to go, which was very limiting when heading out on day trips.

In addition to this book, be sure to get a good map, complete with Chinese charaters. Also be sure to pick up a copy of the Rough Guide Mandarin phrasebook, which is an essential resource for ordering in restaurants, getting around town via taxi, asking directions, etc.

First, I should point out that most (~70%+) of LP¡¯s Shanghai guide is just reprint of what is in their larger China guide. No need to get both.

While the condensing, arrogant, and at time sophomoric attitude that characterizes LP¡¯s china guide in general is absent here it is unfortunate that this guide is so far out of date that it could just as well be about another city. Its high time for a new edition.

An example; the book talks about a development, ¡°xin tian di¡± that is worth keeping an eye out for some time in the next ten years. (Xin tian di was completed years ago).

I moved to Shanghai in August 2005 and bought this guidebook to orient myself to the city. A few observations from having used the guidebook for the past six months:

As an introduction to Shanghai, the Lonely Planet does a decent job for anyone who only has a few days to a week to spend in this dynamic city. The author covers the typical tourist areas well, including the Bund, Old Town (Yu Yuan), and the French concession. The walking tours described in the book are very nice as they go into the architectural history of some of the amazing colonial and art deco buildings in town. The history of Shanghai that is noted in the guidebook is not exhaustive but adequate.

The guidebook falls short for anyone seeking more information on Shanghai. Shanghai is larger than New York city and the guidebook is "thin", literally and figuratively. The coverage is hit-and-miss as well, and the section on bars and restaurants does not begin to cover the plethora of fun and exciting western and Shanghainese restaurants in town.

My wish list for improving this book:
- note in the eating section which restaurants offer English menus and which do not
- provide Chinese addresses (to show to taxi drivers)
- provide more recommendations on some of the best values in town, e.g., massages and buying CDs/DVDs (genuine ones)
- provide an online supplement for sections that have changed since the last edition

My advice to anyone coming to Shanghai would be to
- get the most recent guidebook available
- spend some time online browsing the Shanghai expat sites.
- once in town, look for a free Shanghai map from a hotel and
- for dining, arts and leisure activities, pick up one of the weekly magazines that are available in hotels, bars, and restaurants

This will help you come up with a more current flavor of the city and provide a must-see/do list while in this amazing city.

I just returned from a pleasure trip to Shanghai and this book lived in my bag the entire trip. It's extremely helpful both with general travel info on China and specific info on the highlights of Shanghai. I used it to focus the limited time I had there, it was invaluable in planning my itinerary each day. The walking tours are especially good, if you're going to Shanghai you must see the Yuyan Gardens and take the walk the book recommends through the Old Town section, you will never forget it. The other recommended highlights are also good, and fortunately it also includes some info about Suzhou and Hangzhou, which are easy day trips from Shanghai. My only quibble is that the maps aren't very good, they aren't detailed enough, you'll need more if you're a serious walker. I used an English map I picked up from my hotel.

This is a decent guidebook but I must confess that I like Lonely Planet and I'm very familiar with their format. If you use this along with another guidebook and a really good map then you will be fine. Be warned that Shanghai is a very dynamic city and it is constantly changing. This edition is already out of date so Lonely Planet needs to release a new version ASAP. Overall, it gives you good background about Shanghai and I wouldn't go there without it.

It is refreshing to see a travel book that is as well integrated, considering the publisher is undergoing a transformation in their editorial dept to include costlier photos. The book's descriptions are diverse in central city, suburbs, provincial environs, as well as covering common aspects of China travel. Lots of practical advice and categorizing tourist expenses into budget, medium priced, & first class. This book has 22 pgs of photos and 9 maps with marked key lists. The photos go well beyond the media touristy stock photos to include children, people at work, everyday scenes, empty freeways, but no massive bicycle or bus traffic jams which I'm sure exists.

About the first half of the book included general history and descriptions, getting there, and getting aclimated. Then the back half of the book has specific discussions on diverse topics from the usual hotel, eats, and entertainment, to shopping, expat & gay bars, and children's activities. There are many warnings that all things in Shanghai are expensive, more than the US. There are day excursions to famous Suzhou (Venice of the East) and Hangzhou (West Lake) which are very touristy with the natives. There is only one visit "off the beaten path" to Putuoshan, an island and overnight ferry about 150mi SE.

The book is well made to stand the rigors of travel, bound in signatures, so pages and maps won't drop out after the spine has flexed with rough use, or maps can be carefully razored out for separate pocket use. The 8-page language section has the essentials, including the word for toilet and toilet paper and the men and women characters on p57. I wonder if pronunciations can also be given in Shanghainese dialect as it appears to be Mandarin.

The most objectionable format issue was the 6 pages of publisher's advertisements (p212-218) which were stuck between the glossary and index, and maps with site lists at the end. These adverts should be placed in the foreword or left out. And the inside of the front and back covers are non-functional, adverts in front and metric conversions in back. They could have been maps and not-to-be-missed sites. And the metric conversions did not include conversion of area, esp sq meters to sq ft and sq km to sq miles.

Having read Yatsko's New Shanghai (0-471-84352-0, 2001), which has no maps and only 4 pgs of stock pixs, I was anxious to see more. I was pleasantly surprised. When trying to locate the famous Fudan University, however, I was disappointed that there was nothing in the index, which is a scanty 4 pages, with only a few Chinese locations. After scanning the map's key lists which are not indexed, the only Fudan U entry was the last entry on the last page. This turned out to be wrong. In the Harvard U based Let's Go China (0312270348, 2001, p281), I found an obscure reference to take Bus 910 to Wujiaochang, a NE suburb as discussed on p63. Only after looking at the MapQuest-like city map at ShanghaiGuidedotcom did I find Fudan U's location, whose own website had a campus map in Chinese and no street address or directions, a common mistake with website designers. Wujiaochang is a traffic circle, like in DC and Boston. Fudan U is just west of it on Handan Lu. Fudan U could have been marked on Map 3, which includes Tongji U and Shanghai Normal U. This area needs to be emphasized of its location and proximity to the Pudong SEZ.

As a reader of the author's prior co-authored book, Odyssey's Uzbekistan (962-217-582-1, 99), I considered it excellent in photography and description guides and sidebar stories.

As a feature LP has a website to support its books, however the support area is not linked from the home page. Only after searching LonelyPlanetDotcom was I able to locate the upgrades area, but they did not have any updates for China (Taiwan, Japan, and Central Asia had Acrobat PDF files).

This book was written within the round-eye tourist and expatriate's perspective. For the squinty-eye overseas Chinese, those able to blend-in and reading and speaking Mandarin, Taiwanese, or Cantonese, I'd like to see your coverage broadened to include dirt-cheap accommodations and native business interests, especially in the Pudong SEZ and other high-tech areas similar to the Zhongguancun SEZ in Beijing. Or at least include a detailed list of resources, websites, or tourist guides written in Chinese.

Seldom have I given a guide five stars, but this guide is brilliant. Without a doubt this is the definitive travel guide for Shanghai today. Lonely Planet and Bradley Mayhew did it right. The maps: excellent. Internet addresses and web sites listed, YES. Great introduction, check. The history and general information are very good. Even the box vignettes are filled with wonderful superfluous information (IE. Cheap thrills, great Jewish families, etc.). His entertainment section is one of the best I have seen. And, the accommodations, restaurants and 'what to see' are reliable, up to date and discriminating. `Lonely Planet: Shanghai' is done right.

This also would be a great guide for long term business persons, foreign students and expats living in Shanghai. Mayhew's has unearthed information that would take you a massive amount of time and energy to retrieve on your own. His list of clubs, organizations and charities are great. .

For those who will be in Shanghai more than a few days, his section 'Excursions' takes you outside of Shanghai and these areas are well worth the effort to see. He is a co-writer for 'Lonely Planet China' (see my review) and, even though some of the information is found there too, it is only cursory compared to this guide.

Bottom line: Shanghai is a marvel, a modern urban Lazarus. A study of a city's resurrection. Never has any city come back so new, so fast. There is not a better guide out today to introduce you to this resurgence than Bradley Mayhew's, Lonely Planet Shanghai. Highly recommended

I bought this book before my 2-day trip to Shanghai. This book does not say specifically what the 'must-see' are. It is a bunch of explanations about some monuments / neighborhoods, and thats it. I would have expected a book that was a little more specific about what I should / should not see.