Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to Beijing, Second Edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was great--I don't know how we would have managed without it--it gives great, accurate information about places to go (not the nightclubs though), had great maps. We went to some of the most amazing restaurants that we would never have been able to find if not for the really detailed directions in the book (for example, this famous, but out-of-the-way roast duck restaurant hidden in the depths of the hutongs at Qianmen.) The maps were very useful, especially to show taxi drivers where you want to go, though you have to read the pinyin names to them since they can't read english. But definitely, you can't go wrong in Beijing with this book.

I've had great success with Rough Guides, and this seemed like a good bet given all the reviews here on Amazon. Unfortunately, I've been super disappointed. Sure, it's a challenge writing a guidebook for such a rapidly changing city; but this guide being pre-Olympics makes a HUGE difference. Don't let the 2008 date fool you.

The subway and bus information and maps are all wrong. Quite a few of the restaurants mentioned don't exist anymore, which I frequently discovered while hot and frustrated on Beijing's complicated streets. (Directions and maps are quite short on details.) Prices and information for major tourist sites (such as Forbidden City) are slightly off. The text even mentions Dunkin Donuts, which hasn't existed in China for five years or more. In addition, big swaths of the city aren't covered at all, notably the foreigner hot-spots around Chaoyang Park. The section on 798, the Arts District, is woefully short, just a paragraph long with no map or gallery suggestions.

Hopefully there's a better guide out there, because Beijing is the kind of massive city where you really need quality advice and maps and directions.

If you plan to go to Beijing and you don't speak Mandarin,
you *need* a good guide book. I consistently found this
to be accurate, and it gave good advice. I met other travelers
using the Lonely Planet, and they didn't find it nearly as
useful.

Straight away, you're going to love the 'deck of cards’ size of this wonderful guide. It slips in your hip pocket and leaves your hands free to part the pressing masses of Beijing. If you’re a people person, you will love China (1.3 Billion and rising).

Lewis has condensed, in a few hundred pages, a very intelligent and functional guide to this sprawling city. The nightlife section is the best and there are some very interesting dives to explore in Beijing. The color maps are great and easy to use. Want to find a restaurant that Simon Lewis recommends? Go to map 7, cross reference C,8. Besides these color maps at the back of the guide, the b&w map of the Hidden City is very good, showing the palaces, buildings and special locations at the site. The restaurants and accommodations that I used on my visit to Beijing were 'spot on'.

Simon Lewis' unique and 'off the beaten tracks' vignettes are a joy to read. Topics include, Feng Shui, Beijing online and the Trans-Siberian Train and Dissent in Tian'anmen Square, just a few of the vignettes. On the other hand, very little information is given to help the reader understand the culture and history of Beijing.

Though Simon Lewis includes a very informative directory of important offices, i.e., airlines, banks, embassies, hospitals etc., he only gives names, addresses and directions in English, not Chinese characters, so they are basically useless for taxi drivers and just about everybody else. But he does have Chinese characters for all accomodations and resturants.

Simon Lewis focuses on the budget minded when it comes to recommending accommodation and restaurants, "Luxury hotels in Beijing are legion (and very pricy), but, you can still avail yourself of their lavish facilities, such as the lobby toilets and pick up free copies of the 'China Daily'.

A peeve that I have about Rough Guides is their use of a number system to quote the price range of a hotel, i.e., the Friendship Hotel costs a '6', then you have to flip back to the numeric legion to find out that 6 = 600 to 800 yuans, which you then divide by the current rate of exchange. As other guides demonstrate, there are betters ways to help your reader gage approximate cost.

A weakness of many guides, including this one, is the absence of a hotel/ restaurant index. Thus, if you have a recommended restaurant you want to look up, you have to go through all the restaurant pages 'til you stumble across the name you seek or miss seeing it completely. Another significant short coming when you wish to make a reservation, especially considering the 2000 published date of this guide, is the lack of website and email from any of the listed hotels. Most all Beijing hotels are connected to the web.

If you want a very good true 'pocket size' compact guide, "The MINI Rough Guide to Beijing" is a must buy and one of the best guides out today...Highly recommended. 4 1/4 stars....

Even my sister, an x-pat living in Beijing, was impressed with the maps in this book. She said they were better than any maps she'd been able to find in-country. We still did get lost a couple of times, but overall managed very well. Also, the small list of English/Pinyin/Character words in the back came in very handy when we needed to buy a phonecard and no one understood our feeble attempts at spoken Chinese.

I used this book on a recent trip and found it excellent. Each time I followed its recommendations I was rewarded with a fascinating place that most tourists did not know about. This book gave me access to the city's excellent nightlife, which few tourists seem to know about, and gave me the low down on some great restaurants. It's also very well written - sometimes I laughed out loud at the authors sly, sceptical humour. My friend was travelling with the lonely planet but he soon abandoned it and kept borrowing my book.

Going to Beijing? Bring this book. Everything about it is superb. It served me well on a five-week study sojourn a few years ago. In addition to being of excellent quality (everything in it is valuable), it is nice and compact and will fit right in your pocket. Great maps too. In short, the best guide book I've ever owned, and I've owned quite a few.

Troy Parfitt, author

The guide is as good as any of the Rough Guides, which is to say that it is comprehensive and generally accurate, though if you are not used to the author sharing his personal opinions, in addition the objective guidance, you might find it surprising.

I used it a quite a bit and found a lot of things in Beijing that I would have never discovered without the guide so it was a good purchase. There are a few things that the author doesn't mention that stood out to me as a westerner and a stranger to the city which would have been useful, such as the fact that taxis are very cheap and available at all times of the day and night and generally safe and honest. Some of the text could have done with better editing too; an example was that it said that a temple that I went to visit was a short walk from a certain subway station but it did not say in which direction, and on my first attempt I wasted a good hour trying to find it and gave up.

The reason why it doesn't get four stars is that it is really quite out of date. It seems to have been written about thee years previous to me buying it which does not sound a lot, but the Olympics has been to Beijing in the intervening time and a lot of things have changed. For example only about half the subway is in the map at the back, which has made it a lot easier to get around the city, but I had to purchase a separate map locally.

In summary, yes it's worth the money but due for revision.

A subject like Beijing isn't easy to cover fully enough to satisfy everyone but this guide does a good job. It lists all the usual "pricey" options which many are looking for but it assumes the user/reader is traveling independantly or at least semi-on-their-own and also attempts to offer cheap/affordable options in all categories as well. I found that using this book in combination with the internet, I was able to construct the memorable trip that I wanted at the VERY budget price I demanded. Excellent descriptions of sights, great accomodation options and fairly easy hints on "getting around" by public transport.

Very nice book, but spend some time reading it, before you go to China. There are a lots of details which are easy to overlook. For example, in contrast to Lonely Planet book, the Chinese transcription are gathered together at the beginning of each section. In fact it can be quite handful, but you need to get used to it. There are some minor mistakes, but every guidebook has them. For example the hole info about tourist buses is really bad written - I think this info is out of date and of little use. Also it is quite disappointing that in some places this book is less comprehensive than much general 'rough guide to China' - as an example there is no city map of Taijin.