Good historical information as well as maps, etc. Good overall information about the new China

Although the 10th Edition provides useful information, I found its coverage of Western China extremely dated. Indeed, the information was so stale that a resident expat in Kashgar questioned whether LP visited Xinjinag prior to releasing the new edition.

I used this book only in Beijing and Shanghai, so I can only vouch for those two sections. The maps of Beijing were great, when they were there. Because the book appears not to have been copy edited, there are lots of references to more detailed maps there are not actually in the book.

Also, the Beijing section doesn't include some of the most interesting areas for tourists to visit. It seems like someone just did a google search on Beijing and listed the first few things that come up, regardless of their interest or relevance to tourists. A major park walking distance to the forbidden city surrounded by cafes, museums and excellent souvenir shops is simply not listed.

Shanghai was a little better.

It is a good book for dreaming though. I am keeping my copy so I can plan ahead for next trip. Before I actually go though I will be buying a different book.

We are independent travelers who usually travel with Lonely Planet. China is changing so fast it is hard to keep any guide up to date, but the travel and site information here was generally accurate and very helpful. I was disapointed in some of the restaurant recomendations.

An exceptional travel guide. Do not count on the prices being accurate but the big picture is spot on.

There are two problems with the Lonely Planet guide: it is too heavy for a traveler; it is on the banned books list in China (but my copy was not taken in my last two trips).

Death by Lonely Planet refers to guiding thousands of tourists to a once untouched spot. The Lonely Planet guide is a blessing and a curse.

An exceptional travel guide. Do not count on the prices being accurate but the big picture is spot on.

There are two problems with the Lonely Planet guide: it is too heavy for a traveler; it is on the banned books list in China (but my copy was not taken in my last two trips).

Death by Lonely Planet refers to guiding thousands of tourists to a once untouched spot. The Lonely Planet guide is a blessing and a curse.

I was born in China and lived there for more than 20 years. Since I moved to the States, I have traveled in China frequently on business and for family reasons.

I am planning a trip to China with the rest of my family who traveled in China only once in 2006. To help them organized for the trip, I was looking for a guide book. I browsed this book in a local book store. I was shocked to see that it contains so much value-judging commentaries about Chinese history, customs, government policies, etc. Unfortunately the authors seem to understand little about Chinese history, culture, politics, economy and business. Some of their commentaries are blatantly racist. In describing Chinese moving around in their own country (whether Tibet or Xinjiang), on their own free will, the book's use of "hordes" and "flood" is derogatory, if not plainly racist.

I do not intend to buy this book to brain wash my kids: They are going to China with an open mind and will be there to see with their own eyes and to judge on their own. Thank you very much.

I also found quite a few misleading information about some popular sites. Other readers have already commented on some of them.

So thanks to the authors for spending so much time on the commentaries and not enough time on providing accurate information for tourists, I am not buying this lonely planet.

I used this book during my second trip to China in summer 2007. We did not take any organized tours. We used it in Beijing, Shanghai and Hunan province and we took its advice and avoided Shenzhen.

That out of the way, I found the book eminently useful. There is enough Chinese script in it to show a taxi driver where you want to go by pointing to the characters. Every place name has a set of Chinese characters you can point to. The maps are particularly useful (of course), but I thought they could have edited out some of the color pictures for more maps. Can't get enough maps in a travel book.

I did not really read this book until we actually landed in Beijing. From there it was pretty much a thing I could immediately pick up, figure out and use to get moving. The descriptions of things are acurrate.

I'm not sure why some reviewers are complaining that the descriptions are too short or simple. China is a massive country of 1.6 billion people over a huge land with dozens upon dozens of cities -- more detail would double the book's weight.

If you have to go to China (which I wouldn't really recommend) then you cannot go wrong with this book. It's a starting place, and a savvy travelor will find one of the millions of internet cafes available to look up more things in depth, or just ask questions of other travellers or hotel workers, shop clerks, waiters, etc. Anyone who wants more information than this book offers should just book an organized tour for their entire trip and have their hand held the entire time. Or better yet, take a cruise. Otherwise, this book will get you started and the rest is easy to figure out. It's very easy to travel around China. My first trip I didn't even use a book or a Chinese-Engilsh dictionary or even the internet.

I spent a month in China with this guide book. The city maps were not great, but they were the best maps I found in any guide book. When I got back from my trip, someone gave me a hilarious new novel that takes place in China -"Sweet and Sour July"- about a group of tourists making their way from Hong Kong to Beijing and seeing everything in between. I highly recommend both of these books if you are planning a trip to China.

It is confusing that many of the reviews here are for the National Geographic Traveler China book, by the same author as the Lonely Planet book. The National Geographic book has lots of pictures and is a good "idea" book. The Lonely Planet is geared to the independent traveler, with much more specific information about how to get around. This review is for the Lonely Planet.

My husband and I have successfully used Lonely Planet books on many other trips, but we were disappointed in the China book. Obviously China is a huge country, and it is changing very quickly, so we were not surprised to find that many places no longer exist and that some of the information was out-of-date. But we WERE surprised at the amount of blatantly wrong information. For example, the section on Jade Dragon Snow Mountain near Lijiang was so mixed-up that we ended up spending the day at the wrong hiking area.

In most countries it would be fairly easy to double-check the accuracy of a description by asking a hotel concierge or taxi driver. In China, though, we often had problems communicating, so we relied much more heavily on our guidebooks.

The book is huge, but it didn't need to be quite so big. Many of the descriptions are excessively wordy, and sometimes it seemed like the author was more interested in writing a clever review than clearly giving the facts.

The best thing about the book is that names of places and most streets are written in Chinese. It was incredibly helpful to be able to point to the place we wanted to go. We found that our accents and pronunciations were so bad when we tried to read pinyin that most people didn't even realize we were trying to speak Chinese to them.

We looked through other guidebooks at some of our guest houses, and unfortunately none seemed to be much better.

I spent over over two months traveling around China and this is the book that I took with me. Besides the fact that the map at the front isn't very good and that in a couple of remote places (the North Korean border town of Dandong, for example) the street maps weren't entirely accurate (a problem in China given that local people usually don't even know the name of the street on which they work) I found this to be a great book. Really. It was fine. It did the trick. No problems. I subjected it to quite a lot of wear and tear and it's still togther and looking good. I cannot, for the life of me, understand some of the negative reviews here.

One says there's no Chinese in the book. I'm looking at the Chinese in the book right now. In addition to place names, food items, and so on and so forth, there's an entire section of it for pity's sake (although, to be fair, it has been cleverly disguised as "Languages"). Another critic claims that the volume doesn't contain any useful travel information, a kind of miracle when you consider that it's nearly a 1000 pages long and positively teeming with the sections 'Sights,' 'Sleeping,' 'Getting There and Away,' 'Getting Around,' 'To and from the airport,' 'Maps,' etc.

Despite the LP formula, quality can vary from writer to writer and book to book and some writers are bent on plugging the hum drum (lest the potential buyer think the country is rubbish and return the book to its spot on the shelf), but not in this case. Perhaps there are a few minor glitches here and there but in a tome of this size there are bound to be. Basically, you arrive at a place, check into a recommended hotel, take a look at the 'Sights' section and off you go. Book your onward ticket from your hotel's in-house travel agency, which is easy to find as it's usually the same counter or the one next to your hotel's in-house "massage center."

One more thing: if you are using this guide book in China, you may want to consider tearing out the map in the front. I ran into three people who had their Lonely Planets confiscated by officials because it didn't include Taiwan. Each person was given a little geography lesson before having their (rather expensive) book taken away from them ("Do you see this troublesome little island here? The one with more than a thousand missiles aimed at it? To whom does it belong?"). The reason why this can be problematic is that you rarely see English travel guides (even second hand ones) in China, except for major cities like Shanghai and Beijing. I ran into a nice Danish couple who had their Lonely Planet taken away and hence they had to waste valuable time searching around for a new one. It was their first time to China and they hadn't the faintest idea as to where or what Taiwan was. But, of course, they do now. No matter which book you decide on, enjoy your travels in China. It's certainly a fascinating place.

Troy Parfitt, author of Notes from the Other China - Adventures in Asia

I'm a Han Chinese who has traveled extensively in Xinjiang. Lonely Planet is only harming Han-Uyghur relations with their anti-Han Chinese rhetoric and veiled racism. The section on Xinjiang starts off by claiming that Han Chinese are "invaders", then goes on to describe the Beijing government sending "trainloads" and "hordes" of Han Chinese to flood Xinjiang's ethnic makeup. I'm Han Chinese, I am not an invader, I refuse to be described of as human cattle, and I have just as much right to be here as some snotty Western backpacker who thinks he's above it all. The Lonely Planet section on Xinjiang is filled with opinionated, anti Han-Chinese drivel and the little actual travel information that it does provide is woefully outdated and inaccurate. When I buy a travel guidebook, I buy it for pure travel information, not to be "educated" by racist garbage written by self-righteous Westerners who can't even speak Mandarin. For this reason I will not purchase Lonely Planet guidebooks in the future and recommend others not to purchase them either, especially not the China edition. I have heard the Iran edition has similar problems.

Physical condition - Bent cover and first pages - ACCEPTABLE

Contents - We plan a trip to China in November 2007. This

Guide will be an invaluable resource - even though we will

be on a guided tour. We have guests that have lived years in

China and when they saw our copy of "Lonely Planet - CHINA",

they said that "It is absolutely THE BEST."

Physical condition - Bent cover and first pages - ACCEPTABLE
Contents - We plan a trip to China in November 2007. This
Guide will be an invaluable resource - even though we will
be on a guided tour. We have guests that have lived years in
China and when they saw our copy of "Lonely Planet - CHINA",
they said that "It is absolutely THE BEST."

the book is too big... China is a big country, there should be a separate book for each region covering it more in depth. Also due to this, the authors have selected a tiny font making it quite hard and unpleasant to read.
The book is also lacking useful hints which I find in the french equivalent "le guide du routard" for french speakers.

For standard tourist attractions its a fine guide book BUT it is no insider guide ............ not even close.
And it is HEAVY!!!!! So think twice; or actually thrice as it is banned in China and if you come across police they might take it away from you!

Comprehensive edition actually, but not so easy to read for the foreigners.
As it is a guide I preffer more "easy english".

I'm off to work in Beijing in September and before my contract starts a friend and I are planning on seeing 'some' of China. It's great to see Lonely Planet releasing this updated edition when so many other travel series seem content offering two or three year old information.

This 2007 version has bountiful knowledge, mesmerising photos and up to date costs and information throughout China proper and outlying regions.

I've normally been a Rough Guide user but glad to see L.P has improved its staple with this China-logue and now my friend and I are all set (just to about) to take on this sizeable journey.

Recommended, just make sure you have strong shoulders if you decide to take the book with you. It's BIG!

This volume is a mine of fascinating and important information, with comprehensive yet succinct narration and explanation about Chinese history, customs and culture, along with a great array of pictures and maps as well as practical guidance for preparing for and making a trip to mainland China.

This volume is a mine of fascinating and important information, with comprehensive yet succinct narration and explanation about Chinese history, customs and culture, along with a great array of pictures and maps as well as practical guidance for preparing for and making a trip to mainland China.

Very good book for someone planning to make a trip to China.

I found this book invaluable on my recent trip to China. It is not a typical tourist book, however, it provides a treasure of genuinely valuable background information for the serious traveler.

Excellent book for general knowedge on planning a trip. worththe $.

The photos and color are beautiful, as you would expect from National Geographic, but the actual guides to major sightseeing areas are fairly poor. They are somewhat "snobby" with too much criticism of places "for tourists." The book is actually hard to handle since, I assume for the sake of the photos, the paper is very heavy and glassy, certainly nothing you could actually bring with you on your trip to China.

In my travels I've always relied on the trust Lonely Planet series, but for my trip to China I decided to also try a new book --relying on the respected National Geographic name to guide my second purchase. After spending August '05 in China, and reading both books, I must say the Nat'l Geographic book was a disappointment as a practical, on-the-ground guidebook but great as a basic guide to China for someone thinking about going. Here's a quick overview of the good and the bad:

THE GOOD:
It should be no surprise to hear that the photos in the guidebook are excellent, as it carries the National Geographic name. In addition the pieces it has on different aspects of Chinese culture are very interesting. The book acts as one very long National Geographic article and should not disappoint someone who wants to learn more about China without actually going there.

THE BAD:
As other reviewers have noted, the hotel and restaurant listings are inferior. Comparing it side-by-side with other major guidebook labels like the China books by Lonely Planet or Frommers shows that the book pales as a practical guide once you actually hit the ground there. This problem cannot be underemphasized: China is a moderately difficult place to get around for the foreign, non-speaking traveller. You need all the practical help and advice you can get and this guidebook does not offer near the level of the other brands. For the relatively novice traveller, I strongly do not recommend relying on this guide for your travels within China.

After purchasing both the LP and Nat'l Geographic guidebooks last July I read them both cover-to-cover before leaving on my trip. While the Nat'l Geographic book added a few interesting angles and had many more pictures than the LP guide, I only brought the LP guidebook with my on the trip because (1) you can only bring so many books with you as you go around and (2) it was clearly the more practical guide.

Best of luck and safe travelling!