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The Rough Guide to China 5 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) | 
 enlarge | Authors: David Leffman, Simon Lewis
Publisher: Rough Guides
Category: Book
List Price: $27.99
Buy New: $15.82
You Save: $12.17 (43%)
New (27) Used (7) from $15.82
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 193957
Media: Paperback
Edition: 5
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 1843538725
Dewey Decimal Number: 915
EAN: 9781843538721
ASIN: 1843538725
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Rough Guide to China is the definitive guidebook to one of the world’s most fascinating and rapidly changing travel destinations. The full-colour introduction gives an inspiring insight into many of China’s highlights, from the awesome scenery down the Yangzi River to the incredible Great Buddha at Leshan and the lavish Confucius Temple. Read expert background on everything from the treasures of the Forbidden City to the Buddhist art of the Mogao Caves as well as comprehensive information on China''s history, politics, cultures and peoples. This fully- updated fifth edition includes an extended chapter on Shanghai and new colour inserts throughout allowing you to chose where to go and what to see, inspired by over 150 photos. Rely on our selection of the best places to stay and eat, for every budget with place names, accommodation and restaurants invaluably translated into Chinese script. Featuring over 140 detailed maps plus vital Chinese characters, this indispensable guide takes you from cutting-edge clubs in Shanghai to holy mountains in Tibet and from ancient temples to gleaming new skyscrapers. Make the most of your time with The Rough Guide to China
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| Customer Reviews:
 New edition? Disappointing... June 28, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Disagree with Mr. M. Kibbee. I think this is very good guide book, it is a bit different than Lonely (I mean layout and in much less degree destinations), but not worse. Chinese/English translations as full as in LP (even more) and easy to use (IMHO), maps are very convenient to use - more colours (you have to have very keen eye for distinguish subtle shades of grey in LP's maps and hieroglyphs in text are too small). Don't worry about restaurants - eating is not problem in China, in big cities you will waste much time trying to find certain restaurant (too many ones) with either LP or RG.
In general Rough Guide is much more substantial (interesting) than LP (guide itself and cultural aspects), but transportation (especially long distance buses) is a weakest point of this guide (LP has much more details).
About 5th edition: They have much renovated Accommodation section (but I advise use online booking if available).
Major questions to this edition - information on site entry fees and addition of new sites (almost lack of it). It seems that they just reproduce some chapters without checking of them. As a consequence you can not plan your budget on this information. Even one year old LP (2007) has more up-to-date prices and some new sites. The chapter on Xian is worse in this aspect (and why they didn't add account on Tomb of Emperor Jingdi).
Nevertheless I think RG is one of the best guides on China and you will have difficult alternative between it and LP. I have both and used them both in China (4th RG and 10th LP). I like RG more.
For three years from previous edition it is very pale job, two stars for novelty of 5th edition, 5 - for guide in general, 4 stars on average.
P.S. Sorry for my English
 Disappointing June 24, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I bought this because it was new this year and I've heard good things about Rough Guide. I've used the last version of Lonely Planet from 2003 which was decent.
This version can be summed up by disappointing.
First, I like maps, it gives me a sense of where I'm going. There are few maps in this guide and the ones provided are pretty inadequate.
Second there are not enough Chinese characters and/or pinyin to make this useful to anyone who doesn't have great chinese skills already.
Third, it is disorganized and hard to find out which places are worth going to or not. I found it had to plan an itinerary based on what I read.
Last the shopping/food sections are almost useless without addresses.
I highly recommend you skip this edition of Rough Guide China until they produce a better one next time.
 China Travel Guide June 17, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'm leaving on my third trip to China. The Rough Guide is the most complete China travel guide.The 5th edition brings the guide up-to-date with the 2008 Olympics. Great maps, recommended hotels and restaraunts. Comprehensive, but not too heavy to carry along.
A guide book for independent travelers to avoid June 16, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Rough Guides used to be my go-to guide books, with up-to-date, honest (not sugar-coated) descriptions, and great tips for independent travelers. I was excited to find that a brand new edition was published just two weeks before I started my vacation. But I just got back from a three week trip to China, and I truly cannot express this strongly enough: do NOT, for the love of God, do NOT buy this travel guide, especially if you actually need a guide that will help you get from one destination to another.
The most critical problem with the book is the fact that Chinese/English translations are difficult to access, when they are provided at all. Unlike Lonely Planet, Rough Guide China does not write out the names of the destinations/hotels/restaurants/etc. in characters next to the entry about them. What this means is that you have to keep flipping forward or backward several pages to find out how to say or write it in Chinese -- knowing what something is called in English will do you absolutely no good whatsoever. While this may not sound like a major drawback, I can assure you that once you arrive in China and depend on being able to quickly reference this information, you will understand why it's a big deal.
Even worse, NONE of the addresses are written in characters, or even in pinyin. I cannot even begin to say how many headaches this caused -- most taxi drivers in Beijing and Shanghai (and I assume in most other parts of the country as well) do not know where hotels are by their name - they really need the address. This makes the guide completely useless, causes untold frustration (both for you and the cab driver). And of course none of the maps has the street names written in characters either. There are very few directions on how to get to any of the hotels or restaurants by public transportation.
All of this is compounded by shoddy editing, which means that not all of the destinations mentioned even show up at all in the page-long lists where the names are provided in characters. Also, some of the addresses are flat-out wrong -- so even if you manage to say the address and have it understood, you may find yourself giving the cabbie the wrong directions (as I did, after arriving at 1 a.m. in Shanghai, exhausted and desperate to get to my hotel, take a shower, and go to bed).
If those weren't enough reasons to keep you from buying this guide, there are plenty of others -- bad maps, illogical layout, almost complete overlap with Lonely Planet re: places reviewed & recommended. This guarantees that you will never be far off the well-trodden tourist path. Was also disappointed with the meager sections on shopping - sure, everyone wants to visit the big fake markets at least once to see what they're all about, but those are completely geared towards tourists, and sell mass-produced souvenir-y stuff (much of it of dubious quality). It would be nice to have recommendations on where to find unique, artisanal, high-quality goods as well.
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