Travel to China

Frommer's Beijing (Frommer's Complete)

Format: Paperback
Author: Graeme Smith
ReleaseDate: 06 March, 2006
Publisher: Frommer's
Rating:

Beijing in your pocket!
different view of the City than the usual sights. Great guide book with lots of good recommendations, especially for restaurants and long walks - the last one of these takes you out of the way and provides a v. Book handily fits in your pocket or bag with little coffee book type information - a few more photographs would be nice though. Also liked the itinerary suggestions, guiding you in the art of what's possible during a stay of any length. Try the tea shop district mentioned for a memorable experience, and some nice tasting souvenirs!.

Very good guide, marred by bad editing and difficult-to-use maps
The recommendations are usually right-on, and the walking tours are a great addition. Good guidebook, small enough to carry with us, big enough to be useful. Overall quite accurate given how quickly things change. My only quibble with the content is that sometimes it feels the author tries too hard to be "different" and find unique places at the expense of listing better but well-known places. It could also be improved by more use of Chinese characters and less use of pinyin.

The guidebook is, however, marred -- almost ruined -- by the maps. The maps themselves are fine. The problem is the large number of typos (which could be fixed by a good editing), and even more so by the inexplicable lack of any cross referencing from the maps to the rest of the book. Say you are at a place and want to find a nearby place to eat. You look at the map, and find a nearby numbered diamond (marking restaurants). What is the name? Unfortunately, the restaurant names are listed alphabetically, not by number, making it difficult to find which one among the 20+ listed. Then you find it, but only the name is provided. What food is served? What are the hours? How much does it cost? To find that you need to read the descripiton. How to find the descripiton? You need to look at what *section* the map is showing, then find the same *section* in the dining guide, then search the entire section as the restaurants are listed alphabetically within the price range, so the restaurant you want could be anywhere. THERE IS NO LISTING IN THE MAP PROVIDING THE PAGE NUMBERS OF THE DESCRIPTIONS. Trying to find the description of places is even more difficult, as the descriptions are spread out among several chapters: does it have its own description? Is it in the park section? Somewhere else? What an utterly utterly stupid oversight, whoever decided not to include page numbers should be fired. While the maps can be used, everything takes at least 10x longer than needed.

Hint: you can fix the above problem by spending 30 minutes before you leave making the page numbers of associated descriptions in the maps. But why should you have to?.

The Best
I feel like a native in Beijing now. Frommer's knows what they are doing.

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