I don't allow email or pms because of all the weird messages one receives, people trying to strike up some kind of odd relationship, and those wanting a private one-on-one detailed analysis of every second of their China travel plans, which rather misses the point of a site like this even if I had the inclination and the time to respond.

I wasn't intending to make the pdf generally available here, but I suppose I might if there's demand. If so I'll start another thread for this purpose. In the meantime you could consider coding your email address in the usual way: m e a t m y a d d r e s s d o t c o m, me [at] myaddress [dot] com, or similar. This will stop address harvesting software.[/QUOTE]

They are all suspect for the reason that it typically takes 18 months from the earliest piece of research to the arrival on the shelf, even for many an update, which is indeed time for plentiful change to take place. All of them need to be treated as 'guides' and not more, with the full understanding that much will have changed. But if the authors have little experience, can't speak Mandarin, are lazy, or not given adequate incentive by the publishers to do things thoroughly and well, then it won't matter what the date is, the book will still be poor. If the concentration is on cultural and historical background then the outdated nature of the practical information (hotel selections, restaurant selections, transport information, etc.) may well be largely irrelevant. If the advice on tipping, transport, cultural niceties etc. is poor through lack of understanding then it will remain poor even in the very latest edition. And some publishers (typically those working in four colours, but others just because they are greedy and incompetent) take a lot longer to turn round new editions than others. So the copyright date, while certainly worth considering, isn't always much of a guide to content quality.

Back on the map option, another approach before departure is to look at Beijing on maps.google.com. This still uses the same hopeless source material and its account of back streets is just a joke, as is its painful translations of place names that no one ever uses. But opening the Chinese version ditu.google.com (click on the characters for Beijing, 北京, to get going) can allow direct comparison of English and Chinese names and the printing out of both versions for destination areas. Oh, some of the street names are wrong in both versions, but it's a start.

Peter N-H
China