guide book and map
 

While I always do my research before the trip, I always try to bring a handy guide book and more importantly a detailed street map along with me. Can anyone recommend me one of the better ones for Beijing pls.

I don't think I've ever seen a great portable street map of Beijing (would not surprise me if one existed - though it might be in Chinese). Hopefully someone else here (Moondog, Peter etc) can help.

As for guidebooks, what's the purpose? If its to give you an itinerary and sightseeing/eating suggestions - then ignore them and use the search function on this site. If its for historical blurbs and other things like that, then you'd be best served avoiding Lonely Planet and maybe doing the Eyewitness Guide?

Best thing to do IMO, is to go to a bookstore and look for Beijing specific (not China) books and browse through them to see what fits your need best. There are a lot out there and more and more new ones. Another idea is getting on the ground and getting a copy of the Insider's Guide to Beijing -which should have some maps and a ton of listings/ideas (the first one I saw was the 2005 edition - updated every year and its probably 2x thicker now)

Since I'm responsible in whole or in part for several Beijing guides, I'll bow out of that discussion, except to say that on-line sources are no substitute for a decent guide book and indeed very frequently highly misleading, and the main problem is sorting out a decent guide book from all the dross. As a hint, while you browse the shelves (my local travel book shop had more than 30 Beijing guides last time I checked) turn to the biographies of the writers. If they haven't long experience of China and a knowledge of Mandarin, move on.

The Insider's Guide is a bit thin on sights, very shabbily written and researched in places (while spot-on in others), and contains a great deal that's of interest to the resident but not the visitor. However, for a restaurant guide you won't beat Beijing Eats (published by the same people) by Eileen Wen Mooney. She also blogs here:

http://eileeneats.com/wordpress/

There's only bad news on the map front. The bi-lingual ones are hopelessly inaccurate. The Chinese-only ones are better but not by much, and in addition to getting street names wrong simply make up much of what's in between the main avenues and larger hutong. Some of the road atlases are a bit better (although these are all working from the same sources and ripping each other off--there's no original cartography) being at a clearer scale yet still light enough to be easily portable. Just go into the Beijing Book Store on Wangfu Jing and you'll find a large selection just to the left near the cash desk on that side. Simply get your hotel reception to go through and ring the characters on your key destinations. These are the ones you'll need to show drivers anyway. The Beijing Public Transport Guide (title in English on cover) is not too bad. Or there's the heavier Beijing Street Atlas. Note, by the way, that showing maps to drivers or when asking directions in the street is a pretty pointless activity liable mostly only to cause long-drawn confusion and delay. If you're just interested in the rough relationships between sights and the nearest metro station then even the usually pathetic guide book maps (themselves dumbed down versions of existing sources) will do. Leave the navigation to the metro system and taxi drivers.

If you'd like a hutong walking guide in pdf form (in a rather rough state, but with backstreet routes largely uncovered by existing guides) let me have an email address and I'll send you one.

Peter N-H
China

I'd like a hutong pdf but since you don't allow either email or PMs to be sent to you from FT, I wonder how I can provide an email address without putting it out here for the world to see.

Incidentally, I consider copyright date as the first eliminator in China guidebooks. It's rather amazing how many of them go to great lengths to hide it or even exclude it, which rules out that guidebook for me. If it is 2007 or earlier, forget it entirely. Even 2008 is suspect.

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

While I appreciate the advice on how to hide email addresses from internet spiders, the reason for not posting email addresses on FT threads is for privacy from humans as much as from machines. So I guess I'll have to find hutongs without your map as a guide, alas.

I am comfortable in accepting that FT's PM and email mechanisms, along with "ignore user" if necessary, will preserve my privacy. I am not nearly as famous and in-demand as you are, so have never had the problem of being blizzarded with weird PMs and emails from the members of FT.

Neither am I - but I have recieved the odd random PM which was most unwelcome, though most are just fine and addressable. Most are a one-off, but I understand Peter's stance.

I'm not a fan of maps in a lot of cities unless I have a set itin - I like wandering around and getting lost - particularly in hutongs...or in Rome, for example.

I love maps, in part because they provide a strong defense against getting taken for rides by taxis (all over the world). When going to a new city, I usually print out the best map I can find on google (to study on the plane) and then replace it with a free tourist map (which, even the least significant locales seem to have) upon arrival.

Maps: Compared to a lot of major world cities, Beijing seems hopelessly never able to catch up to reality on the mapping issue, Chinese or English. Most maps of Beijing are either somewhat or completely out of date on the details and even some of the critical new major roads. So, I would just pick the latest one I could find to get familiar with the general layout of the city and where the major landmark sights are. At least the locations of those haven't changed! One useful thing to have on that map are the latest subway lines and stations--some maps may have these showing as "proposed." When you get to Beijing, make it one of your first missions to see if you can find something better but don't obsess about this.

Guidebooks: If you have the time, try the cheap method and visit the local library. Focus on the Beijing sightseeing parts not the accom/food/misc stuff. Some guidebooks have more historical or cultural background than others but it's a matter of personal preference for how deeply you get into this. Buy your own copy of the one that seems most useful to you. If you are a speed reader/skimmer and your library isn't well stocked, then visit the local bookstore instead and pick one. Some are drier and fact-based, others give more explicit or implicit opinion about the sights. I don't think there is an overall "best guidebook" that you'd get any consensus on. Thrifty option or if you can't make up your mind: go to a secondhand/used/remainder bookstore and buy two or more different guidebooks, then slice out the relevant Beijing parts to ease the weight. For the major sights, it doesn't matter too much if the book is a few years old--the hours of operation will be similar though the admission price may be up. Some of the newer museums (Capital, Beijing Museum of City Planning) may not be in a guidebook unless quite recent, but after some recent Beijing forum research (Tripadvisor, Lonely Planet, Frommers, Bootsnall, etc), you can add things of interest to material you already have.

Oddball: Around bookstores and expat grocery stores in Beijing there is a little deck-of-cards collection in a small box called "Beijing by Foot." It's set up for walkers as a set of card-sized maps with routes and places of interest plotted on them and a bit of description on the reverse side. As it is fairly recent, it is as accurate as any of the larger foldout maps and having tried some of their routes, I can attest to this. You don't get the "big view" of Beijing but as a large map supplement, especially for anything inside the 2nd Ring Road, it is useful and easy to carry/refer to the cards while wandering around. It's priced about the same as a standard map but not sure if available outside Beijing. It's published by the same people as the Insiders Guide to Beijing--which BTW I don't advocate for tourists--it's too heavy and has too much info useful only to expats so is the wrong tool.

For historical blurbs, buy a history book (though dated, In Search of Modern China remains one of my favorites).

At the risk of triggering a full-on essay in rebuttal from our resident guidebook editor, I'm going to plug Lonely Planet because I really like it. While useless with respect to things like 5-star dining, it has helped me form effective game plans in second and third tier cities many times over the years, which is a weak point for many of the higher brow guide books. A drawback that Peter has pointed out in other threads is that some content is over 20 years old (which is a substantial length of time in a country that is undergoing 8% growth). But, for the most part, it still works quite well. BTW, I also relied on LP when I was living in India during the late 90s and it was effective there as well.

A 700 plus page book by Spence (albeit fantastic - currently working through it) for blurbs? My thinking was more like a few pages (at most) of history and descriptions with some photos of the major sites, like the Forbidden City, which LP and others (they have to cover more things) may skimp on.

I actually think LP is ok for the basics, its what I use it for (a guideline) and all I need.

Hmmm. I guess I see where you're coming from. The BJ LP actually does a respectable job insofar as blurbs are concerned (e.g. when you're out at Huanghuacheng or similar, you can learn quite a bit of useless info about Towers X, Y, and Z). But, for me, the bigger (China) LP is a much more useful book because provides guidance in the hinterlands. What's more, I'm glad it is light on blurbs; otherwise it would be hopelessly heavy (in the literal sense).

Here's a (not so imaginative) suggestion: print out internet content on the sites that interest you and bring along these mini packets at the appropriate times. While internet content isn't always the most reliable, it shouldn't be hard to arm yourself with 10x more info and anecdotes than the majority of physical guides have at their disposal.

Chinese land border guards have some bizarre fetish for confiscating guidebooks (or just ripping out the maps). Have observed at Vietnam and Kyrgyz borders and met people who've had this happen at Kazakh border as well.

Some have even had this happen on leaving China.

Back to the original question of the OP:

The best guide for Beijing I have come across so far is this one, especially for frequent visitors or expats:

http://www.amazon.com/Beijing-Comple...3793941&sr=8-1

They had a pretty good plasticized one at the Beijing Foreign Language map store on Wangfujing -- Labeled "Beijing City Map," bilingual, and only Y15. Pretty recent, even shows subway line 4 which won't open for a few days yet.

I realize it won't help you with your planning (it appears to be locally published) but check it out when you arrive.