Rating: 
Summary: Good travel literature, but not a good guide book!
Review: Lonely Planet China provides excellent introduction on the destinations and I do enjoy reading it. I appreciate the writers and the editors to have done such wonderful research on those small villages and towns.However, most of the "practical" information is getting unpractical, because it's apparently far outdated. Hotel rate, admission fees, cost of the food and so on are really misleading the travelers! After traveling thouroughly in China, I really do not believe I can find a place that costs 10 RMB per night, even in a backpacker's guest house. I have to say, this is not a good "guide book" as most of the supposed to be useful info is useless.
Rating: 
Summary: A REQUIRED Book to carry WHILE in China
Review: Lonely Planet has THE BEST travel guides for anyone travelling in any country. In many cases, especially covering areas that see more visitors than others, the coverage is excellent, very detailed. HOWEVER, for areas that see fewer visitors (like the section on Changsha, Hunan), there are several errors, usually in the area of places to stay and eat. (In past editions of this book, the map of Changsha was wrong. I do not know whether this has been corrected.) It almost appears that the person who was supposed to cover this area couldn't be bothered to really check the city out. No matter what, whether you are just going for a short visit OR going to live there for a while, you must pack this book. IT WILL BE A BIBLE TO LIVE BY!
Rating:
Summary: It was a survival guide for me in China
Review: My friend and I have been in China two times: each for 3 weeks. LP was one of the guidebooks we used throughout. The first trip was to the South (up to Lijiang in Yunan) and the second was to the west (up to Turpan). Both trips planted in us rewarding experiences and beautiful memories. We wanted to go to Tibet, but we had no enough time (by bus, it already would have taken 3 days to Lhasa from Qinghai). While reading some of the reviews on this page, IMHO, I think that if you'd like to learn more about history of China or language, you should buy history books or some sort. LP mainly serves as a "survival" guide. If you ever are in China, you will know how much "survival" means to you. About inaccuacies in this book, you should keep in mind that China is still a changing country. Everthing was so unpredictable. But that's actually one of the things that makes China so fascinating to travel in. Nevertheless, I found that the info was as much accurate as it could be. For example, in Beijing, you can follow the direction in the book to get the cheapest money exchange rate (a laundry shop in an alley was actually there!). If you're planning to spend time in China on your own, I highly recommend this book. You also need one or two good phrase books, if you don't know about Chinese. If you are also interested in historical part of China, also bring with you a good history book. But I doubt it, for the following reasons: 1) the experiences, sceneries, people, etc. will make you forget about history, and 2) they are all to heavy to carry. Imagine you are loading your backpack on your back walking and looking for a place to sleep, or on a bus with a map in one hand. I wouldn't carry a lot of books. I have found so many intersting people travelling in deep China, most of them from European countries. They all carry this Bible with them. If you're traveling in places like China, I advise you have a special home-made wallet that sits between the innest shirt and your skin, or inside the underwear. You should keep all your important documents and money in this wallet.
Rating: 
Summary: Opinionated bordering on utter disrespect
Review: My friends would often rave about the quality of LP guides. So I decided to borrow a LP China guide. I was quite disgusted. Being able to read/write Chinese and well acquainted with Chinese culture, I was quite outraged at the author's ignorant, insensitive, disrespectful and inaccurate depictions of the Chinese language, culture, and history. Imagine if you picked up a guide book on France and the guide book suggested that the people of France *stubbornly* hangs on to speaking and writing French. That's the impression I get when reading this guide book on China. In fact, one part in the book even faults the country/people for using Chinese characters (i.e. its own written language! ) instead of switching to romanization. The entire book shows an obvious lack of research and understanding of a country as complex as China. Calling the Ming tombs an empty bank vault also shows an obvious lack of appreciation, understanding, and sensitivity towards Chinese history, architecture, and recent cultural turmoils. It seemed like the only definition of "good", according to the author, is how much English is around and how much beer is served. The only consolation for me is that I didn't actual pay money for this book.
Rating:
Summary: Best Coverage of Yunnan and Lijiang
Review: Of the major guidebooks, Lonely Planet has the best coverage of Yunnan, and of the Lijiang area -- which is fast becoming one of the hottest destinations in Asia.
Rating:
Summary: Indispensible
Review: Road tested the Shanghai section in Shanghai in May 2000. Indispensible - especially the section on scams - could have been taken if not forewarned.
Rating:
Summary: The Clarity of Clarity
Review: Superbly written and informative. A good background before anyone goes on a trip to China and certainly shouldn't leave without it. Still, a more regular update would make it perfect!
Rating: 
Summary: like a pair of training wheels
Review: The China LP is an excellent resource for the novice traveller to China if you use it correctly. By "use it correctly," I mean that you have to learn to ignore large chunks of it. Some of the info is invaluable for even the most veteran China-traveller: the maps showing where the train stations and cheap foreigner-accepting hotels are (perhaps the most annoying phenomenon in China is the proliferation of cheap guesthouses that, owing to Commie regulations, cannot accept foreigners. In this aspect, the LP is a life-saver; I've wasted literally half my day trying to find accomodation in cities not covered by the LP). For the uninitiated, the LP can be somewhat helpful for showing where the major sights in Beijing, Hong Kong, Xi'an, and other large cities are. For Chinese speakers, the recent revisions have been particularly helpful, with the addition of characters throughout the book (instead of in the annoying, hard-to-find glossary secton in each chapter). However, that being said, I really despise the LP. In terms of restaurants and food, AVOID USING THE LP AT ALL COSTS. You will waste your time trying to find non-existant or crappy, overly expensive restaurants. China (especially southern China) is packed with some of the best food in the world in the most unexpected places. Do not waste your time chasing after a restaurant on the other end of Guangzhou when every street corner has a little restaurant that's incredible. Half the fun of China for me was exploring all of the street vendors and little holes in the wall. For those of who want to see anything outside of the major cities without being funnelled into the tourist ghettos known as Dali, Yangshuo, and Lijiang, avoid this book like the plague. Those three tourist traps are mind-numbing in their monotony of banana pancakes and muesli with yogurt. Most of the people who use the LP to guide them through China are essentially spending a huge wad of cash to fly to China in order to avoid as much as possible actually being in China. Easily the most edifying experience I had in China was when I to places uncovered by the LP (e.g. far western Sichuan, southern Qinghai). Admittedly, to get outside of these ghettos requires a least a modicum of Chinese language ability, but this can be overcome be finding help from other travellers who speak Chinese, natives who speak English, or, in the worst case, using a phrasebook. China is a difficult country to travel in, but the only interesting experiences you'll have is when you drop the book and open yourself up to unexpected ephiphanies.
Rating:
Summary: It kept us alive!
Review: The highest praise I can give this book is that it kept my wife and I alive and relatively sane during our three-week jaunt around China. We set off with little in the way of a plan, and this book found us the best hotels on our small budget and helped us get around and warned us of perils. We saw things we would never have considered otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Necessary but unsatisfactory
Review: The lonely planet China guides, for the two years that I taught in China, were indispensable for its general information about places that do not disappear overnight, e.g., train stations, large hotels and hostels. It is relatively useful in physically orienting yourself with cities and the larger tourist destinations. If you want a more informative guide on the history of places that you visit, I would suggest the Rough Guide. General information on what to expect when traveling in china is also useful however some of this is outdated as well. Outside of this, the Lonely Planet essentially provides you with a tour of China without being on a tour. Everyone and their Grandmother that has a backpack will have this book. Do not expect to find little known attractions with this book, as when a site shows up here, it immediately becomes an overnight success. This is particularly true of all of the restaurant listings and entertainment venues as many of them actually vie to be mentioned in this book. I have also seen many a decent restaurant ruined by callous and hastey remarks. I have good reason to believe that the Lonely Planet does not verify all that they publish from one edition to the next. While I lived in Chengdu, a new edition came out and listed several restaurants and bars that had been closed for over a year and a half- more than ample time for the Lonely Planet to verify their existence. With all of this said, no other guidebook remotely comes close to matching the utility of the Lonely Planet. Its an essential point of departure, that I would recommend augmenting with other resources, to discovering your own adventures in China.
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