Rating: 
Summary: Good city guide, getting worse
Review: In general, I consider Lonely Planet (LP) as one of the best publishers which excels in thick, detailed guide books that describes in "text" the best attributes of a city or country. LP is not a book with pretty tourist stock photos. If you want pretty pictures, I recommend the Insight Guides which have at least 1 per page. After looking at a half dozen Beijing (BJ) city guides, this book excels again in describing Zhongguancun, where others fail.Zhongguancun, (Zgc) is like a Chinese Silicon Valley, or computer business development area near Beijing and Qinghua Universities (p149-50) in the older 3rd edition. Zgc is an important hi-tech area for tycoons, business, and consumers alike to find computers and software localized for China. It is located in the Haidian District, NW Beijing, near Haidian Rd and Zgc Rd following the 4th Ring Rd, far outside the Metro ring. Zgc is just south of the Old Summer Palace area. This area is probably best accessible by bicycle, taxi, light rail, and bus. It is about 4 miles (6km) NW of the northwestern-most metro ring station at Xizhimen. Zgc is listed in the index. In the Insight Guide (p198), I saw a Zizhimen light rail stop about 1 mile away from Zgc. LP/BJ 3rd ed (0-86442-547-3), also has a two maps to get a good view of Zgc and the downtown districts, Map 3 for overall Beijing and 10 for the Haidian district. Map 10 also shows the Zgc bus stop with nearby hotels, restaurants, internet cafe, brewery, and universities. This edition has 11 maps. However in LP/BJ 4th ed (1-86450-144-8), Zgc is still listed (p53). Zgc is lost in the maps with only 7 maps, ersatz replaced with 20 pages of pretty stock tourist pictures. I believe LP's editors have stepped in the wrong direction here. Lets hope that they get it right before the 08 Olympics. I read this in the local library. I noticed that LP/BJ 5th ed (1740592816), with a new author is scheduled to be released this month, 10/02.
Rating: 
Summary: Beware!
Review: Many of the things that I tried to do in Beijing failed because the book was inaccurate. Because there has been a lot of construction and renovation in the city since this book was published in January 2001, Lonely Planet's Beijing is already out of date.
Rating:
Summary: A guide that needs much more work and accuracy...
Review: The Beijing City guide, is one of poor quality that lacks a lot of information, I was just this past Christmas and New Year on a holiday trip and I was frankly disappointed. These guide included some really inaccurate information on restaurants, the maps are totally inaccurate and the information given is scarce. I really expected more seriousness in this guide -being a Lonely Planet one- that leaves me asking why is Lonely Planet guides so popular? With the maps on this guide instead of finding my way, I got lost! As for the information, it was OK but just imagine trying to find a restaurant that does not exist. Well I think there might be better guides out there.
Rating:
Summary: A guide that needs much more work and accuracy...
Review: The Beijing City guide, is one of poor quality that lacks a lot of information, I was just this past Christmas and New Year on a holiday trip and I was frankly disappointed. These guide included some really inaccurate information on restaurants, the maps are totally inaccurate and the information given is scarce. I really expected more seriousness in this guide -being a Lonely Planet one- that leaves me asking why is Lonely Planet guides so popular? With the maps on this guide instead of finding my way, I got lost! As for the information, it was OK but just imagine trying to find a restaurant that does not exist. Well I think there might be better guides out there.
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