Kristin -
The information was current, accurate. All the main tourist destinations did seem to be included in the book and the tips, info on local customs, and warnings were good. My criticism is that this book didn't go in as depth as I would have liked and has few photos. It is a fine guide book as long as it isn't your sole source of information. In edition to Fodor's Beijing, we referred to a second guidebook, as well as some very good information, provided by the organizers of the conference (that was our reason for the trip). As Americans traveling in Asia for the first time, we would have run into problems with illegal taxis and other tourist pitfalls if our only travel research came from this Fodor's book.
Things I liked about this book, was that it is broken down by District. We were on business so our time for site seeing and shopping was limited. With this book it was easy to quickly see what sites where open and nearby when we had free time. This book also includes lots of excellent, detailed, neighborhood maps and a large pull out map of the entire city. There are invaluable language charts with the names for all the sites in English, Pinyin (the chinese written phonetically), and Chinese. It was reassuring to know that when we had trouble communicating with taxi drivers that we could just point to the Chinese name of our destination.
Things I liked about this book, was that it is broken down by District. We were on business so our time for site seeing and shopping was limited. With this book it was easy to quickly see what sites where open and nearby when we had free time. This book also includes lots of excellent, detailed, neighborhood maps and a large pull out map of the entire city. There are invaluable language charts with the names for all the sites in English, Pinyin (the chinese written phonetically), and Chinese. It was reassuring to know that when we had trouble communicating with taxi drivers that we could just point to the Chinese name of our destination.
