I went to china: This book has a bit useful general information. The bulk of it is on the differant cities in china. I visited Guilin and Liuzhou and the information on these cities seemed old. It stated the best hotels to stay at and this was inaccurate due to constant building. I would not recomend taking this book with you to china. It is not worth the added weight.

This is to replace my earlier copy - much used - published in 1993. I have not yet discovered the definative guide book to China, but Lonely Planet is not bad.

Has some older sights which were there in 1978 when I visited; absent from most recent guide.

The usual LP package of general information and detailed guides on places no other guidebook mentions. However, due to the sheer size of China the number of cities contained is limited (some provinces have less than ten entries). Chinese characters are given for town names, maps contain characters too. Prices rarely match, but are highly variable and negotiable in most places anyway. ( )

The 2005 edition was really poor - out of date information all over - and don't think it can just be blamed on how quickly China is changing. Also, needed more Chinese in there as very difficult to pronounce for example placenames correctly, and useful to be able to point at words in their Chinese characters instead. ( )