Insight City Guide Beijing (Insight City Guides)

By Insight Guides

Book Overview

Visiting a museum, a monument, a market? Want some quick facts to truly appreciate what you're seeing? Make sure you have an Insight Compact Guide tucked into your pocket or travel bag. Compact Guides... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Turtleback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9814137502
• ISBN13: 9789814137508
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Insight Guides
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.8" x 5.4"

Customer Reviews

An good alternative to Lonely Planet

Normally, I strictly stick to Lonely Planet guidebooks when buying for my travels, but for my recent trip to Beijing, I made an impulse decision to buy this Insight Guide to accompany the LP City guide I had already purchased. I was pleasantly surprised at just how good the Insight guide was. Illustrated in full colour throughout, the book gives the usual history of the capital of China, as well as sight details of all the major sights in Beijing and the surrounding vicinity, including of course the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. However, I don't think the book lists quite as much activities and sights as the LP book, but for short term visitors I don't think this would be much of a problem. Usually when travelling I struggle to do even a quarter of the activities and sights that are listed in guidebooks. I note that the maps are quite good, a little better for detail than the maps found in the LP book. In a neat touch, it also includes a seperate map of resturants in a little pocket on the inside back cover. Structurally, the book is very sound, with a good tough binding to cope with the usual rough treatment that travel accords guidebooks. It even has a piece of cardboard designed to fit around the pocket holding the resturant map on the inside back cover. This guide is recommended as an alternative to the Lonely Planet book - it helps that this edition of the Insight guide is 6 months newer, and a little cheaper, than the equivalent LP edition for those you note such things. But guidebooks are out of date the moment they get printed, particularly for a city such as Beijing which is rapidly developing for the Olympics in 2008. If you are planning to visit Beijing in the next few months, be aware that a lot of the major sights such as the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven are under restoration (for the Olympics), with scaffolding to be found in abundance. Some portions of the Forbidden City were closed off when I visited in July.

Great guide to Beijing

Stunning photos accompany well-written text about every aspect of the great city of Beijing. This is the best guide I have seen; in fact, this whole series is really, really good.