1 comments about The Silk Road: Xi'an to Kashgar, Seventh Edition (Odyssey Illustrated Guide).

1. I found this book most useful on a recent trip along the Chinese Silk Route and would recommend anyone doing the same to purchase the book.

2 comments about Fodor's Beijing, 1st Edition (Fodor's Gold Guides).

1. I'm leaving for Beijing this Thursday, May 17, 07, and prior to having this book, I was worried about names, cities, map, language, and pretty much EVERYTHING. Having the book has calmed me, there's great suggestions, events, places to see, walk, bike, and drive to. There's English names, there's pronunciation, and most impressively, there's clear Chinese characters given at the end of each chapter for you to show the taxi drivers.
   
   This is, if I'm not mistaken, the most updated version on the market, (as LP and others are releasing editions later on this spring/summer) so it's an obvious pick for anyone looking for an updated guide to Beijing and surrounding areas.
   
   I'll further continue my review upon my arrival home, after putting this guide to the test.
   
   
   -----
   
   June 4, 07
   Baaack!
   I was there for 9 days, and in those nine days I've probably seen more than the residents of Beijing. The hutongs, the markets, the million and one temples, all breath-taking. I took most of the suggestions on sightseeing, went to the Lama Temple, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, Forbidden City, basically all the sites that Fodor suggested. I did most of my shopping for gifts and souvenirs in beijing, but held back because a lot of people were telling me that hong kong was the place to shop (as i was going there after beijing). Well I learnt on my own that if you want the knockoffs, then beijing is the place to be. But if you want the authentic stuff, then hong kong is the place to be. Anyway, this guide had great and up to date information concerning where to shop and for what.
   
   I did not test the nightlife section. Not really my thing. I need sleep.
   
   I did test the Food suggestions, as I went to Metro Cafe (an italian place which was apparently very good). It was good, but not the best italian food i've had. If anything, I was just glad to be eating something familliar. THE BEST italian place that I found was at the Ritz Carleton Hotel, called Cepe. I'm telling you, it was like a breath of fresh air after eating chinese food for all those days. The reason I'm not giving the guide a 5 is because spending all the time in Beijing, I started meeting various people who'd give me their personal favorites on where to go and what to do so I found myself going against the guide and more on word of mouth by the end of my trip.
   I also wasn't fond about the organization of the book. I found myself constantly looking for a specific place or a specific map with the translation and it wasn't fun flipping through and through a million times.
   
   All in all, I would not have had such a great time if I didn't have this guide. I only wish i had Fodor's Hong Kong for the little time I spent there. I had to take a tour instead.
   
   cheers.



2. I bought this book because it is the most recent guidebook out there for Beijing, and it's been OK. However, I wish I had gotten a different guide. This is the first edition, and there are a number of small, but irritating and confusing mistakes. For example, the Panjiayuan market is given as being in two different, far apart, locations on two different maps in the book. The book gives the characters for the Dashanzi neighborhood in reference to the Danshanzi arts district, and this is not enough for a taxi to get you there. Subway closing times are inconsistent on different pages. All this adds up to a way less than satisfactory guidebook experience. I also found the organization of the guidebook less than efficient. All in all, I wish I'd gotten the Rough Guide, and I over-rated the importance of having the most recent guide published (you can just look up a recent subway map on the internet!).
   
   The book does have good ideas for things to do in Beijing, and I had a great month here doing stuff that was well off the beaten track. The maps were OK, though the pull-out map adds very little.

No comments about Travels of a Photographer in China, 1933-1946.

No comments about The Power-Places of Central Tibet: The Pilgrim's Guide.

No comments about Chinese Encounters.

No comments about Across Yunnan: A Journey of Surprises: Including an Account of the Remarkable French Railway Line Now Completed to Yunnan-fu.

No comments about A Journey to Yunnan in 1892 , Trade and Exploration in Tonkin and Southern China.

4 comments about The Siege of Shangri-La: The Quest for Tibet's Sacred Hidden Paradise.

1. McRae recreates the journeys of several adventurers seeking an undiscovered waterfall in Tibet. Old notebooks, rumors, sacred writings, and guides from remote villages lure these explorers into an exquisite landscape of dense rhododendrons and ferns, steep rock canyons, and snowy peaks, all framing an elusive river that became impossible to map. The physical challenge is overwhelming, sometimes leading to despair and even death. Rainstorms, clouds of insects, waist-deep mud, impassable vegetation, leeches, steep and slippery rock walls, and even a tribe of women known to poison visitors, all demand constant mindfulness. A chance meeting with a Lama, the sudden appearance of a rainbow, the discovery of refuge in a hidden temple, a gift of food and the guidance from a native are intermittent rewards for the constant struggle. 

   Motives for the search were diverse, with some seeking ego-less spiritual enlightenment, while others lusted for recognition and glory.

   McRae brings to life a world totally foreign to me in engaging prose, full of facts and well-researched details. I appreciate glimpsing the exotic, strange land McRae presents in his fascinating account of travels into this magical place.




2. This is not just a book about exploring remote places, but the spirituality of exploration itself. The Tsangpo River's gorge through the Himalayas in southern Tibet was probably the last place on Earth to be explored and mapped. This was not completed, at least by Westerners, until 1998. This is due to the area's extreme remoteness and isolation, and its impossible terrain. Add to that the West's not entirely accurate glorification of Tibetan geography and culture. Here McRae covers both the Western explorers who tried to "conquer" the gorge, and the native attitudes toward surrendering to it. "Classical" explorers made many attempts until the 1950's when China "liberated" Tibet and closed it off, followed by extreme sports adventurers in the 1990's. Also in the 90's, two expatriates named Ian Baker and Hamid Sardar became adepts at Buddhist/Tibetan spirituality and explored the gorge from a completely different standpoint - that of a pilgrimage to Tibet's spiritual centers. Theirs is the most interesting story of the book, as the Tibetans believe that any landscape can only be truly discovered if one surrenders to it (the Eastern way) rather than trying to conquer it (the Western way). Sadly, all the hubbub in the pro-conquest Western press of recent years will probably ruin the gorge's extreme beauty and isolation. But with this book's great coverage of the cultural and spiritual dimensions of Tibetan exploration, we know that this paradise will continue to confound conquerors but offer rich rewards for surrenderers. [~doomsdayer520~]



3. I am doing research for an upcoming trip to Shangri-la region, and this is the first English book I read on the subject. It did not offer much information on anything other than some very limited history of the exploration in the Tsangpo River Gorge region. Since the names of places used in the book is different from those used in another Chinese book I read before, I had hard time cross-referencing and squeezing any useful information out of this book at all. Book reads like a C+ to B- college term paper on the subject.



4. Sets the scene of a beautiful but forbidding region: jungles, glaciers, leeches, rainbows, frequent rearrangement by earthquake... discusses the meaning of exploration and discovery, of regions with indigenous populations. More respectful of nature, culture and spirituality than the brash kayakers who visited and published, but not as deep as - a useful pre-read to -
   The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise by Ian Baker.

2 comments about Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846.

1. I got this book because I was researching central Asia, and then didn't read it for a couple of years. When I finally did, I couldn't put it down. This is a true account by two French priests who travelled by camel and horse, first to Mongolia and then to Tibet in the 1840s. What they saw and did is fabulously interesting, but the joy of this book is that it's wonderfully written. Huc, who actually wrote it, is a kind of 19th Century Paul Theroux, but without the sour attitude. This book is a great read



2. Is there anyone who has traveled in Thibet in our days and
   reached that famous place in Amdo and has seen the tree
   with the letters on the leaves?

No comments about A Portrait of Lost Tibet.