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5 comments about The Rough Guide to China.

1. I am just back from a week in China. Unlike my normal travels this time I stayed in luxury hotels and had arranged transport. Therefore I did not depend on the guide to tell me which bus to take from which museum etc ( at any rate a painful thing to do with most guides and something to be explored much more easily locally).

   The guide was superb in giving condensed information on the places we have visited ( Beijing, Xi'An and Shanghai) and enabled us to do all the planning of what we wanted to do and wanted to see whilst travelling. I found the information on markets and shopping to be very accurate and, most enjoyable, for all the markets, places of interest, restaurants, hotels etc. the guide had the names in Cihinese characters as well, so that we could tell our driver or the taxidriver where to go.

   Also the general information on history and culture where quite interesting and gave another dimension to our short and unplanned trip. All in all well worth the value.

   One tip; the guide has for all the hotels the listed prices. Through the Internet or with frequent flyer cards you can get up to 60% discounts even in the big hotels like Sheraton and Hilton.




2. The question is not how do you cover the world's largest and most populated country (as big as all the countries of Europe combined), but rather, how do you visit such a vast, multi cultured world as China? The first step is to arm oneself with the best travel guides on the market. "China: The Rough Guide" is one such guide.

   "China: The Rough Guide" is designed for those that have more than a week or two in China. It is NOT a pocket guide (almost 2 lbs.) and more than 1100 pages. In this tome, Leffman, Lewis & Atiyah captures the best of China and give you the low down on what you must see while in China

   Straight off the introduction in this guide is one of the most engaging I have ever read, "China is not so much another country as another world; chopsticks, tea, slippers, massed bicycles, shadow boxing, exotic pop music, karakoe, teeming crowds, Dickensian train stations . . . one of the world's largest economies." The maps (a critical element in any guide) are among the best found in a guide to date. Each restaurant and accommodation that is listed in the guide is marked on the maps (ya gotta love it).

   The terse 3000-year history is as well written as objective as history can be, and thorough enough for most visitors. There is an outstanding appendix section, titled: "Context," covering, besides history, architecture, art, film, music and an excellent book list. The recommendations for accommodations and restaurants are reliable and up to date.

   However, this is not a perfect guide (5 stars). One of the weak areas of the guide is the omission of an accommodation or a restaurant index. Thus, if you have a recommended restaurant you want to look up, you have to go through all the restaurant pages 'til you stumble across the name you seek or miss seeing it completely.

   Another significant shortcoming is the lack of website and email addresses for hotels. Phone and fax numbers are provided but, considering the cost, nothing beats email. This is a significant omission, especially considering that the guide has a 2000 publishing date and most major Chinese hotels are now Internet connected,

   Though the 'Basic Section' is up to guide books' standards, and has a few interesting sections (i.e., recommended tours, China Online Etc.) I found some of the information needed updating. Northwest Airlines is NOT the only airline that flies non-stop from mainland US to China, United Airlines also does (though the service is sub-par and the seats very cramped, I would not-recommended you flying UAL). Also, there is NO website information for any of the airlines.

   I am disappointed that the 'boxed' vignettes are few and far between in this guide. There is no mention of Falun Gong and only a scant mention of the Three River Gorge Dam. Usually Rough Guides are much better in this area.

   Finally, an ongoing peeve that I have about Rough Guides, is the use of a number system to quote the price range of a hotel, i.e., the `Friendship Hotel' is listed to cost a '6'. For a `6' you have to flip back to the numeric legion where you find out that `6' = 600 to 800 yuans, which you then divide by the current rate of exchange. As other guides simply demonstrate, there are better ways to help your reader gage approximate cost.

   If you are going to just be in and around Beijing or Shanghai then this guide at 1100 pages may be an over kill. You would be better off with Rough Guide: Beijing, Cadogan's Beijing or Lonely Planet Shanghai (all highly recommended guides, see my reviews). However if you are going to explore this great country then 'China: The Rough Guide' will be a welcome companion. Recommended




3. The Rough Guides are considered among the "cream of the crop" in the guidebook world, and this book is no exception. I used it extensively in the planning phase of my recent month-long trip to China, and it was very helpful.

   The background sections of the book are outstanding, giving the reader a solid overview of Chinese history and culture. The primary sites of interest to travelers are adequately covered as well, and so the book is very helpful in planning one's itinerary.

   The main drawback of the volume is it's weight. If you are backpacking in China, as I was, this book is pretty heavy to be lugging around. Therefore, unless you are staying in China more than a couple of weeks, you might consider looking at the smaller city guides.....or ripping the necessary sections out of this book and packing only those in your rucksack.

   Highly recommended for pre-trip planning at home. Recommended for packing and taking to China *if* you are going on an extended trip to the country.




4. This book presents itself as a revised edition, but it is very
   little more than a prettied-up reprint of the text from three
   years ago, and some of that was a bit long in the tooth then.

   The first and second editions carried great promise, worthy
   competitors for the boys from LP. To represent the third as
   having been "updated" is merely a deception. It would have been
   better not done at all.

   The book is a curiosity. The title-page has it "written and
   researched" by the same three authors as the previous edition
   more than three years ago, but "this edition updated" by two
   others. It's not clear that the original three have contributed
   any "research" at all that was not reflected in the previous
   edition. Nor is it even quite clear that the two "updaters"
   have actually been on the ground in China. The "updating" is in
   fact so slight that it could almost have been done by a
   desk-bound clerk on the strength of readers' reports, with

   perhaps the odd nod in the direction of the Lonely Planet Thorn
   Tree.

   The new edition has more pages, but that's explained by a
   slightly larger type-face; finer paper; unchanged net weight.
   A second colour introduced throughout, with improved visual
   presentation, a bit prettier. And not many other changes.

   Chinese names and words still without tone-marks in the main
   body of the text - a shortcoming that was never really excusable
   and which has been merely unacceptable since Lonely Planet bit
   that particular bullet.

   There is scarcely a town or locality mentioned that is not
   included in the previous edition. No one who is on the ball in
   the matter of China travel could fail to discover many more
   places worthy of attention than he knew about three years
   before. And circumstances change as well: more than a year
   before the last edition, all of western Sichuan was opened for
   the first time, but the vast treasure of the previously
   forbidden region is still undiscovered by the new edition of
   this (very) rough guide. The wonderfully scenic Muli and
   Yanyuan counties in southern Sichuan have been open for years
   but (apart from one passing reference to Yanyuan) rate no
   mention. Yushu Prefecture in southern Qinghai, with all
   counties open at least since mid-2001, is not mentioned; indeed
   apart from Xining district and Golmud (Geermo) there's hardly a
   mention of any part of Qinghai province at all.

   Of course I can't expect even the best guidebook to discover all
   the places I may have discovered and found worthwhile - the
   Mekong in north-west Yunnan, Yulin in northern Shaanxi,
   Shibaoshan in western Yunnan, Daocheng and the Yading Reserve,
   not to mention secret places in Tibet that I'd perhaps rather
   keep to myself, nor the phenomenal valley of the Salween in
   western Yunnan. The trouble is that this book has found very
   few new places (though there's a tantalising addition of almost
   impossibly remote Loulan and a couple of extra morsels on the
   "southern Silk Road" - a reader's letter perhaps?)

   Then there are the occasions when I've found the previous
   edition mistaken or misleading - Chishui, Matang, Tiger-Leaping
   Gorge, Ruili district, Sanying hotel open to foreigners (well,
   it is if you threaten the PSB with an international incident
   failing their acquiescence), Pingliang hotel; and so on. Any
   corrections? Not one that I can find.

   Some details of hotel tariffs, telephone numbers, admission
   charges and so on have been changed, but they are generally far
   too few to lend any confidence in the reliability of what has
   not been changed; a number I've been able to check are just
   wrong.

   The maps are now far too few, the provincial (or
   multi-provincial) maps just too simplified; the largest scale
   for some provinces is one to twenty million. Even so, how
   revealing for the text to say that "Weixi marks the end of the
   road" (from the east)! Tell that to the mini-bus drivers who
   drive another 220km north to Deqin, from where the road
   continues all the way to Lhasa and beyond! The railway line
   between Changsha and north-western Hunan (which cut the journey
   from Zhangjiajie to Changsha to about six hours when it had
   already been commissioned three years ago) is not shown.

   Good points? There's a new "food and drink glossary", which is
   to say phrase-list. The paper is excellent - strong and
   light, perhaps better than the heavier paper of the Lonely
   Planet, so that there are about 30% more pages but 10% less
   overall weight. There must be more words in the Rough Guide,
   but I doubt there is more information, regardless of its
   accuracy.




5. I can't fully agree with negative review of this book. I'm living in China for three years now. I got many guides to China I use them quite a lot during my traveling in here. Sure there is maybe a few thing missing and there are some mistakes in this book but it is still the best. I find it much more accurate and detailed than last edition of Lonely Planet.

   It's best all around travel guide for China.

   If you want to get and bring just one get this one.

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5 comments about Everest, the West Ridge.

1. A detailed account of a great mountaineering feat. The tensions between the team is fascinating. Because the sheets the mountaineers were required to fill in about what they were feeling by the team psycologist were left behind before the final push the most interesting part of the account is related in the thinest detail. A shame cos it knocks the gloss off what would otherwise be truly a 5 star book.



2. "Everest : The West Ridge" by Thomas F. Hornbein is an extremely well written book. A lot of climbers in their books are trying to explain why they climb - Hornbein gives one of the most honest, eloquent and convincing account; almost as good's as Mallory, who just said "because it is there".

   The book takes an honest, and sometime humorous account of foundational days of American Everest mountaineering; in sometimes naive ways the climbers are trying to vote themselves off the mountain; filling up psychological surveys in high camps, using a little robot to haul up food. In a matter-of-fact way Hornbein describes how they climbed beyond the point of safe return on the West Ridge, have to descend down the unknown to them side of the mountain, bivouac at 8500 meters .. and help their fellow climbers down the South Col route.

   Now, 40 years after the climb, the book and the events are as true to the times and the spirit of climbing as ever. And besides, to the best of my knowledge, Hornbein and Unsoeld's is still the only traverse in Everest history.




3. This book tells the history of the 1.st ascent via West Ridge of Mount Everest by Thomas Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, both members of the 1963 american expedition lidered by Norman Dyhrenfurth that also putted the first american(Jim Whittaker) on top of Mount Everest.

   They set out to climb Everest by the traditional route via South Col, but somewhere along the journey to base camp a group of climbers decided that a new route would be the biggest thing still to be accomplished in Himalayan mountaineering, among them were Hornbein and Unsoeld.

   Hornbein became a fanatic about summiting Everest via The West Ridge through a couloir and with the support of Unsoeld, Barry Corbert,Al Auten, Dick Emerson and some good sherpas, he did it.Corbert and Auten pioneered a route to Camp 5W, followed by some sherpas and by Hornbein, Unsoeld and Emerson. From camp 5W Hornbein and Unsoeld attacked the summit, summiting it at 6:15 p.m. on may 22 1963, them they traversed the mountain and descented via the south col route at night. On the descent they actually found two other climbers(Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad - that summited that same day)and spent the night out with them at 8000 mt. The rest is mountaineering history.

   This classic book is a must have in any mountaineering collection and a must read to anyone who is interested in this subject.

   Note: The only fatality during the expedition was Jake Breitenbach who died in the khumbu icefalls while leading a reconnaissance team. The couloir that Unsoeld and Horbein used to reach the summit is still known as the Hornbein Couloir.




4. I first read this book in the summer of 1969, and it is anything but dry or boring. Hornbein's matter-of-fact narrative does nothing to diminish the drama and the risk inhering in any attempt on Everest, but especially one in which the climbers descend by a route which is completely new to them. Hornbein also worked very hard to select incredibly beautiful photographs and inspirational quotations from some of the most famous mountaineers of all time. These, combined with the narrative of his own personal odyssey on the West Ridge, make this book into a truly inspirational piece of literature. Those who require sensationalism and hyperbole will not like this book, but those who recognize the drama inhering in any "point of no return" decision to continue going on up will see that no hyperbole is required. The narrative of events is compelling, especially if one has ventured into the high mountains and feels their majesty with both awe and respect--and sometimes terror. For some reason this book changed my life, and those who respond to challenges with the desire to do something worthwhile with their own lives will see in mountaineering a metaphor for every great and risky enterprise.



5. This book is awesome. It describes a large and successful American expedition that gets up Everest by two different routes. Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld lead a climb up the West Ridge of Everest. The West Ridge had never been attempted before and it has only been done a few times since. At one point they leave the ridge and Hornbein describes a reconnaissance where they walk for hours across the North Face of Everest, to reach the bottom opening of what is now known as the Hornbein Couloir. A true wilderness adventure. I would have loved to see more photos from inside the couloir but at that altitude just hiking is enough of an effort. Unsoeld manages to take many awesome photos anyway. That they did this with oxygen is even more impressive to me because the logistics of such an attempt are very difficult. They encounter a considerable amount of real rock climbing at an altitude that had certainly never been tried before. The point where they can no longer go back down is also described. They have to go up and over in a desperate bid for survival down the (to them) unknown South ridge route in the coming night. There they encounter teammates who were desperately freezing as they waited for them in the dark. They must survive an extremely cold night out in the thin air. A truly remarkable book. My introduction to Willi Unsoeld who seems to be a force in himself. Amazing.

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