Best china travel guides according to redditors

Alright, kid. You're 12. You like to read. Good work. It's useful for exploring new interests. A few recommendations for life in book form:
Yoga for Dummies
Chinese: Crash Course
A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Phantom Tollbooth
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
Case Closed, Vol. 1
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Those should get you started on an introspective teenagehood. If any of those strike your interests, let me know and I'll do a little digital dumpster diving.

Kind of tough to pick just one, as China is vast and there are so many differect aspects of the society worthy of being explored.

I really enjoyed Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside, which was a pretty solid caricature of just about every type of foreigner you meet in China, and a well written story as well, a bit like a more modern, more dynamic River Town.

I think the two most common answers to this question are River Town, by Peter Hessler, and Factory Girls by his wife Leslie Chang. Both are excellent but tackle very different parts of contemporary Chiense culture.

A touch of sin was already mentioned, and it's a very, very good movie. So I'm mentioning it again. If you haven't seen it, go watch it.

Learn the sounds, then the tones, then basic words, then grammar.

I think would recommend getting the Berlitz Mandarin Chinese in 30 Days Book and CD. You should go to Barnes and Noble or another book store and look at it and the other books they have, just to make sure it would suit you.

I looked through it before, and it seems to be quite detailed.

An alternative would be to learn it through online resources, there's certainly no shortage of them. Perhaps glance at Chinese-Tools.com's introductory lessons.

Here's another site that will really help you at the beginning with the pronunciation and tones. It has flash-based audio, which means it plays quickly and easily. No mp3s and no fuss.

Some important points: You WILL need to find someone who is fluent to help you learn. Preferably a native Chinese person, but someone with many years of experience would probably work just fine. You just want to make sure you are on the right track and are avoiding any traditional mistakes (usually pronunciation-wise). It will also help a lot with grammar.

Also, I recommend paying a lot of attention to pronunciation in the beginning. Make sure you get it right. It was only a year after I began learning Chinese that I finally understood some of the nuanced differences between t, c, and z, and between x, q, j and sh, ch, and zh, and it made a HUGE difference in making myself understood (and listening).

(The short of it is t is normal, c is like ts in cats, z is like ds in cards; x, q, and j all end up taking on a subtle y sound--xiao is more like "she-yow" than "shaow", etc... This should all be very clear if you spend enough time on pronunciation, which I sort of didn't.)

Additionally, memorizing the most common radicals will turn learning characters from a tedious, difficult task into a relatively straightforward and relatively painless experience. I highly recommend you investigate them.

And finally, don't ever think you can take an English sentence, translate all the words into Chinese characters, hand it to a Chinese person and have them understand what you are trying to say. 99% of the time, it will not work. When I finally stopped trying to do that direct-translation thing is when my learning really started taking off. You're going to have to wholeheartedly adopt Chinese grammar if you want to be understood. The best way to do this is to listen to what others say and copy it as directly as you can. Change nouns if you need to.

Good luck! I hope some of what I've said is helpful to you.

River Town Not Chinese history per de, but puts the daily lives of modern day Chinese people in an understandable context. It’s also a good read.

An interesting sidebar to US-PRC relations are the relations between Canada and the PRC. Prime Minister P-E Trudeau began negotiations with Beijing shortly after becoming PM in 1968, culminating in Canada ceasing diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in 1970. Canada was one of the few Western-bloc nations to recognize the People's Republic prior to the UN changeover in 1971.

Trudeau had an interesting personal relationship with China, having visited in 1960 with a group of Canadian/Quebecois academics. The visit is recounted in the book Two Innocents in Red China. The book is a very interesting read of China during the Great Leap Forward, especially so as it is written by the future Prime Minister.

https://www.amazon.com/SHANGHAI-WALKS-Streets-Changing-Fortune/dp/9627872350 there are four books now, with things to do in Shanghai.

found a book version (in chinese). I heard the chinese publisher bought the rights to the book and it sold very well there.

Here's amazon links for everything

Italian made simple


Cortina or here for free


Bertliz Self Teacher


Teach Yourself Italian


Assimil


Nature Method Institute -free

Get this: Let's Go! Germany It's made by teen/twenties travelers and is very smart. Always gave me a good time.

Do this: Bring your debt card. You don't really need to get Euros before you go. Just go to any ATM first thing and pull out as much as you can in one transaction. It'll cost you maybe $10 bucks. Make sure you keep your money in a belt around your chest or somewhere safe.

Learn this: Taffelwasser[Taafelvaaser] or tap water. Anywhere in Europe, they'll give you a glass bottle of water if you ask for water and charge you the same as pop (sometimes it's more than beer!). Also, they're heavy into mineral water which is carbonated, mineral infused water. Some of my friends loved it, I found it disgusting. Be sure you know what you're buying before you hand over the cash.

Go here: Munich

Drink this: Liter of beer from any of the pubs there. Especially if there are beer gardens out.

Do not: Get belligerent. Don't make Americans look like idiots, please.

Also do not: Bitch about anything. You're there for a good time. Take it up the ass. You'll be out in a few weeks.

Germany is amazing. Have fun!

If you haven't already read them I'd suggest reading the books by Peter Hessler.

River Town, two years on the Yangtze

Country Driving: A Chinese road trip

Oracle Bones



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hessler

Some of my personal favorites (amazon links):
A Fortune Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East, mainly Southeast Asia.
The Geography of Bliss, RTW.

Food-related:
Ant Egg Soup: The Adventures of a Food Tourist in Laos
Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China

Peter Hessler in China:
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
Country Driving

And Peter Mayle's series on Provence.

I read a really great book by Peter Hessler called River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze that had a great bit about his students funny english names. Give it a read if you haven't already.

https://www.amazon.com/Tipping-China-Harlan-James-Wheeler/dp/1470108577

I don't know what to believe anymore.

Do you mean a book like this? https://www.amazon.com/dp/1786575205/ --- also do you mean that I don't need a translator because people would sorta understand english in those two cities? I visited Tokyo last year and I could do basic communication with English there... once I took a 4 hour train ride outside the city I was in trouble in Japan.

Also look into these https://www.amazon.com/SHANGHAI-WALKS-Streets-Changing-Fortune/dp/9627872350 there are currently four books in the series. It a collaboration between expat and locals.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

I would totally do it. Of course it will be a culture shock. But you would always wonder about how it might have been. Take it from an oldster, the stuff you didn't do haunts you a lot more than the stuff you did.

Look into the author Peter Hessler. His book River Town is a well-written description of what it is like for a Westerner who moves to Asia. Hessler still lives in Beijing. edit: Hessler is now posted in Cairo, though he does plan to return to China.

My younger son joined the Peace Corps moved to China at the beginning of the summer. He is teaching English to highly motivated young engineering students. He is not making tons of money but he likes his job, has a beautiful apartment and busy social life with Chinese friends.

Older son was making good money in Paris, but wanted to re-stimulate his creative juices. He is moving to Mexico City tomorrow with his girlfriend. They can always move back to Paris (or maybe some day he will return to the States.)

We live on a smaller planet these days, and the experiences we have can enrich our lives and broaden our careers.

The story that the article introduces is in the book Country Driving by Peter Hessler. It's a really good book. It made me want to live in China along with other books like Iron & Silk by Mark Salzman and Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux.

Might I suggest picking up a Lonely Planet? It's chock full of travel tips, places of interest, accommodations, restaurants and bars for most Chinese cities (over 1000 pages). Greatly enhanced my travel experiences.

Wikitravel is free, but much less comprehensive/ reliable. If you're paying the cost of a plane ticket to get to China you can spend twenty bucks on a Lonely Planet.

Random travel tip: when you leave your hotel to explore, make sure to grab your hotel's business card to hand to a taxi driver when you're ready to go back.

Edit: I accidentally a zero.

If you only have 1 day I'd say do the common thing and visit Kiyomizu dera in Higashiyama, but if you have more then I'd definitely say Arashiyama. It's one of the most naturally beautiful places I've even been, a close second to Yellowstone.

If you still have time, pick up this book. Both of my copies are dog eared from use, it's full of tips on what to do and how to get there

Pierre Elliot Trudeau (not joking it's a good book)

https://www.amazon.ca/Two-Innocents-China-Pierre-Trudeau/dp/1553652541

(Sorry. Don't read read many Chinese authors so watching this thread and figured I would post this. Obviously you need to check out Bo Yang's masterpiece that has been covered here many times)

[Top 10 Hong Kong (EYEWITNESS TOP 10 TRAVEL GUIDE)]
(http://www.amazon.com/Hong-Kong-EYEWITNESS-TRAVEL-GUIDE/dp/0756670373/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331708535&sr=1-2&tag=bookforyoudm-20)

Not sure if this really counts for "Modern China", but Red Dust: A Path Through China takes place in the 1980's. I haven't read it personally but it's gotten good reviews and is also on my list of books to read. Same with River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, which is set in the late 1990's.

I can recommed the artist who goes by the name of Brother on fiverr.
Here are a couple of samples of his work done for me.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L7DRU02

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0128G8CPS

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CI6SZOQ

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H7CZWQ6