Product Description

This first-ever humorous travel guide on China both dishes the dirt on the myriad travel mishaps that may befall any unsuspecting tourist and explains how to avoid them! Possible danger zones debunked include airports, hotels, hospitals, taxis, and bathrooms. Readers will learn essential skills like how to haggle, exchange currencies, cross the street, decipher menus, say useful phrases in Chinese, and more. The guide comes complete with survival tips on etiquette, a map, and resource lists. Don't leave home for China without it!

Veteran travelers Qin and Larry Herzberg are Chinese language and culture professors at Calvin College in Michigan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32663 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781933330518
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Larry and Qin Herzberg are a married couple, and are both professors of Chinese language and culture at Calvin College in Michigan. They travel to China every year, both with students and without.

Qin and Larry are a married couple, and are both professors of Chinese language and culture at Calvin College in Michigan. They travel to China every year, both with students and without.

Customer Reviews

Useful!
This is a very useful little book that picks up where most sight-seeing guidebooks leave off. The section on customs is invaluable. We learn how to be polite (take and offer gifts and even business cards with both hands) , where to be assertive (those people aren't cutting ahead of you in line - there is no line!), and when to bargain (not my strong suit, but now at least I know to start at 20% of the suggested price).

The section on the Chinese language is unusually comprehendible. The authors, who have taught Chinese for years, make basic communication surprisingly easy. This has become the book I send to China-bound friends who have no previous Chinese language experience.

China Survival Guide contains lots of good information on a wide range of subjects. With the authors' personal (and often self-deprecating ) travel stories woven throughout, the book is a delightful way to get inside contemporary Chinese culture and equip ourselves for the variety of situations that we may encounter in our own travels.

small and inexpensive but great!
Larry and Qin Herzberg have managed to create an inexpensive, easy-to-carry but highly informative--and very humorous--guidebook. It seems to me to stand by itself in terms of genre. Derived from many experiences of taking student groups to China, taking his own private trips including some with his wife Qin, and creating an insightful documentary video on China today (a joint project of the two), this little book is full of sound advice for novice travelers/first time tourists and seasoned businessmen alike. One of the most valuable parts is the short introduction to the Chinese language, incuding an appropriate (i.e. ralistically manageable)number of useful Chinese phrases. So before you go to China get ahold of this book; you will not be sorry--I guarantee it!

Nice quick overview
I am ethnic Chinese but do not speak or read Chinese. However I was raised with Chinese sensibilities so the subtleties of the culture were already ingrained in me. I went to Shanghai,Hangzhou, Xi'an and Wuhan. I traveled with a friend from China who now lives in the US. There are some good tips especially about etiquette in the book but there are others that are missing. Some tips may be dated because the pace of change in China is so fast. Foremost is that you don't need to bring US $100 bills. There are Bank of China ATMs with English menus everywhere that work fine and have much more security features than in the US. At Shanghai airport, there is a currency exchange machine that sucks your money in and dispenses RMB but that is the only place I used dollars. You need RMB for everything because the only places that accept US credit cards are hotels. The other cards you see people using in store are debit cards that require PIN numbers and they only accept debit cards from Chinese banks. You should warn your bank that you will be in China so they don't freeze your cards. Bring a couple of cards because they will be refused sporadically. Hotels charge 8% service charge to exchange money which is pretty steep so go to the ATM.
Make sure you write down the taxi driver's cabby license number so you can report him if necessary. We were taken for a ride (over an hour)in Xi'an to drive up the fare from the airport and we were terrified that he would drop us by the side of the empty highway at 10pm.
The biggest problem when using the squat potties is the stray puddles of urine. I don't know how women wear sandals! You have to roll up your pants and swing your handbag across your back so it doesn't touch the floor. Most places do have Western style toilets but you have to wait.
I did not see any diet drinks anywhere so you have to drink bottled water. The juices are less sweet than in the US but you have to be sure to ask for cold otherwise you will be given room temp.
Anything that is imported is the same or more expensive than in the US. Japanese snacks like Pocky are the same price. My friend's suitcase was filled with Lancome cosmetics for her cousin so that is a good gift for hosts. People are very conscious of real brand names and will pay through the nose at the Nike or Adidas store.
Lastly, most of the tourists you will see are Chinese, not Western. There is a vast middle and upper and even uber class. Tourist sites are geared to the Chinese not Westerners. There was a Porsche dealer in every city we visited. In August2009, the ten story Superbrands Mall in Shanghai Pudong was packed to the rafters with people shopping at Western priced stores. Malls in the US are half empty.