Yangzi River: The Yangtze and The Three Gorges, Seventh Edition (Odyssey Illustrated Guide)

Rating:
Summary: Recycled Content in a New Package
Review: The 2004 Odyssey guide to the Yangzi River seems much larger than its predecessor, and credits a collection of contributors, including authors Judy Bonavia, Richard Hayman, Kevin Bishop, May Holdsworth, Paddy Booz, and photographer Wong How Man.

While at first this may seem like an impressive array of contributors, closer inspection reveals that both the text and photographs are a hodgepodge of earlier works cobbled together into one book. Much of this content was originally produced in the 1980s, and is now terribly outdated, in some cases by about 20 years.

The photos credited to Wong How Man in the 2004 Odyssey guide to the Yangzi actually first appeared in Wong's 1989 book, "Exploring the Yangtze," and many of othese photos were actually taken as early as 1985. What's worse, the 2004 Odyssey guide repeats the mistakes of Wong's 1989 book in mislabeling or not labeling the identity of his photos. In one prime example, the same photo of a brick pagoda occurs in both the 1989 and 2004 books. In the 1989 book the photo was simply labeled as a nameless pagoda somewhere on the Yangzi River. In the 2004 Odyssey guide an attempt has been made to identify its name and location, but unfortunately the information that has been provided is in both cases completely wrong. It is neither in Zhenjiang, nor is it an Iron Pagoda, which should be obvious from even looking at it. One has to look to Eric N. Danielson's Nanjing and the Lower Yangzi (Singapore: Times, 2004) in order to find a photo of this same pagoda correctly identified by both its location and name.

Likewise the text seems cobbled together from many out of print and outdated sources. May Holdsworth's contributions come from her 1987 guide to Jiangsu Province; Kevin Bishop's text comes from his 1989 guide to the Grand Canal entitled China's Imperial Way; and Paddy Booz's content comes from her 1987 guide to Yunnan Province. Even Judy Bonavia's text dates from the first edition of this Yangzi guide published way back in 1985. This makes most of the written content 15-20 years old. The only content that dates from within the last five years is that written by Richard Hayman, whose specialty is only on the Three Gorges section of the river. Even this content may date from an earlier guide to the gorges authored by him in the year 2000. A photo of Captain Hayman standing in the wilds of Shanghai's Pudong New District beneath the Jin Mao Tower skyscraper is not very impressive evidence of any recent explorations of the Gorges.

In conclusion, it's not clear if any of the content in Odyssey's 2004 Yangzi guide dates from more recently than four years ago, and most of it is nearly 20 years old. China has changed considerably since then, making this less than useful as a practical guide of what to see today.