tour in China
 

I am looking for a guided tour in China. One that would help me navigate a culture and transportation system completely new to me. Does anyone have experience with a tour group they used and liked? Thanks

China Plus. A wonderful small company and excellently run. Check them out.

America Asia Travel Center....It's a Chinese company based in California

www.americaasia.com

I used them on my trip last summer and they are really affordable and the money you pay will cover all 3 meals, tours and you will end up staying 4 star hotels. My 11 day tour last year that included Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Hong Kong costed me under $1500

The only catch is you have to depart from LA, San Francisco or New York.

Thank you both very much for your suggestions. CM

We went to China in 2002 with Uniworld. Good itinerary, good price. Do a search for Uniworld. Also check out Pacific Delights. ((*))

Check out www.chinafocustravel.com. We went to China with them (and our 4 kids) in 2000. They were terrific and very reasonably priced. At the time (I presume it's still the case), all the guides were national guides, meaning that they were hired and controlled by the government. Hence. they were all the same, regardless of what you paid for your tour. We kept running into the Notre Dame Alumni Assoc. at all the same restaurants and sights. I KNOW they were paying a lot more than us for their trip. Our hotels were nice, the one in Bejing was exceptional. The worst hotel was in Xian and it was not so bad...the equivalent of an airport Sheraton, but not at the airport. It's was a very polluted city. The food was quite good and the guides really made an effort to make their American tourists feel welcomed.

As a side note, we don't usually travel on guided tours, but for China, I would recommend it. On a free night, we were trying to find a particular restaurant. Our guide wrote it down in Chinese, but we could never have communicated with the driver otherwise. When we went, almost seven years ago, English was compulsory for middle school students so the language barrior may be better by now.