We are an Australian family who took the private tour from 24 December 2019 to 3 January 2020. China tours Co. had organized a meticulous tour for our family. Apart from the Shanghai stage, other stops were historic and memorable. The key attraction for China is her rich history. It would be very important that the tour guides must learn and comprehend Chinese History, not only PLA, Communist Revolution, or China Modernisation, Silk Road – One Belt – One Road, guests would be much more interested in her ancient history. Just imagine that when Qin Shi Huang connected the Great Wall to protect his newly formed dynasty – Qin, Jesus Christ was not even conceived yet, let alone the development and establishment of many great dynasties before his. Tour guides should treat this issue very carefully because of many tour guests who have studied Chinese History as their majors in High School and in University. They travel with two purposes, to see and to verify the historical records.
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To avoid the misunderstanding, that could be interpreted as a deception, in the itinerary of the tour, the program details must be utterly succinct and concise, i.e. Day 1: Receive the tour guests from Airport and deliver guests to the prebooked hotel. Tour guide will briefly explain the tour to the guests. This is the first day of arrival, the tour manager would like to leave the guest a resting time for recovering after a long flight.
While Beijing and Xi’an stops were very well organized and rich history, the Gullin – Yangshuo and Shanghai stops were shallow. In Gullin – Yangshuo stop, if the tour guide were not as good and friendly, this stage would be very boring. We were very lucky to have Sue as a tour guide, she was so excellent in her English and her deep knowledge of China that shined the tour stop in a very different direction.
In Shanghai stop, I would expect the tour guide would lead us to the Shanghai historical museum where we would learn the bitter lessons of the 1930 – 1945 chaotic period in Chinese history, we were taking to the Parks which we could find them ourselves. Shanghai has so many historical monuments to attract international traveling guests, not the riverside where it showed the newly built highrise skyscrapers, we have seen them enough in New York, Singapore, or even in KL. We would like to know the history of Shanghai club, the details of the day when the Japanese planes dropped bombs over the city’s residential areas, etc.
It would be very useful to prepare a china-tour booklet in advance, such that the details of the 2020 tours include detailed programs of the year i.e. how many stops of the tour, cities, historical locations, etc.