Client's information:

  Dear Rebecca/Vicki:

We couldn't have been more pleased with our tour with TravelChinaGuide. Please feel free to include our comments on your web site (but please omit the email address.) It was actually your client reviews that gave me more confidence in booking our private tour with you.

Everything about the tour was great. Hotels more than lived up to our expectations and all the drivers were friendly and their cars were clean and comfortable. We also appreciated the seemingly endless supply of water which was most welcomed in the hot weather.
Your patience as I kept changing dates and the schedule for the tour to suit our other China commitments, and your quick resolution of a minor issue with our Shanghai hotel reservation were much appreciated. It was so nice to get to meet Rebecca herself in Xi'An.

The food was excellent and by the end we were especially enjoying the Chinese breakfasts; though the western choices at all the hotels were also very good. In retrospect the first lunch in Suzhou was not up to the standards of the rest of the tour, but since it was the first meal of our tour it seemed perfectly fine at the time. We also appreciated that the guides were willing to order for us at the a la carte meals when we felt overwhelmed or uninformed about all the choices. Though there were many delicious dishes I'd say our most memorable meals were the dumpling dinner in Xi'An and the lunch in Zhouzhuang with the local pork shank? specialty.

It's hard to say what the most memorable sites were, but the Li River cruise, the Humble Administrator's Garden, the Beijing Opera, the terra cotta warriors and of course the Great Wall stand out. We also really enjoyed our bicycle ride outside Yangshuo, the drive from Zhouzhuang back to Shanghai and the trip from the Ming Tombs to the Mutianyu Great Wall which provided wildly different views of rural China.
It is your guides, however, that really made our tour so wonderful. All four of them were knowledgeable, considerate, friendly and spoke excellent English. We had endless questions about what we were seeing and also about life in China more generally and they were happy to try to answer all of them. They were scrupulous in honoring our request to avoid shopping stops (although we chose to visit the silk museum in Shuzhou and found it very interesting.) I wanted especially to single out Helen in Suzhou and Zhou Li/Carol in Xi'An as special in their interest in doing everything possible to make sure we had a good tour.

I also wanted to say that we were really impressed with China and the Chinese people in the aftermath of the earthquake. Everyone's attention to the terrible situation, concern for recovery work, and the widespread effort to raise money for relief work were some of the most important memories we take away from our trip. We offer all our best wishes for all those affected by this disaster.

I will be strongly recommending TravelChinaGuide to anyone who asks about our trip and we will certainly use you again if we come back to China, which we are hoping we will be able to do.

Sincerely,
Barbara Gottschalk