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I visited China with a group of teachers from a Concordia College Global Language Village program in Minnesota, USA. We stayed in a Radisson Hotel branch in Beijing for about 4 or 5 nights and toured all of the major sites, including the Great Wall, several historic gardens, herbal medicine, minority tribal dinner with snake dancer, Chinese acrobats, Chinese opera, Peking duck dinner, porcelain factory, silk factory, tea ceremony, and dinner in Hutong village home.

Afterwards, my group of 10 (out of 80) teachers traveled by overnight, soft sleeper train to Yangzhou, on the banks of the Yangtzie River and Grand Canal -- the city where Marco Polo had been governor. We stayed in the boarding school staff dormitories for two weeks and taught conversational English to 3rd-8th graders. During our two weeks, we traveled into the city to sightsee and ate dinner at two of the restaurants. We also traveled for a day tour by bus to Nanjing, which is about one hour's drive from Yangzhou. In Nanjing, we toured the Old Town shops, ate lunch in a restaurant, visited the gardens and tomb (I need to look up my notes for all of the names because I mix them up!) We also spent one day at the zoo in Yangzhou and I was able to accompany a family who made a formal visit to the Mayor of Yangzhou (family included then Mayor of Poughkeepsie, NY).

I had added Macau and Hong Kong to my trip, and other had added Xi'an and other locations for just one week. Instead of returning by train to Beijing with my group, I switched to a second group that had also been teaching in Yangzhou, and traveled by bus with them to Shanghai, which took about 4 hours' drive. With that group, who knew their way around Shanghai, we took a taxi to the International Embassy area and had lunch at a new Peruvian restaurant. Then one family went to a silk factory to get tailored clothes made and delivered the next morning. I went with two people to see Old Town Shanghai. We returned to our hotel for dinner. The next morning, I had made arrangements to fly to Macau to meet up with nine other teachers who had all signed up to tour Macau and Hong Kong for 5 days.

The first day in Macau was perfect. However, on the second day a Level 8 typhoon blew in and disrupted our plans to take the ferry to Hong Kong. We ended up spending the entire night standing and sitting on the cement floor (no benches) of the ferry terminal, at the head of the line for the next ferry, which we boarded at about 5 a.m. for Hong Kong. (This was the first week of August, and the beginning of typhoon season.)

We stayed in a nice hotel across from the horse racetrack in Hong Kong. We went on a tour of Hong Kong and Kowloon for one day. We were on our own to explore for the second day in Hong Kong. The third day, airline flights were still backed up after the typhoon, and our schedules were changed. I decided to leave early for the airport and spent several hours browsing around the beautiful shops and sampling the food before boarding my flight. The others in my group chose to wait until the last minute to take the train to the airport and spent more time at the markets in downtown and Kowloon. We all took different flights to return to various states in the USA.

You need to allow flexibility in your schedule in case you also encounter weather emergencies or other emergencies or missed transportation. You should include Macau to see the high roller gambling in the casinos -- I was awestruck, even though I had been to casinos in Las Vegas and also American Indian casinos. Macau also has beautiful Portuguese-style architecture and we ate at a Portuguese restaurant.

I have been reading on this forum about Yangshou, and I am already planning my next trip to China after my upcoming one! My trip for 2013, will focus on Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces.

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Hi,

I've 2 weeks to travel between Beijing, xian, maybe shanghai and honking over the upcoming spring break. I love the sound of your trip.
Could you tell me if you booked tours in Beijing or did you do it all independently ? If Yu have any finer details of the names of the places you visited ,I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks so much
Sarah

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I found my Beijing Tour Itinerary from July 2006. My month in China cost only $2,375 because I volunteered teaching for two weeks -- room and board for two weeks was free.

In Beijing, we stayed at the Tianhong Plaza Hotel, a branch of Radisson Hotels. 2006 was the year previous to the Beijing Olympics, and everything was ramped up to teach tour guides conversational English. Our tour guides were university students and we traveled on buses everywhere (80 total = 2 buses).

1st day after spending night in hotel:
Forbidden City (Imperial Palace)
Tiananmen Square
Acrobatic Show
Dinner and show
2nd day
Jade factory
The Great Wall -- Juyongguan Pass
Cloisonne (porcelain) factory
Historic museum
Peking duck dinner
3rd day
Summer Palace
Traditional Chinese Medicine (Herbal) Tour
Temple of Heaven
Silk Factory
Beijing Opera and dinner
4th day
Panjiayuan Flea Market
Optional Traditional Chinese foot or body Massage
Hutong pedicab taxi tour and dinner at village home
Train station for overnight train leaving at 10 p.m.-5 a.m. (approximately) to Yangzhou.

I don't have the itinerary for Nanjing. The tomb is either for Chang kai shek or Sun yat sen.
I don't have the names of the hotels in Shanghai or Macau.

In Hong Kong, we stayed at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, across the street from Happy Valley Racecourse. We could see the horses racing from our window. It was located on the corner of Queen's Road East/Morrison Hill Road, at the MTR subway station. It was not far from Times Square. We had a substitute guide for our tour who turned out to be a thief, along with the bus driver -- so you must be very careful! I recommend purchasing the "DK Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guide to Hong Kong" which is pocketsize. It includes Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and Macau. In 2006, the horse races were on Wednesday evenings, starting at 7:30 p.m.

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The $2,375 included airfare from the USA on United Airlines, hotels, meals, tour guides, admission fees, train ticket, bus to Shanghai, air fare from Shanghai to Macau on Singapore Air, and ferry ticket from Macau to Hong Kong on Star Ferry. I do not have the name of the restaurant where we watched the snake dancer.