<p>A travel brochure? tours? Life is too short to stay on that beaten path. ;)</p>
<p>When I lived in China, I had a friend who came for a visit on a tour - I jumped onto her tour for a couple days and can say, yes, you certainly see alot of the cultural highlights on a tour, but you also lose alot with running around and not lingering. Alot of photo-ops but without the trip leaving any impression at all. I don’t think learning a few phrases in Chinese is that hard certainly, and will get you far enough to find english speakers to help out. Difference in China is trying to speak Chinese and not doing it well, usually still earns you a “You speak Chinese so well!!!” type compliment. Noone gets ****ed (well, maybe in Beijing) if you are incoherant. They appreciate the effort.</p>
<p>I visited the Anhui region and climbed up and down ,thousands of steps for 2 days . We stayed at the White Swan Inn and it was decent ,Very few Westerners up there ! It was interesting . We hired a luggage carrier to carry my bag to the hotel . Kept wondering if it would be there when we arrived . I did this at 54 and it was exhausting !!</p>
<p>kathiep: I am not suggesting a tour. Rather I am suggesting getting ideas from tour brochures for places to visit.</p>
<p>We spent the month of July in China and went to many different places. There’s way too many places to see in only a month. We were fortunate that in each place we went, we had our own private guide and traveled in each place by private car. The trip was great. It was unfortunate that the only time we could go was July because it was extremely hot. In a lot of places, English is not spoken. When we were in Shanghai and used the subway at night to go to the Bund, we got lost. I expected that when I asked around that people (we were on the correct street to get there) knew the “Bund” - apparently that was a poor assumption and we headed in exactly the opposite direction. The next day our guide laughed and told us that of course that is not the name in Chinese and that’s why we didn’t get correct directions.</p>