FAM Trip
People’s Republic of China
February 15-25, 2005

Trip Highlights:
• Includes round trip airfare from San Francisco, CA to Beijing, China
• Includes inter-city flight inside China
• Includes all ground transportation in China with deluxe tour coaches
• Nine nights accommodation at 5-star/4-star hotels (double occupancy)
• Three meals daily with American food, Chinese cuisines, Grand Banquets
• All admission fees to tourist attractions in China as mentioned in the program
• Site inspections at various hotels
• English speaking local guides in each city

Preliminary Program

Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005
Depart in SFO by Air China flight 986 at 1:55 pm. En route to China.

Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2005
Arrive in Beijing at 5:55 pm. Transferred by a fleet of tour coaches to the five-star Chang An Grand Hotel. A Welcome Cocktail Party to be held in the hotel ballroom around 9 p.m.

Thursday, Feb. 17, 2005
Tours in Beijing start at 9 a.m. after breakfast. Beijing sits on a broad dry plain in north China, the same latitude as Philadelphia, PA. Beijing has been inhabited for 500,000 years, but the first documented settlement dates to 3,000 years ago. As the nation’s Capital, Beijing has a population of 13 million.

Our tour starts at the Tiananmen Square, which is the largest square on earth, covering 123 acres and paved entirely by huge slabs, and can accommodate half a million people at once. The late Chairman Mao’s Tomb is on the Square, as is the Great Hall of the People, the meeting place of the Congress. To the north of the Square, Tiananmen Gate guards the entrance to the Forbidden City.

Visiting the Forbidden City is a must. This 9,999-room “city-within-a-city” Imperial Palace was home to 24 Emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties between 1406 and 1911. After a lunch of Sichuan Cuisine, we will visit the Temple of Heaven. Built in 1420, the Temple of Heaven was a sacred place used by the Emperors to pray to the heaven for good harvests. The Chinese Emperors once humbled themselves in the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests to ensure a bountiful crop. Believe it or not, the huge construction was built 600 years ago without use of a single nail.

This evening, a grand Peking Duck Banquet will be given to welcome CrossSphere tour operators. It is a dinner-show-kind-of-banquet. A 79-member dance troupe with live orchestra is giving their excellent performance on the stage during and after the Banquet.

Friday, Feb. 18, 2005
An excursion is arranged today after breakfast to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Great Wall. The 3,750-mile-long Great Wall stretches from east to west in North China and is the only man-made structure visible to the naked eye from the moon. The massive construction of different sections of the Wall started about 2,000 years ago during the Warring State Period. Later, sections of the walls were connected and fortified by the successive Emperors in order to defend themselves from invasions of the northern minority tribes.

After a lunch of the Northeast-China Cuisine at the Great Wall, we continue our visit to the Ming Tombs, where 13 Emperors and their Empresses of the Ming Dynasty were buried between 1368 and 1644.

This evening, a dinner workshop with Chinese tour suppliers will be held. The internationally renowned China Tour expert, TUI China’s CEO Mr. Martin Buese, will give a speech on China Tours. The head of the China National Tourism Administration and Air China are to be invited to speak on topics of how to promote China as a destination before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Prizes will be given out by drawings.

Saturday, Feb. 19, 2005
After an All-American breakfast, we will visit the Summer Palace, built in 1750 as a royal recreational resort in the Qing Dynasty. In 1860, the Anglo-French expeditionary forces destroyed the Summer Palace. Later, the Empress Dowager Ci Xi diverted funds from the Chinese Navy to restore the Summer Palace in order to celebrate her birthday. Nevertheless, the only thing related to the Navy is the huge Marble Boat, where the Empress could sit and watch some drills of the Navy on the vast Kunming Lake. The Summer Palace is the world best preserved imperial Garden. It is a garden of gardens. Many of the finest gardens in China were copied and built here. Beside the gardens, we will see the 17-Arch Bridge with countless lion statues on it, and the 700-meter-long corridors with its wonderful painted Gallery.

After a lunch of Cantonese Cuisine, we will enjoy a free afternoon at Beijing’s most prosperous shopping center – Wangfujing Street. Here we can see the most elegant hustle and bustle and some of the most luxurious brand name stores of the world. The good thing is that the prices here are found to be very low. After shopping and dining at a restaurant of your own choice, you are just about 10 minutes away from the Chang An Grand Hotel by taxi. The taxi costs only $2 maximum (no tips for taxi drivers). This whole afternoon is yours, and you can freely experience real life as a local Beijinger.

Sunday, Feb. 20 2005
After a big breakfast, we will conduct site inspections at various hotels before heading to the airport for Air China Flight 1517 to Shanghai. Departure time is 1:30 p.m.

We arrive in the Hong Qiao Airport at 3:20 p.m., and check in at the five-star Guangdong Hotel. We will have a Welcome Dinner Reception at 5 p.m., then an exciting night-tour to the famous Bund and the unbelievable Nanjing Road.

Monday, Feb. 21, 2005
Breakfast in Shanghai is special. Afterwards, we visit China’s largest and most cosmopolitan city, which has a population of 14 million. Shanghai started life as a fishing village and small silk-weaving center, and became a seaport in the 17th century. Trade in silk, tea and opium boomed later on. In 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing forced the city to open itself to large-scale foreign trade and settlement. Therefore many old houses are foreign styles.

We will visit the Temple of Jade Buddha, which is the most famous temple in the city. The White Jade Buddha, carved from a precious piece of milky white jade, was brought all the way from Burma in 1882. The jade Buddha is still used for worship today, and visitors must remove their shoes to enter.

After a lunch of Shanghai Cuisine, we will visit the Old Town near Zhongshan Road. The Huxinting Tea House is said to be a very safe and clean place because it sits in the center of a pond. Humans can cross the zigzag bridge to take tea in the teahouse, but evil spirits cannot – they cannot turn those corners.

After a special dinner of Huaiyang Cuisine, we will enjoy the best of China’s evening entertainment: an acrobatic performance given by renowned Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe. We will stay at the five-star Guangdong Hotel tonight.

Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2005
After breakfast, we will take a train or coach to Hangzhou. Hangzhou is at roughly the latitude of northern Florida and is the capital of the Zhejiang Province with a population of 1.5 million. A cliché goes like “Above, there is Heaven. Below, there are Hangzhou and Suzhou.” Hangzhou is one of the most beautiful cities in China. Marco Polo once visited Hangzhou and found it to be the finest and most splendid city in the world.

We will taste the famous dish West Lake Fish in Vinegar for lunch. Before checking into the four-star Lake View Hotel by the lakeside, we will take a city tour and a cruise on the West Lake.

A Welcome to Hangzhou Dinner is prepared for us at 6 p.m. and information of Hangzhou and Suzhou as tourist destinations will be handed out.

Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005
After breakfast, we will visit the Ling Yin (Soul’s Retreat) Temple, which sits at the foot of the Northern Peak, to the west of the West Lake. The temple was founded during the 4th Century. The front temple, called the Hall of Celestial Kings, houses a large Laughing Buddha covered with gold. The peak facing Ling Yin Temple is covered with 280 rare rock carvings that date to the 13th and 14th centuries. The rock carvings are so mysteriously placed on the peak that people call it Peak Flying From Afar. In fact, some of the carvings are believed to have been carved by monks who brought Buddhism to China.

Our lunch will be Huaiyang Cuisine, and afterward we will visit the Tomb of General Yue Fei, which is located at the northwest edge of the West Lake. The Tomb honors a famous Song Dynasty military hero who was unjustly executed by the Emperor in the early 13th century. We will also visit a Tea Farm to experience life as a farmer in China’s countryside.

A dinner of Hunan Cuisine will be served at the Lake View Hotel where we will stay.

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005
After an early breakfast, we will go to the other heavenly city Suzhou through the waterway on the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal was built near Hangzhou and Suzhou in the 6th century. When the Canal finally connected to Beijing during the Yuan Dynasty, Suzhou’s main production such as the finest silk got to be shipped to many big cities, and the local economy and population boomed almost overnight. As a result, Suzhou was full of wealthy people, who had enough money to build their mansions with huge and luxurious gardens. With time, many of the gardens were abandoned, but we still see over 150 famous gardens here today. Going all the way to Suzhou by the water way is too time consuming (about 14 hours on the boat), so we are going half way by coach and half way by cruise.

Suzhou is a city on the water and lies in the Yangtze River Basin of southern Jiangsu Province. Poets have compared Suzhou to Heaven and called it the Venice of the East. Our lunch is served in downtown Suzhou before we check into the four-star Guanyunlou Hotel.

The whole afternoon will be spent in the Garden of Forest of Lions. It seems impossible that this small 14th century garden, only one acre in size, contains four lakes embellished with numerous bridges, caves and hills. A wonderful Welcome/Farewell Dinner Reception is prepared at 7p.m. for CrossSphere tour operators in the hotel. We are going to say farewell to Suzhou and to China tomorrow.

Friday, Feb. 25, 2005
After a Suzhou-style breakfast, we continue our visit to the gardens.

The Humble Administrator’s Garden is the largest and the most famous of Suzhou’s gardens. It was designed in the 16th century as the private residence of a retired court censor. Water fills much of the garden’s 10 acres. If time allows, we will also visit the Liu Garden which ranks with the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the Summer Palace in Beijing and the Imperial Summer Resort in Chengde, as one of China’s four nationally protected State Gardens.

We will have a lunch of Sichuan Cuisine before leaving the city for Shanghai International Airport. Our flight (CA 985) will depart at 5:15 p.m. for San Francisco. Our home bound flight will gain one day when crossing the International Date Line, so our arrival time in San Francisco will be on the same date at 11:55 a.m.