"Everything seemed to happen without any effort: flight reservations, hotel check-in, sightseeing and time for shopping – everything made to order for us, knowing perfectly to accommodate our different interests and needs. Many thanks to our China Host – who made the difference between Excellence and Perfection."

The Garza Family, Mexico

My wife and partner Nancy Kim and I did not hail from the travel industry when we started Imperial Tours over 15 years ago. We didn’t have preconceived notions of what should and should not be done. Instead we compared what we would wish to enjoy as part of a private tour with what then existed. One of our more innovative formulations was introducing the role of the China Host. This is a Chinese-speaking Western concierge cum cultural attaché, who travels with parties from as small as one person on their vacation around China.  This had not been done before and after using this service, guests frequently urge Imperial Tours to introduce the same concept to other parts of the world.

However, a China Host has more value in China than in other countries because of the distances involved. I do not mean geographic distances, for example the distance in traveling between Wyoming and Beijing, but refer to a multiplicity of enormous gaps that exist between a Western visitor and their experience of China. More often than not, these are political, cultural, linguistic and logistical in nature.

A China Host acts as a bridge to span the chasms in each of these dimensions; originally Western with many years’ residency in China and fluency in Mandarin Chinese, the China Host is perfectly placed to interpret China for a visitor. Whilst a Chinese guide can relate objective information such as the history of China and the development of contemporary life, he or she is subject to exactly the same limiting cultural and ideological divide as the visiting guest, and so is limited in helping visitors understand China. It is the China Host who is well placed to do so, clarifying the sometimes confusing machinations of this politically different country. Similarly, he is well-placed to explain the interactions of a Communist/Confucianist society, for example in describing the operations of the marriage market outside the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Through using the China Host as this kind of resource, the traveler profits from a deep and up-to-date appreciation of the Middle Kingdom.  

In addition, thanks to the linguistic and logistical prowess of the China Host, the vacation becomes less about negotiating a holiday in an exotic and unfamiliar country than about understanding, learning about and enjoying the destination. Anxiety is displaced by curiosity, hesitation by enthusiasm, temptation by implementation. The China Host liberates the traveler from the hassles of organizing travel to empowering her to implement instantaneous improvements. So, when the traveling party wishes to eat Sichuanese instead of Western food that evening, wishes to change hotels to explore the mountain top rather than staying at the base of Yellow Mountain, or else wants to extend a night in Hangzhou, that is when the China Host effortlessly plugs the gap to make it happen immediately.

Any luxury travel company has its store of guests’ unusual requirements, for example the China Host that had to organize a visit to a pebble-cooled nuclear reactor or the one required to interpret for a holidaying senator when the provincial governor decided to televise their evening get-together, but these heroics pale beside the everyday contributions that make up a China Host’s daily role. This could be organizing an impromptu soccer game with local villagers for a large traveling family, inspiring a young traveler to take up Chinese when they return home, or else putting together a once-in-a-lifetime marriage proposal on the side of a snow-capped Tibetan mountain for a romancing couple. These are some of the life-changing experiences fueled by Imperial Tours’ unique China Hosts.