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The Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing
After the success of the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo, people around the world saw the rapid growth and development of China. As China gained prominence as an emerging market, the Chinese Government wanted to grab the attention of more foreign investors, in particular, overseas Chinese, and encourage them to invest in China. Therefore, the government decided to partially sponsor some guided tours of China for overseas Chinese from Australia, USA and Canada.
The tours include 5 star accommodations, three meals a day, a tour guide (speaking either Mandarin or Cantonese - the English speaking tour is an additional cost), airport transfers and a coach bus & driver (so you don't have to navigate China's dangerous roads by yourself).
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Watch out for cars, bikes, other motor vehicles and pedestrians!
The tour is advertised for a minimal cost of $49 or $399 (depending if you're going to Beijing - in which case the $350 is the airfare from Shanghai to Beijing).
So what's the catch right?
Even though you still have to pay for airfare to China, tour guide fees (approx $8-$10 USD a day) and certain entertainment fees (depending on what's in the program), it's still pretty reasonable.
The main reason why it's so cheap is because the government is only partially sponsoring these tours; the local merchants in each city are also sponsoring the tour. This means that the tour includes visits to the merchants where they sell you stuff (from tea to jadeite, silk products to freshwater pearls and even some feng shui stuff). The good part about the tours is that all these local merchants are government approved merchants (meaning you won't get ripped off too terribly, but you're probably paying a lot more for stuff than locals would pay).
At the end of the day, you're probably spending 1/2 your time sightseeing and 1/2 shopping at the sponsor stores. That's not too bad and on the plus side, if you convert everything you buy into CAD or USD, it's much cheaper to buy it in China than it is to buy it in Canada or the US - so you're saving quite a bit & stimulating China's economy at the same time: win-win situation?
All that being said, the point of the explanation was so that I could clarify a few things:
1) I didn't have a choice in where I ate. The lunch and dinner meals were usually sponsored by the merchants (about ¥30 per person) and the hotels all offered a breakfast buffet.
2) The meals were all very big (meaning I didn't have a lot of room for snacks or anything else really)
Now that I'm done my long-winded explanation, I can proceed with the food blogging!
We spent 8 Days in Jiangnan (Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou and Wuxi) and 2 Days in Beijing:
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