Privétour-Beijing Hutong Foodie en Seal Carving Experience

I chose this tour for my husband as he is first time to China and the tour said a full day of cultural tour- learning and doing all these things about China. My husband and I joined this tour on April 7, except for the tour guide was exceptionally knowledgeable and tai chi part was authentic, the rest of the activities were a joke! There were no learning of these activities. We were taken to a room in a local family with the tour guide. The local family handed us paper and ink and left. The tour guide was very nice to show us. Then the paper cutting, we were given paper with pre-drawn lines to cut, no instructions or whatever, we just cut on our own. Then the clay making was even worst, the local family took some black clay and made a tiny tiny black panda! On the ads, it said a GIANT panda. The last activity was supposed to be painting mask. There was no painting. The guy came in with painted masks and gave us the mask as gift and tried to say a few words about the meaning of the colors, but he could not name them all! So, there was no painting. The lunch was nothing special. We were expecting to learn about the family or wonder to see how they live etc. However, the two hours we were sitting in a small room. It was not fun at all. We were very disappointed! and I was very upset as I had looked at other tours and I chose this one as I thought there would be some real cultural learning for my husband! For the money we had paid for this tour, it was not worth it. I don't understand why this costs so much when we ended up learning almost nothing. I have joined other tours by Viator in the past, this is the worst one and I don't trust your ads anymore. You did not deliver the services you have advertised. Theonly best part is your local tour guide, we learn so much from him about China and Beijing. He is the star!

this was a great day I had a personal tour and meet at the Drum Tower Square for a personal Tai Chi lesson The people I meet were all very kind and lunch was good cooking with lots of food. Took my Chinese calligraphy lesson shared my calligraph lesson with my art class.

I was met at the Drum Tower at 8:00 am. The square was already busy with people exercising and dancing which was an inspiration to me as many of the people were elderly and looked like they were having fun. The tutor gave me instruction on the basics of Tai Chi which was very enlightening although I did have trouble concentrating and relaxing my mind but that was just me. I was then met by Eva who took me to a Hutong which was preserved with lovely antiques from her relatives. She showed me the basics of calligraphy and paper cutting which I enjoyed, although I would have like to do more of the paper cutting. We took a short walk back to the Drum Tower and I had a demonstration on how to make a kite, followed by a painting lesson and make a theatre mask which I enjoyed tremendously. I also made a small panda out of air-drying clay which was great fun. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the day and the lunch provided was lovely.