The following information will be useful for your China Travel Tips. Your itinerary will probably be a compromise between what your group asks to see and what the Chinese want-or find it logistically possible-to show you. Well in advance of departure for China, your group leader should compile a “shopping list” of members’ interests, general and specific. This will be sent to your Chinese hosts; then you sit and wait. Do not expect to learn details of your itinerary until you arrive in China. In some cases, even the cities you will visit will remain a mystery until you have crossed the border.

Most Americans want to see what is “typical” or “average” or at least a spectrum from best to worst. Your hosts, understandably, want you to see their proudest achievements. “Key schools” favored with government subsidies, hand-picked teachers, and selected students may represent a small proportion of all the schools in China, but will account for a disproportionate number of the schools you visit. It is easy to find out whether or not a specific institution is a key school; just ask.

Arriving in China, you will be met by your chief guide and interpreters from the host organization, and they will be joined in each city en route by local guides or interpreters. You will soon discover that despite the highly centralized Chinese political structure, many decisions are made on the local level. Your centrally appointed guides can be invaluable in handling problems, requests, and complaints, but they, like you, are guests in strange cities and must defer to their local hosts.

To illustrate On its final clay in Chengdu, my group visited a local Temple of 500 Buddhas. This was a 500-Buddhas temple to beat all500-Buddhas temples, and we spent three hours there, first picnicking among the ancient artifacts, then gawking at the exquisitely carved and painted Buddhist saints, each of them uniquely different from the other499. That evening we overheard our chief guide on the phone, long distance, to our next city Wuhan:

“But you can’t take them to a 500-Buddhas temple. They’ve just been to one!”

Although it is difficult to add to your itinerary or to exchange one institution or attraction for another, it is sometimes possible to cancel a visit in favor of free time. In the packed agenda of a China trip, that is no small blessing. For example, having visited an industrial exhibition Just-before leaving Shanghai, we were about to be taken to a handicraft exhibition just after we got off the plane in Beijing. Instead, we re-quested-and got-free time to shop, stroll, and rest. Such changes are easiest to arrange in instances when an entire commune or school is not geared up and waiting to entertain its foreign friends.

Difficult though it may be to change your itinerary, you may find it easy to adapt scheduled visits to your special interests. You should try to inform your group leader and guides of your particular needs in advance, e.g., a desire to visit an art class or to meet with a professional counter-part. But even if things cannot be arranged in advance, opportunities may arise at the school. Most groups are too large for everybody to visit the same classroom at once, so you will have to split up anyway. After the brief introduction, it is perfectly all right for the group leader to ask one of the hosts if members may visit a particular kind of class. If such a class is in session, they will probably be happy to accommodate you. While walking through the school, you will generally be free to stop, ask, and look, provided that you do not hold up the group. For example, one of our group’s most fruitful encounters occurred during an impromptu visit to a teacher’s lounge, where we were able to talk informally to the teachers and even to ask questions about their teaching schedules (which were posted on the blackboard): My wife’s curriculum-developers group gained permission on several occasions to break up into three or four units to talk informally with counterparts-master teachers, administrators, curriculum specialists, etc. Pursuing your own interest will be beneficial to your group as well as to you when you return to your hotel and compare notes with colleagues who had different kinds of encounters.