From Gail and Doug Hilderbrand from Kenmore, Washington

We highly recommend Mystic Trails and tour guides, Spring and Tao.  The opportunity to visit China with native speakers who handled all the logistics and travel plans was an opportunity we could not pass up.  The trip offered a variety of activities, landscapes and experiences.  From the first day on the journey, we were extremely pleased with Spring and Tao and the services they provided.  The trip was well organized and all the tours, lodging accommodations and meals were thoughtfully planned. 

Visiting China opened our eyes to another part of the world.  We enjoyed learning about the long, evolved history of the Chinese people and their culture.  Visiting the many monasteries and Buddhist temples, hanging our prayer flags at the base of Mystic Falls, trekking around Kawa Karpo and shopping in Lijiang were some of the many highlights of our trip.

We especially enjoyed meeting the Chinese people and immersing ourselves in their world for a short period of time.  Their warm, friendly and welcoming ways were immediately engaging.  This trip gave us a snapshot into their lives-- how an average Chinese lives, their challenges and the simple pleasures they enjoyed.  

Things that we particularly appreciate:

• Meals!  Excellent choices made offering a variety of samples.  Great selection of eating establishments.

• Patience and knowledge of Tao and Spring:  your patience to deal with all of us and our incessant questions and inquires plus your own ability to handle all situations with tact and grace and your extremely strong knowledge of the culture, history and geographical area.

• Great sense of humor - you both had even steady moods and temperaments, never seemed to get down or negative and loved to laugh.

• How diverse China is in terms of language, ethnicity, culture and standard of living, transportation, sanitary condition, and etc.

• How people with so little, relative to our western culture, can be so happy.  To me, this is mostly a confirmation that the "modern", "developed" aspect of the west does not by itself bring happiness and joy to one's life.

• How warm and friendly the people are to us as if we were not western outsiders.

• How difficult the various Chinese languages (e.g., Mandarin; Cantonese; Tibetan) are to learn

• The impact and importance of tourism to various places in China

We lived among Chinese people, in their neighborhoods, and ate regional dishes; we became part of a good network of honest business people who share our ethical concerns for the people we visited.  

Large tours tend to isolate their clients on buses and in upscale hotels and restaurants, hanging out together and following inflexible schedules, contributing little and possibly exploiting the differences between their incomes and the economy. Instead, we had a goal to do more than that and bring a benefit to the people we visited. 

Spring and Tao were able to help us take surprises as they came and receive lovely, unexpected, special opportunities that no one could have scheduled in advance.  It was as though good fortune had shone on our party offering us unique experiences.   An example was arriving in Yubeng and finding alternate lodgings closer inside the village, which put us closer to important events, such as the visit by the Living Buddha to bless the beautiful shrine, and the welcome for Yunnan officials.  We got to share wonderful rituals, parties and traditional singing, that would be the envy of any National Geographic photographer. 

Throughout the trip, we actually got to "hang out" with Chinese and Tibetan cultural people, and see how they work and live, and learn their viewpoints in a way that increased my sense of brotherhood and empathy.   It was pure enchantment to experience how people provide for themselves, their children and their animals high in the mountains, beyond roads.   This helped me to have a better sense of what is truly necessary and what is only wanted.

On what she has learnt from this trip, Priscilla from Seattle says:

I learned to be a minority, looking different and being unable to speak the common language, a very good thing for Caucasian Americans to experience, since we really are a minority in world terms.  I learned that if you think you know everything, you will have no room to learn anything new.  I learned that I can reach out to people and even though we don't speak the same language, a smile is something everybody understands.  I learned that whatever opinion I may have of another, that is my burden, and that if I wish to go far, I need to keep my burden as light as possible.  I learned that any preconceived ideas I have about people of another nation must be revised, so that I acquire a more humane viewpoint -- when that happens, the world is more beautiful than before and life is more precious.  I learned that hope is a reasonable thing, even in the face of our ignorance and its consequences.