Last year I received an unexpected call from the son of clients I took around China over 10 years ago, when I started working with Imperial Tours as a China Host. Their son Josh had just got married and was transiting via Shanghai with his fiancée on en-roue to their honeymoon in Thailand. Back then, I had spent 14 days traveling with their family as a personal concierge, coordinating all activities and logistics, acting as a cultural bridge and making sure it all went smoothly.  » Read more »

Before my husband Greg Yu started composing the original music score for a documentary on the Titanic last year, I never knew there were Chinese survivors. I had seen plenty of movies, documentaries retracing the tragic destiny of the luxury ship when it sank on 14 April 1912 but don´t remember ever hearing about Chinese among the survivors. And yet, eight Chinese men originally from Guangdong province boarded the Titanic four days earlier, in Southampton,  » Read more »

One of the most received comments from clients who are on their second or third trip to China goes something like “…I can’t believe this is China, I barely recognize it.” This will of course be true for those who first ventured out to the Middle Kingdom in the 80’s and 90’s but is even the case for those who have been as recently as 2008 for the Beijing Olympics. There’s a variety of changes that people are impressed by.  » Read more »

If you haven’t yet read Part 1, click here to read about Jaime’s earlier experiences living through the Coronavirus quarantine in Beijing   “Last week there were five straight days without any locally transmitted infections in the entirety of China. Although that trend was bucked this Monday, it has been the case again today that the only new cases in the country are from individuals (Chinese or foreign: it isn’t known) who recently returned from abroad.  » Read more »

“With just three days until Chinese New Year, faced with the gradually spreading coronavirus epidemic, my husband and I decided to refund our New Year’s Eve train tickets to his home and to cancel plans to reunite with my in-laws for the ‘Spring Festival’, China’s most important holiday. Our family of three would stay in Beijing instead. Except for a meal with parents and sisters who were in Beijing for the Spring Festival, we could not visit restaurants or shopping malls,  » Read more »