Good choice by solopes
One of the worst aspects of many escorted tours is shopping. We are always taken to selected (pricey) places where the guides expect to collect their commissions. In many cases the time devoted to commission collecting equals the time to all the other planned visits.Travelchinaguide was good.
They respected the obligation of taking us to see the artisans at work (and that is also important in tourism), but, didn?t exaggerate. The visited places were selected, we covered everything that should be seen, but never felt dragged into shops. This factory in Xi?an was a good example. Several techniques demonstrated, sympathy in all the explanations, but no one was pushed to buy whatsoever.