china adoption tours

China Heritage Tours

Trips of a lifetime.

CCAI Heritage Tours are dedicated to providing adoptive families and adoptees with authentic, professional, safe, and adoption-centered homeland tour experiences to help support the ever-evolving relationship between birth heritage, home heritage, and adoption identity. Coordinated by The Park, with dedicated staff in the US and China, CCAI Heritage Tours are proud to serve any and all adoptive families, no matter the agency used to facilitate their adoption.

Currently, CCAI Heritage Tours are only operating in China and serving China adoption families and adoptees. We hope to expand our Heritage Tour countries as our community and connections grow. Thank you for trusting CCAI and The Park to facilitate your Heritage Tour. We strive to make every tour a trip of a lifetime.

Heritage Tour Packages

Side streets, crossroads, peaks, and valleys, here we come..

• [email protected]
• (303) 850-9998 ext. 160

IMPORTANT NOTES

• Travelers can add a personal Birth City & Orphanage Visit to any of our tours if orphanage is open to visitors. Be sure to mark “ Add an Orphanage Visit ” on your tour registration form.
• Tour prices are based on a 15-person travel group minimum and are subject to increase if travel group is below this number.

Information for the 2025 China Heritage Tours will be coming soon! Details will be published to our website by the end of September 2024.

China Grand Tour - Summer 2024

$1,739/child   $2,039/adult.

• June 16 (arrive) - June 26 (depart)

China Grand Tour - Winter 2024

• December 22 (arrive) - January 1 (depart)

Grand Tours

The crowd favorite, our Grand Tours let you experience China’s most renowned world heritage sites in its most famous cities. Visit the Great Wall of China and Temple of Heaven in Beijing, the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’An, the Giant Panda Reserve in Chengdu, and the Li River in Guilin, while immersing in unique cultural experiences for an unforgettable panoramic view of China’s breathtaking past and present.

Specialty Tours

Skyscrapers & Mountaintops: Shanghai to Yellow Mountain

$1,669/child     $1,799/adult.

• June 27 - July 7, 2024

Get lost in the metropolitan landscape of Shanghai, where Old China meets New and East meets West. Try Shanghai’s famous cuisine and be sure to stop by the Bund before our guide whisks you off on a tour through some of east coast China’s most best-kept-secret getaways. Luckiest of all, this tour brings travelers to the stunning peaks of Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and China’s “most poetic” mountain!

Jiangxi Province Tour

Booking Deadline: September 13, 2024

$1,370/child $1,500/adult

• November 24 - December 1, 2024

Guangdong Province Tour

Booking Deadline: October 18, 2024

$1,400/child $1,500/adult

• December 28, 2024 - January 5, 2025

Province Tours

Custom tours.

Deluxe China Heritage Tour

Prices vary.

Custom Private China Heritage Tour

Prices vary, travel resources, what to pack.

The right outfits take time

China Visa Information

Everything you need to know about that pesky little piece of paper

Travel Tips

It's never too early to start becoming a pro

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Each tour group is divided into smaller travel groups, around 8-12 parties per group (depending on the number of travelers), each with their own tour guide. This tour group and guide will be yours for the entire tour.

We try our best to arrange groups based on the age of the adoptee travelers. Tour groups will have staggered bus departure times, sightseeing schedules, and often different restaurants for group meals.

Yes, of course!

Please make sure to email [email protected] to make any travel group requests. The earlier that you make requests, the more likely it is that they will be honored. We try our best to honor every request.

Yes, of course! Please make sure to register together under the same profile. The email address provided upon registration will be used for all Heritage Tour correspondence, so be sure to pass information on to your travel companions if they do not have access to that email.

Of course you can! Our Heritage Tour opportunities are for everyone.  Please spread the word! We would love the chance to help make your travel dreams a reality.

Certainly! If you need help with any additional trip bookings, we are happy to help.

Yes, you can, but please understand that unused tours are non-refundable and the cost of the Tour package is a fixed cost.

Please let us know in advance   of your decisions so that we can confirm your preferences with your tour guide.

$3-6 or 20-35 RMB per day per person in your party for each tour guide. It is fine to tip in either USD or RMB currency. You should plan to tip $1-3 or 7-20 RMB per day per person in your party for tour bus drivers. To make tipping easier for your family, you can tip your guide & bus driver at the end of each city on the tour. 

China no longer requires a negative PCR test to enter China.

Wearing a mask is suggested at airports and train stations. In more crowded sight-seeing areas, some people still choose to wear masks, especially elders and kids, but it is not required.  There are no more public COVID testing stations or daily requirements.

China has no specific immunization requirements for entering their country and the U.S. has no immunization requirements for re-entry. This includes no requirements for COVID immunizations.

We recommend that you ask your personal physician, a travel/immunization clinic, and/or the Center for Disease Control about any vaccinations requirement updates or suggestions.

CDC website for specific recommendations.

Each traveler will need:

• A valid passport with at least 6 months’ validity from departure date
• Obtain a Chinese tourist visa from a Chinese Embassy/Consulate prior to travel. For more detailed information on travel visas, please view our Visa Information page .

Please check your passport and the passports of each individual in your travel party to verify that all expire at least 6 months after your tour dates.

Due to the unpredictability of international travel, we highly recommend that you purchase international travel and medical emergency insurance. Visit our Tour Resources section for more information.

All of the hotels we will be staying at have in-house clinics for any mild medical needs. For anything more urgent, our guides are able to take you to the nearest hospital, if needed.

For any prescription medication, it is recommended that they be kept in their original containers in case of emergency. Make sure that you pack amounts slightly more than enough for the entire trip and have a plan for the drastic time change. For more information regarding medications in your carry-on or checked bags please visit TSA guidelines .  

Yes, all of our tour guides will try their utmost to help ensure that all meals are safe for any dietary restrictions. However, due to cultural and culinary differences in China, we cannot guarantee anything and suggest taking caution and packing snacks if food allergies are severe.

Please mention any and all food allergies, dietary needs, or health concerns on your registration form. This will help our guides better prepare.

We also have translated cards available for common allergies or physical conditions. Visit our Tour Resources section to find these under “Travel Tips”. If you would like a translated card that is not yet listed, please contact us.

For in-China flights:

• Checked luggage weight allowance: ≤ 44 lbs
• Carry-on size restrictions: 14in. x 19in. x 22in.

Plan to bring an additional $50-$100 if you are a heavy packer. You may lock your bag for in-China flights but you must leave your bag unlocked for your international flights.

For bullet train travel:

• Checked luggage weight allowance: ≤ 110 lbs.
• Carry-on weight allowance: ≤ 44 lbs.
• Carry-on size restrictions: 36in. x 36in. x 36in.

Your hotels on the trip will have laundry services available; however, with the quick speed of the trip, it can be challenging to get hotel laundry done in time. Plan on only being able to do laundry when you are staying at least 2 nights in a given city so that your clothes have ample time to dry.

Please keep in mind that hotel laundry services can be very expensive. Be sure to carefully review the laundry form provided by the hotel in regards to the price per item. There may be some opportunities to have your laundry done outside of the hotel in Chengdu and Guilin. These options could be cheaper.  Your guide will be able to notify you if this service is available. 

A $200/traveler deposit is required upon booking. This deposit is applied toward your tour total and is non-refundable except under extenuating circumstances.

Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about this deposit.

Unfortunately, we are no longer able to provide free trip coverage for adoptees traveling on a heritage tour.

Your tour fee does not cover:

• International airfares
• Passport and/or China Visa fees
• Suggested tip amount for Guide: $3-6 or 20-40RMB/day/person
• Suggested tip amount for Driver: $1.5-3 or 10-20RMB/day/person
• Additional $330 for single room occupancy in hotels
• Personal expenses, spending money
• Approximately $20-$40/person/day for any lunch & dinner
• Any optional tour excursions
• Transfers between the airport and the hotel before or after the main tour itinerary

Click here to view our 2024 Specialty Tour Add-Ons Fee Schedule

*Please keep in mind that orphanage visits are not guaranteed and will be at the discretion of the orphanage.*

For an orphanage visit, you will need:

• Adoption Registration Certificate
• Abandonment Certificate (Chinese version)
• Printed copies of Adoption Registration Certificate, U.S. passport, and Abandonment Certificate to bring with you to China.
• Orphanage Visit Application Form (completed by CCAI in-China staff)

Yes, to everything except the orphanage visit itself. Pending approval of your Orphanage Visit Application, our guides can contact the orphanage for you, but the go/no go decision is ultimately up to the orphanage. 

Your Orphanage City Tour costs (including hotels, flights/trains, transportation, guide services, etc.) will be calculated specifically for your trip.

Yes! You can take a day trip to visit your/your child’s orphanage in Shanghai, Suzhou, or Hangzhou while the group is traveling in each particular city. The additional cost of this would be approximately $200-$500 per family per orphanage visit.

• Day 1: Fly into the capital city of your birth province. Get settled and acquainted with the area.
• Day 2: Drive to birth city/town, visit the orphanage, visit foster parents and finding spot (if information is available), stay overnight in the birth city or travel back to the provincial capital
• Day 3: Free day or sightseeing before flying either to join the main tour OR to fly back to the U.S.

Yes, this we are happy to plan a Birth Province & Orphanage Tour itinerary for whatever length you would like! Additional costs will be communicated accordingly.

Yes, this is possible in most cases. Please be sure to note this on your registration form  and we will work with you to make sure we understand all of your needs.

Although gifts are not required as part of the orphanage visit, if you would like to bring a gift, you can consider bringing small toys or school/art supplies for the children. You may also consider inquiring with the orphanage about any specific needs they may have. If you would like, you can purchase what is needed in China.

Gifts/donations are strictly optional. 

Adoption Program Specialist

GiGi Pleet joined CCAI in 2014 as our China Applications Specialist. She rejoined the team in 2022 after taking a few years off to spend time with her family.  GiGi and her husband have adopted three beautiful daughters from China who are the joy and purpose of their lives.  GiGi is passionate about adoption and furthering CCAI’s mission to find loving parents and permanent homes for as many children as possible and to continue reaching out to children left behind.  When she is not working, you can find her spending time with her girls in the beautiful mountains of Colorado or on an adventure to a new, faraway place.   Joined CCAI:  Originally 2014 – 2020, rejoined 2022   Bucket List Item:  To see all Seven Wonders of the World 

Contact Information

[email protected]

(303) 850-9998 ext. 300

Emily Straut

The park administrative assistant.

Emily was adopted through CCAI in 2002!  Having always admired the ways that the organization continued to support families even after adoption, she began working at The Park last year because she wanted to be more involved in the adoption community and according to her, “It’s been a blast so far!”

Emily is majoring in environmental science at MSU Denver and hopes to help mitigate the causes and effects of climate change. In her free time, she like to practice guitar, play video games, watch movies, and spend time with her friends and family. 

Bucket List: Visit every province in China!

[email protected]

(303) 221-6688 ext. 170

Ivy Buchanan

The park adoptee program coordinator.

Ivy has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Production Design for Film and Theater with a minor in Studio Art. She had the opportunity to study abroad in London, England and Florence, Italy. After graduating, while visiting an orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal she had a moment of realization and knew she wanted to work in the adoption community. After some prior experience in post-adoption and nonprofit management, she came to The Park and is really enjoying focusing on and being involved with offering lifelong support for adoptees and the adoption community.

Ivy was adopted from Kazakhstan at 18-months old and is proud of her adoptee identity and her adoptive family. She is passionate about sharing the stories of the amazing people in the adoption community and helping adoptees celebrate their identities. Her lifelong best friend was adopted from China through CCAI. 

In her free time, she enjoys making art (she is working on a series of sculptural paintings of poached animal species), trying new food, catching up with friends, reading, and being with family. She loves to travel whenever possible.

Joined CCAI: 2023

Top Bucket List Items:

• A trail ride through “Middle Earth” in New Zealand
• Volunteering for a few weeks at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary
• Sleeping in a hammock on a beach

[email protected]

(303) 221-6688 ext. 205

Colorado Expenses

China Adoption Return & Heritage Tour

Cet-11: 14 days guangzhou - guilin - xi'an - beijing china tour.

We're honored to have helped over 100 loving adoptive families explore China, including welfare institutions in provinces such as Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Guizhou, Fujian, Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Hebei, Henan, Zhejiang, etc.

Our most recent booking is for August 5, 2024.

In the adoptive family return tours we organize, we have had the pleasure of serving numerous families who have adopted multiple children. We are also more than happy to arrange visits to the orphanages of each adopted child, creating a meaningful and enriching experience for everyone involved.

We believe that heritage tours should be designed to meet your unique preferences, so the sample itinerary we provide is just a starting point. Simply share your wishes with us, and our caring heritage tour specialists will craft a personalized itinerary to ensure you and your child create unforgettable memories in China. Let's work together to plan your heartfelt return journey now.

This heritage tour is designed for you to take your adopted child back to visit his/her motherland of China. You will not only visit the orphanage where he/she was brought up and the exact spot where he/she was found, but also better appreciate China’s ancient history and rich culture. You will arrive first in Guangzhou (this destination is subject to adjustment based on where your adopted child is from) and explore the city. You will not miss Guilin which has the best scenery in the world and learn about the historic treasures of ancient China in Xi'an and Beijing. This will be the most educational and enriching experience which you and your child will cherish forever. If this China heritage tour itinerary is not what you want, let’s create your own heritage tour .

• Trip Highlights
• Visit the orphanage, finding site and foster family
• Family friendly guides speaking fluent English and Chinese Mandarin
• Ride a bike on a thousand-year-old City Wall
• Learn to cook delicious and popular Chinese food
• Practice Taichi with locals at the Temple of Heaven
• Learn Chinese calligraphy and brush-painting

No Shopping Traps

Adoption Heritage

Accommodation

Best Season

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter

Full itinerary for China Adoption Return & Heritage Tour

Welcome to China! Your private guide awaits you outside of the luggage claim area at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport ( CAN ). After being transferred to your hotel by your comfortable private vehicle, you can enjoy the rest of the day to walk around the hotel’s neighborhood or just relax at your hotel.

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport

You may start the day a bit later if you are still jetlagged. There is a lot to discover at this international metropolis. Chen Clan Ancestral Hall shows you the prosperous past of Guangzhou. It is a splendid hall of decorative folk arts, with its skillful use of wood carving, brick carving, stone carving, grey plastic sculpture, ceramic sculpture, copper and iron casting, and painting. The main theme is based on Lingnam folk arts. You can also see the residence of the rich and powerful businessman in the late Qing Dynasty called Sai Kwan Mansion . There were more than 800 houses at its height, but now only 10 remain. You will have a general idea about the customs of local people's living. You must try Cantonese Cuisine for lunch. It features just the right amount, with rich and clever ingredients, and beautiful decoration.

Chen Clan Ancestral Hall,Ornate Roof

Stroll around Shamian Island , you will feel like you are in Europe. The beautiful houses and buildings were built during the time when the French and English were the big influence in China. Qing Ping Market is close to it. It is the biggest traditional Chinese medicine market in Guangzhou City. You will see various Chinese herbs and understand their functions.

Shamian Island

You will travel to the city where the orphanage your child was adopted is located. The transportation can be flight, speed train or car depending on which city it is. On arrival, your guide will show you around for your child to get to know his/her hometown. You will have a chance to stop by the local supermarket if you want to prepare some presents for the children and the staff in the orphanage.

Spend the whole day visiting the orphanage, you will have chance to talk with the orphanage director and staff, visit the place where your child was first found, where they lived and played. You can also meet with the people who were related to the adoption and the foster family, if there is one, to see the detailed information that is provided. Have lunch at a local restaurant. This day will be a lifelong memory for you and your child. Return to Guangzhou, or take flight/speed train to your next destination.

Play with kids in the orphanage

You will take a speed train to Guilin after a leisurely breakfast at your hotel. On your arrival, you will see your personal guide waiting at the exit of the train station. And then the guide will escort you to the city center for lunch.

the Speed Train

Guilin is surrounded by Karst Mountains and is as famous as the beauty of the naturally formed scenery. Reed Flute Cave is one example. There are lots of caverns and large limestone formations. You will need some imagination to visualize the story behind the formations. And then you will go to Fubo Hill Park . This is a complex park with a lot to see, like the Sword-Testing Stone, a cave with Buddha statues carved into the wall and a great view from the top of the hill.

Reed Flute Cave

After breakfast, you will go to Longji (Dragon’s Backbone) which is about a 2 hour drive from downtown Guilin. The terraces were made by local ethnic minority groups after the Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368 AD). Zhuang and Yao minority villages dot the area with their unique wooden architecture. A good hike is planned for today, so a pair of comfortable walking shoes are highly recommended. Ancient Zhuang Village is a quiet village inhabited by Baiyi Zhuang – White Clothes Zhuang people – while Ping'an village is inhabited by Yao People. You'll have a 2 hour hike from Ancient Zhuang Village to Ping'an Village.

Baiyi Zhuang Women

Lunch with organic food at one of the local restaurants on the mountain is just delicious. After lunch, you can either continue climbing to the mountain top to overlook the whole village or just walk around the village. Return to your hotel in Guilin in the late afternoon.

Nine Dragons Five Tigers in Autumn, Longji Terraced Fields Scenic Area

Today is one of the highlights of your entire trip. Your guide will pick you up from your hotel lobby at around 08:00. And then you will embark on your boat trip at the wharf which is about a 45 minute drive from your hotel. The Li River Cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo is the best way to appreciate the breathtaking landscape of the Karst Mountains along the river side. Natural scenery, farm lands, fishermen, school kids, water buffalos, mountain goats and cormorants are all in the same picture. A simple lunch is served onboard. Or you can order some fresh catches at your own expense.

Beautiful Scenery on the Li River

After disembarking in Yangshuo, you will stroll through West Street , to feel the harmonious combination of Chinese and western culture. Hire a mountain bike, your guide will take you to explore the countryside of Yangshuo . Biking on the paved path with rice paddies and beautiful mountains on both sides is such a pleasure. You can visit one of the local houses if you wish to learn about the peasants’ life style.

Cycling in the countryside

Recommended activity: 1. Impression Sanjie Liu Show uses the Li River as the stage and the mountains as the backdrop to give audiences a visual feast performed by more than 600 actors. 2. Yangshuo West Street is the oldest street, with a history of more than 1,400 years, which is attractive to a lot of foreigners. It comes alive with pubs and clubs open at night.

Enjoy a lovely breakfast at your hotel. Your guide will take you to join a Cookery Class . The tour starts with buying the ingredients from the local food market. You can learn about all the types of food material that Chinese people eat every day. After returning from the market, you will learn to make three popular dishes with the Chinese cooking style. The chef will show you the process step by step. Enjoy what you cooked for lunch.

After a short break, your guide and driver will escort you from Yangshuo to Guilin airport for your flight to Xi’an.

Upon arrival, you will meet your guide and be sent to the hotel for a good rest. Xi’an is a city with a rich history and very palatable food.

The Terracotta Warriors and Horses , listed at World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1987, shouldn’t be missed. It is one of the greatest archeological discoveries on earth. Thousands of clay soldiers, bronze chariots and horses were made 2000 years ago to protect Emperor Qinshihuang’s tomb. From Pit 1 to Pit 3, you will be amazed by the exquisite artwork. Your lunch today will be served in a restaurant near the museum so you can try different types of famous cold dishes and noodles.

Terracotta Warriors and Horses: Created by China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang

Then you will head back to the city to visit the Ancient City Wall . This is the best-preserved city wall in China. You can walk, or ride a bike or an electric cart on the Wall. Walk for 10 minutes from there, and you will arrive at the Muslim Quarter , a busy and interesting walking street with lots of food stands and souvenir shops. It is where the local Muslim residents live, and a fun place to wander around.

Xi'an Ancient City Wall

Recommended activity: 1. The music fountain at the north square of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is free to the public. You can stroll around it after dinner to experience local life. 2. Tang-Dynasty Palace Music and Dances is a performance that was re-created by many famous artists in Shaanxi province, displaying the essence of music, rhythm, and dance art in the Tang Dynasty.

After breakfast, you will visit the Small Wild Goose Pagoda . It is the same architecture style with the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, but much quieter with less tourists. It is a typical work of the square Miyan style brick pagoda in early China and is Buddhist architectural art heritage of the Tang Dynasty. You can learn how Buddhism was introduced into the Central Plains and integrated into the Han culture. And then you will have a chance to watch a Shadow Puppets Show , which is a kind of folk drama. It tells stories in silhouettes of characters made of animal skins or cardboard. Enjoy your lunch at a local restaurant nearby.

Shadow Puppets Show

After lunch, you will head to Xi’an North Train Station for your speed train to Beijing. During the 4.5-hour ride, you will enjoy the view of the rural area of northern China.

Your guide in Beijing will be waiting for you with your name sign and take you to your hotel.

In old China, the emperors prayed for a good harvest every year. That was how the Temple of Heaven was built. Now it has been turned into a public park where local people do morning exercises and play board games. A Tai Chi lover will teach you some basic movements and the theory of Tai Chi here. It can balance the “Yin” and “Yang” in your body to make you healthy. And then we will drive you to the Great Wall. Lunch will be at a farmyard on the way.

Play Tai Chi

Located 73km from Beijing downtown, Mutianyu Great Wall is the most scenic and well-protected section. Take a cable car up to the half-way point, from where you can hike east or west. Strolling on this thousand-year-old defense project, you can feel the history and imagine the wars which happened here in the past. Return to your hotel in the city in the late afternoon.

Mutianyu section of the Great Wall

Recommended activity: 1. The Legend of Kungfu premiered in 2004. In contrast to the traditional Kungfu shows, it demonstrates Kungfu through dramatic stories. The group also tours abroad and has a good reputation. 2. Acrobatics at Chaoyang Theatre was founded in 1984. Their performances have won more than 30 awards at home and abroad. "Blue And White Porcelain" (balancing a stack of bowls on the head), which is one of them, was on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala in 2015. 3. Peking Opera is one of five major operas in China and the quintessence of Chinese culture with a history of nearly 200 years. It was entertainment only for the court in the beginning and then slowly opened to common people as well.

Your tour of the city highlights starts from Tiananmen Square , the world’s largest city square. You can, however, have an early start at 05:30 to watch the flag raising ceremony along with hundreds of Chinese people. Some important government buildings are located around the square, such as the Great Hall of the People, National Museum, Chairman Mao Memorial Hall and Monument of the People's Heroes. Across Chang’an Avenue from Tiananmen Square, lies the magnificent Forbidden City . This big palace is a collection of valuable culture relics and ancient Chinese architecture. You can listen to the stories of the royalty’s life. Have lunch at a local restaurant.

The Forbidden City: a palace complex in central Beijing, China

Situated to the north of the Forbidden City, Jingshan Park is a beautiful royal landscape garden. The mid summit of Jingshan Hill is the highest point in the city, where you can get a full and clear view of the Forbidden City. After that you will visit Shijia Hutong Museum (closed on Mondays) . It documents the ways of hutong life back in the ‘good old days’. Exhibits include a mockup family home from the mid-20th century, and a ‘Sounds of the Hutong’ audio experience that allows visitors to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of a bygone era.

Shijia Hutong Museum

Today is a more casual day. You will spend the whole morning strolling in the Summer Palace , the summer retreat of Empress Dowager Cixi. The landscape, the architecture and the lake, everything is a feast for your eyes. You will enjoy a 20 minute boat ride (available from April to October) on the lake. Have lunch at a local restaurant.

You will spend the remaining half day in Gaobeidian Village . You will join a Chinese Calligraphy class to learn brush painting. This whole day is for you to get to know more about Chinese culture, language and people.

Brush Painting

Enjoy a leisurely breakfast and pack your luggage. Your guide will take you to the airport for your international flight home. Our service will end here.

Featured Hotel

What's included.

• Hotel accommodation with daily breakfast
• Your own attentive and knowledgeable English speaking tour guide
• Experienced driver with comfortable vehicle
• Visit permit to the orphanage
• All meals as listed at authentic Chinese restaurants
• Entrance fees to all listed scenic spots
• Speed train tickets from Guangzhou to Guilin, from Xi'an to Beijing
• Flight ticket from Guilin to Xi'an

What Our Customers Say On This Heritage Tour

China Educational Tours planned our trip to China beginning on 6/14 - 7/1. They did a superb job! We worked with Carol Guan and found her incredibly knowledgeable, available, detailed, caring and flexible. We have 2 girls who were adopted from China and wanted to modify the trip so we could visit their orphanages and tour their cities, Guangzhou and ChongXing. Carol arranged the meetings with the orphanage directors, set up the orphanage tours, purchased our gifts to the orphanages so we wouldn't have to cart them from the United States, and lined up the hotels, guides, drivers and tours. In order to visit the orphanages, she had to do a tremendous amount of paper work with the embassy and orphanages to get clearance. THANK YOU CAROL FOR MAKING THIS TRIP REMARKABLE!

Our family wanted to travel together to visit my daughter's orphanage and finding site as well as experience Chinese people and culture. Carol from China Educational Tours helped us plan our trip from Guangzhou to Beijing providing domestic transportation and city drivers and translator/guides in each city. They proved to be one of the highlights of our trip! They were knowledgeable about their area and its history and able to make recommendations about restaurants. They were also willing to engage with us and talk about their lives so that we could learn more deeply what it means to live in China today. Carol was also able to arrange for us to visit with two families who welcomed us to tea, and provide experiences hiking, biking and taking classes in Chinese cooking and Tai Chi. After spending a day with us, one of our guides recommended a change in our schedule to include a tour that we had not thought of. No problem--arrangements were made and we had a wonderful time. I highly recommend this agency for their professionalism, knowledge and flexibility.

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China Adoption Heritage Tours

As one of China's largest and most successful online tour operators, we have great local connections and resources to provide a memorable family & heritage tour in China. Join with us and we will do our utmost to provide you with best possible China trip.

We specialize in customized travel

Our experienced travel advisors will work with you to design a fun, interesting trip and give you the best possible price. We specialize in providing customized travel, not off the shelf packages. We can provide experienced adoption guides, if you require their specialized services. We know that families want to have fun not just follow a flag. We will help you design a tour which the whole family will enjoy.

Adoption & Heritage Tour Specialist Travel Agent

Coco has years of experience as a travel advisor and has arranged heritage tours and adoption tours for years. You can contact Coco anytime directly and she will be delighted to help. Just email your requirements or choose any of our existing tours and we will customize it to your requirements.

LeeAnn Mill – US Director, An Orphan's Wish writes about the heritage trip which she did in 2011

Organizing a heritage trip to China for my family of nine for three weeks and including the four cities where my children were found, was a daunting task, even though I have traveled to China many times.

I knew that Brian & Andy (both China Volunteers for AOW) worked as consultant for China Highlights in Guilin so I contacted Brian to discuss my plans. Although I knew China Highlights through their support of AOW's House of Love, it was comforting to know that I had a personal contact who understood my needs. He put me in contact with Karen who was fantastic. She handled all of my questions and special requirements over several months and nothing was too much trouble.

Traveling in China always has it challenges but Karen handled any problems and last minute changes so we were able to enjoy the time without worrying about what was happening. This took all the worry from our trip which allowed us to concentrate on what was important. It was a special time for us all and very emotional at some certain times. Karen organized adoption guides and all the required permissions so that we could visit the SWI's that we wanted to visit.

Karen also organized some fun activities like riding electric motor cycles in Yangshou. These are not normally included in tour program but my kids loved it.

I would like to thank China Highlights for supporting AOW's House of Love since 2005 and also for this new program which will be of great benefit to AOW. I am very confident in recommending China Highlights to provide a professionally organized trip.

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ADOPTION RETURN

• Adoption Family

17 Days China Adoption Return Tour: Beijing Guilin Nanning Yangtze River and Shanghai

This 17-day China Adoption Return Tour introduces you to the Chinese culture and history as well as feasts your eyes with the beautiful natural scenery. It is a great chance for you to get in contact with your homeland again.

Trip Highlights

• Take a Chinese paper cutting lesson in Hutong area
• Visit the minority villages and the large fields of rice terrace in Guilin
• Make the bamboo rice in the local minority family
• Enjoy the 4-day and 3-night relaxing Yangtze River cruise
• Indulge yourselves in Disneyland in Shanghai

Customizable Tour Itinerary

Day 1 beijing arrival.

Welcome to China for a 17-day tour. To ensure you a hassle-free start, our guide and driver will wait for you at the airport arrival hall with your name sign in advance. You will be transferred to the hotel by private transfer with air-conditioning.

Meals : No meal, advice freely available

• Hotels: Beijing Double Happiness Courtyard Hotel

Day 2 Highlights of Beijing, Family Visit and Chinese Opera Face Mask Painting

Tian’anmen Square is a site where numerous major political and historical events happened. It is also the historical witness of China's rise from decline. Wander around the big maze, the Forbidden City and get to know the stories of the emperors with the introduction of the guide.

After lunch, visit a royal garden, Jingshan Park , where emperors used to appreciate flowers, practicing archery, hold banquet and climb up to the mountain for a view to the city and the Forbidden City.

While the emperors lived in the palace, the locals lived in Hutong area in the past. Get lost in the Hutongs and talk with the locals you encounter on the road. Opera is one of the quintessence of Chinese culture. With the teacher’s guidance, you will make your own opera face mask . You can bring home as a souvenir if you like.

Meals : Breakfast, Lunch at Jindingxuan Dim Sum Restaurant with a la carte menu

Feature Dinner option : Peking Roast Duck (Dadong Peking Duck, Qianmen Quanjude Peking Duck), Fangshan Restaurant, Mei Family Restaurant, Bai Family Restaurant)

Optional evening activity : Kungfu show or Peking opera

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch,

Day 3 Mutianyu Great Wall Discovery and Taichi Experience in Temple of Heaven

Get up early and learn Taichi with a master in Temple of Heaven , where emperors used to pray for good harvest to the heaven. You are not alone as there are many locals doing morning exercises.

Continue your tour to the highlights among the Highlights, the Great Wall. Mutianyu part is more suitable for family with kids as there are cable cars, chairlift and slide way. Besides, it is less crowded and commercial.

Day 4 Summer Palace with Cruise and Flight to Guilin

Summer Palace , as indicated by its name, is a place for the royalty to hide from the summer heat. Take a relaxing boat cruise on Kunming Lake like the royalty before you leave for Guilin by flight. Be met and transferred to your hotel when arrive at Guilin.

• Hotels: Guilin Shangri La Hotel

Day 5 Highlights of Guilin Plus Daxu Ancient Town

Guilin tour is a relaxing one. Today, wake up with the bird singing. Hiking up to the Folded Brocade Hill as your morning exercises and get more fresh air. Before really immersing into this beautiful city, have a panorama of it on the top of the hill. And then you will be brought to Reed Flute Cave , a palace of art with numerous stalactites in various shapes.

After enjoying the lunch, go to the outskirt of Guilin to visit an ancient fishing town, Daxu Ancient Town . Step on the stone road and watch the antique buildings, you could feel its time honored history.

Meals : Breakfast, Lunch at Mc Found Restaurant with a la carte menu

Feature Dinner option : Xiaonan Guo, Gold Dragon Village Restaurant, Yilu Restaurant, and The Taste-Made Restaurant

Optional evening activity : Night cruise in Two Rivers and Four Lakes Scenic Area

Day 6 Longji Terraced Rice Field and Bamboo Rice Making

After Breakfast, drive about 1.5 hours from the city area to Longji Terraced Rice Field and Minority villages , one of the important agricultural heritages in the world. The Terraced rice fields are like chains, circling the mountain peaks into giant snails. Walk in the minority village and feel their culture and custom. What obviously different are their house, which made from wood and called stilt-houses (Diaojiao Houses). Learn to make the bamboo rice with the locals and have lunch in a local house. You will finally know how it tastes like when the rice combined with the bamboo.

Day 7 Li River to Yangshuo and Calligraphy Learning

Guilin scenery is like a vivid scrolling picture. A Li River cruise is able to give you a feel of walking in the picture. The big boat cruise takes about 4 hours from Guilin to Yangshuo. The 4-star boat is not as crowded as the 3-star one. After disembark and a while of walk, you will arrive at the famous West Street .  It is the oldest and most bustling street in Yangshuo with many bars, restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops. Learn to write some simple characters with the brush under the teacher’s instruction.

Meals : Breakfast, Buffet Lunch on the Li River cruise boat

Optional evening activity : Impression Show of Sanjie Liu

Note : Please be on time as the cruise company will not change the departure time for anyone

• Hotels: Yangshuo Mountain Retreat

Day 8 Biking Tour and Train to Nanning Homeland Visit

Explore the countryside in your own way by riding a bike with your family. The moo buffalo, ducks and the laughing kids will add some joy to your biking tour.

After lunch, drive to Yangshuo train station (about 50 minutes) for the train to Nanning or  your homeland that we can arrange for you.

• Hotels: Nanning Marriott Hotel

Day 9 Nanning Social Welfare Institute Visit

Your guide will meet you at the hotel lobby. Transfer to visit your child's home orphanage and meet with people related to your child's adoption. If you desire, have lunch at the orphanage or host a lunch or dinner for the orphanage director and staff. Explore the local area with your guide. If needed, locate and visit the place where your child was found or visit your child's former foster family (if applicable and pending special permission). After that, transfer back to hotel.

Day 10 Qingxiu Mountain, Anthropology Museum Of Guangxi

Proclaimed as 'Giant Lung” of Nanning city, Qingxiu Mountain Scenic Area is renowned for its pleasant climate, culture charm and marvelous green scenery for all four seasons. Get some fresh air and refresh yourselves in the park in the morning.

After lunch, immerse yourselves into the Guangxi ethnic culture by visiting the Anthropology Museum of Guangxi . It covers 33,000 square meters, and holds 35,000 artistic and cultural items, including ancient bronze drums, ethnic clothing, weaved brocade and embroidery, tools for manufacturing and agriculture, folk handicrafts and architectural models.

Day 11 Half free day and flight to Chongqing for the Cruise

Explore more about Nanning on your own or just relax in the hotel in the morning. At the confirmed time, the guide and driver will pick you up from the hotel and transfer you to the airport for the flight to Chongqing. From there you will board the Yangtze River cruise ship.

• Meals: Breakfast,
• Hotels: Century Legend

Day 12 Yangtze River Cruise

You will have a free morning to relax yourself on the bed or go to the sundeck for some sightseeing.

In the afternoon, a shore excursion to Shibaozhai is scheduled. Shibaozhai looks like a strangely-shaped pagoda hugging a hill. Walking up from the bottom to the top through the narrow stair, you will get a panorama of the river.

Come back to the ship for the welcoming banquet and dancing party.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner,

Day 13 Yangtze River Cruise

Today comes to two of three the magnificent gorges, Qutang Gorge and Wu Gorge . Be ready with your camera and find a good point for photography first. In the afternoon, do a shore excursion to Shennong Stream and experience the trackers towing a boat (1:30-5:30pm).

In the evening, you will enjoy the crew's performance and the farewell dinner.

Optional tour to White Emperor City (RMB 280 per person)

Day 14 Yangtze Cruise to Yichang and flight to Shanghai

Check out and get off the ship at 8:00am. Visit the Three Gorges Dam Site, which is the highlight of this cruise and take bus to Yichang Sanxia Tourist Center after that.

Notes : On your departure day from the Yangtze Cruise tour, you need to prepare to check out and disembark in Maoping Port before 8:00am. The cruise company will take care of your luggage transfer from Maoping to the Yichang Sanxia Tourist Center (No. 9 dock, face to Wal-Mart). The cruise company will provide the luggage voucher which you need to show later when you can collect your luggage in Yichang. You will take a bus from Maoping Port to visit the famous Three Gorges Dam Site at 08:00am-10:30am, and then take the bus (90mins) to Yichang Sanxia Tourist Center (No. 9 dock, face to Wal-Mart). Bus fee is included. A direct flight from Yichang to Shanghai is arranged for you. The guide and driver will awaits you at the arrival hall in the airport.

• Hotels: The Peninsula Shanghai

Day 15 Highlights Tour of Shanghai

After breakfast, wander through the corridors and archways in Yuyuan Garden to appreciate the classical Chinese architectures, exquisite sculptures and carvings. Nearby is the City God Temple , a main Taoism Temple in the city that enjoys a high reputation both at home and abroad by its long history and magnificent architecture.

Admire the charm of Old Shanghai at French Concession . You may be tired of the regular sightseeing. Different from other skyscrapers, Shanghai Tower is not just an office block, but also a comprehensive building of hotels, offices, retail shopping districts and restaurants. Go to the top of it, you will enjoy a bird-view of the city.

After that, have a leisure coffee time at Xintiandi . End today’s tour with a walk on the Bund .

Meals : Breakfast, Lunch at Xiangyefu Teahouse Restaurant with a la carte menu

Feature Dinner Option : Nan Xiang Mantou Dian, Green Wave Gallery, Lost Heaven-Yunnan Restaurant Bund Branch

Optional evening activity : Era Time or Shangcheng Acrobatic Show

Day 16 A free day in Shanghai

Leisure free day is left for your own arrangement.

Day 17 Shanghai Departure

Weave your hands to our beautiful country. See you next time. The guide will help you take care of the check-in at the airport. 

Price Includes

• In-country transportationas noted in the itinerary.
• Admission fees and activity expenses as noted in the itinerary.
• Luxury or boutique hotels centrally located.
• Meals in local restaurants as noted in the itinerary with complimentary drinking water.
• Your own English-speaking guide service.
• Your own chauffeur and vehicle service.

Price Excludes

• International transportation.
• Chinese tourist visa. (which enquired for most foreign passport holders)
• Travel and medical insurance.
• Meals, snacks, alcohol, etc. apart from those included in the itinerary.
• Excess baggage charges.
• Personal expenses.
• Sights, excursions and activities not included in the itinerary.
• Gratuities to guide and driver.

ANY QUESTIONS?

This tour is tailor-made and we can tailor to meet your reqeusts. Your personal travel consultant will contact you within 24 working hours!

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• Day 1-3: Beijing
• Day 4-6: Guilin
• Day 7: Yangshuo
• Day 8-10: nanning
• Day 11-13: yangtze
• Day 14-17: Shanghai

CUSTOMIZE THIS TRIP

FABULOUS TOUR COMPANY

CHINA OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2019 We researched several companies and studied reviews on Trip Adviser before contacting who did a very China Culture Tour with an initial query. Right from the outset Grace who owns the company was excellent. She emailed detailed with pictures information and a suggested… read more details

Karen from US

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9 Days China Adoption Tour 2024

Route of china adoption tour.

Beijing -(bullet train) – Xi’an -(bullet train) – Chengdu

Highlights of China Adoption Tour

• Visit the Great Wall of China
• Explore Hutong with rickshaw and visit a local family
• Real authentic Peking Duck in a local restaurant
• Chinese Kung Fu Show – Kids will enjoy it!
• Terracotta Army: One of the greatest archaeological find of the 20th Century
• Chinese Calligraphy experience
• Panda Keeper Volunteer Program – close contact with giant pandas, feed giant pandas, lean taking care of pandas, get volunteer certificate
• Chinese cooking class and dumpling making by family together

Authentic china root seeking trip for China Adoption Family

we specially arrange 3 activities which best represent Chinese Culture for China Adoption Family:

• Chinese Kung Fu Show
• Chinese cooking class and dumpling making

Orphanage visit service

We understand it’s very important. We help China Adoption Family applying a visit to orphanage, explore the chinese hometown of adoption kids, activities of a typical orphanage visit could be:

• Visit facilities and surroundings of the Orphanage(SWI)
• View profile of your Child
• Meet the Nurse/Nanny of your child
• Meet the foster mother or family
• Conversation or with orphanage director and staff
• Meal with orphanage director and staff
• Visit the “finding place”
• Gifts to orphanage directors, caregivers, foster families and children

More detail about China Adoption Tour 2020

• Date & Price

Day 1 Arrival in Beijing

Arrival at Beijing international airport, warmly welcomed by your guide and driver. Transfer with comfortable vehicle to your hotel. Your guide will help you check in. You will take a good rest after a long flight.

Hotel:  Four Stars Hotel, family room and connecting room available.

Day 2 Beijing, B/L/D

Visits & Activities:  Tian’anmen Square, Forbidden City, Rickshaw riding and  local family visiting in Hutong.

Tian’anmen Square: The center of Beijing, where you can visit Tian’anmen Tower, Monument to the People’s Heroes, Great Hall of the People, Mao Zedong Memorial Hall and see the national flag raising ceremony.

Forbidden City:  Also known as the Palace Museum, and Gu Gong in Chinese, lies at the city center of Beijing, and once served as the imperial palace for 24 emperors during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368 – 1911).

Hutong: We will ride a rickshaw and visit a local family in Hutong. Hutong is the name given to a narrow lane, alley, or small street between rows of single-storey Siheyuan dwelled by Beijingers in the past. When viewed from the air the interlaced lanes resemble a maze or a chessboard with delicate gardens, fine rockeries and ancient ruins which makes them a wonder in the world.

Dinner: Real authentic Peking Duck in a local restaurant

Chinese Kung Fu Show: a thrilling modern day theatrical production, bringing together traditional Chinese martial arts and a vibrant show atmosphere. Performed daily at the widely acclaimed Beijing Red Theatre, it’s one of the best kungFu Show in China.

Hotel: Four Stars, family room and connecting room available.

Day 3 Beijing, B/L/D

Visits & Activities:  Mutianyu Great Wall, Bird’s Nest, Summer Palace visiting and Boating

Mutianyu Great Wall: Pick you up at the lobby of your hotel at 7:00am (it is holiday, we may meet traffic jam), we will drive you to Mutianyu Great Wall, It will take around 2 hours to arrive the Great Wall, depends on the traffic. The round trip cableway will take you up to the 14th watch tower to save your time and strength. You can hike for about 2 hours with your guide on the Great Wall.

Lunch: picnic lunch on the Great Wall.

Bird ’ s Nest:  It was designed as the main stadium of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The Olympic events of track and field, football, gave-lock, weight throw and discus were held there.

Summer Palace Visiting and Boating: Visit the largest and most complete existing royal garden, reputed as the royal garden museum. We will be boating on kunming lake in the Summer Palace, you will have the best view of the Hill of Longevity from then lake. it’s a good way to explore this largest and best-preserved imperial garden in China.

Hotel:  Four Stars Hotel with Deluxe 1/2 Bedroom Suite.

Day 4 Beijing – Xi’an, B/L

Visits & Activities: Temple of Heaven

Temple of Heaven:  Built in 1420, this huge structure is where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties worshipped the god of heaven and offered sacrifices to heaven to ensure a good harvest. It is now a cultural museum that chronicles the history of China through its architecture, art, music and more.

Bullet train to Xi’an: Take a bullet train to Xi’an (G87 14:00 – 18:20), meet your Xi’an local guide at train station.

Hotel:  Wyndham Grand Xian South, Somerset Xindicheng Xi’an, Gran Melia Xi’an, Crowne Plaza Xi’an, Shangri-La Hotel, Xian, Sofitel Xian on Renmin Square, Merlinhod Hotel

Day 5 xi’an, B/L/D

Visits & Activities:  Terracotta Army, Shaanxi Provincial Museum, Giant Goose Pagoda, Muslim Street

Terracotta Army:  Funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.

Shaanxi Provincial Museum:  One of the first huge state museums with modern facilities in China and one of the largest.

Small Wild Goose Pagoda:  During the Tang Dynasty, the Small Wild Goose Pagoda stood across a street from its mother temple, the Dajianfu Temple. Pilgrims brought sacred Buddhist writings to the temple and pagoda from India, as the temple was one of the main centers in Chang’an for translating Buddhist texts.

Chinese Calligraphy experience: learn and try basic chinese calligraphy, try to write some simple simple chinese vocabulary and your name with Ink brush. It last for 30 – 60 minutes.

Option of Muslim Street Visit: It’s very crowded. Delicious snacks are not hard to find on Muslim Street, from Pita Bread Soaked in Lamb Soup, Chinese hamburgers, cool noodles, Jingao rice pieces and steamed stuffed buns and the like. The restaurants in the streets are all owned and operated by Muslims, and various Islamic foods are easily available here, such as the local favorite roasted beef, roasted fish, and pancakes. Food on Muslim street is diverse and quite affordable.

Day 6 Xi’an – Chengdu, B/L

Visits & Activities:  City Wall of Xi’an with option biking on the City Wall.

City wall of Xi’an: Represent one of the oldest, largest and best preserved Chinese city walls. It was built under the rule of the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang as a military defense system. Option biking on the City Wall is available.

Bullet Train Xi’an – Chengdu: Take a bullet train to Chengdu (D1937 14:00 – 17:43), pick up from Chengdu Trainstation, transfer to hotel in chengdu.

Day 7 Chengdu – Dujiangyan – Chengdu, B/L/D

Activity: Panda Keeper Volunteer Program at Dujiangyan Panda Base

Dujiangyan Panda Base is the most easily accessible base in China to join the Panda Keeper Program. Highlights of this program: -Spend the day with pandas as a Panda Keeper! -Feed the Giant Panda twice a day! -Learn more about China’s pandas up close and personal. Spend half a day getting to know the Middle Kingdom’s most cuddly denizen at the Dujiangyan Panda Base while working together in the panda enclosures with the panda keepers as a volunteer.

Hotel:  Foure Stars Hotel, family room and connecting room available.

Day 8 Chengdu, B/L/D

Visits & Activities:  Sichuan cuisine cooking class and family dumpling making, Jinsha Site Museum

Sichuan cuisine cooking class and family dumpling making experience:  Choose one person from each family to learn how to cook 2-3 dishes of the most classic Sichuan cuisines, at the same time, the others from the family will make dumpling together. Your Lunch are what you made.

Visit of Jinsha Site Museum:  Under the comprehensive protection system, a large number of precious cultural relics have been collected in Jisha Site Museum such as the Sun and Immortal Bird gold decoration, gold mask, jade, ivory and so on.At Jinsha,you will experience the brilliance of Chengdu’s history and splendor of the ancient kingdom .Jinsha Site is selected as National Cultural Relics Protection Unit, National Archeological Site Park. The museum is National Top Class Museum. Jinsha site is also tin the list of tentative world heritage sites.In this nice Archeological Site and Museum, you will see amazing Ancient Archeological Dig and Artifacts.

Day 9 Chengdu – Orphanage province or other destination, B

Today you will be private transferred to either airport or train station for traveling to orphanage visit. Group tour service ends.

• Orphanage visit application: We help China Adoption Family applying a visit to orphanage, as expert in this field we understand it’s very important, we know what you want and we know how to do it.
• Real root seeking: We specially arrange 3 activities which best represent Chinese Culture for chinese adopteen
• Keeping your children amused: There will be many fun and interesting visits and activities to keep the kids amused from beginning to the end of this China Adoption Tour.
• Well-designed itinerary especially customized for family with kids travelling first time to china: The most classic itinerary combines Chinese history, culture, natural beauty and Chinese national treasure giant pandas.
• Cultural enrichment: The educational value of an immersive trip to China cannot be underestimated.
• Kid-friendly Guides: Our experienced patient guides have worked with kids of all ages.
• Unbeatable price and award winning service: That’s our way of survival as a local travel agency in china.
• Included Professional, fluent English Speaking and family friendly guide Comfortable vehicle transfer during your trip Tickets to all the scenic area mentioned in itinerary 7 x Lunches, 5 x Dinners Accommodations mentioned in itinerary with hearty breakfast. Bullet Train Ticket of Beijing-Xian, Xian-Chengdu (second class seat)
• Not Included Chinese visa Personal expense Tips to your guide and driver

Similar Tours

12 Days China Adoption Tour 2024

Small group tour for china adoption Family, China Adoption Tour with guilin, yangshuo and rice terraces

We operate tailor-made Adventure & Tour China for individuals, families and small groups around travellers' time, interests, preferred pace and travel style. We will take you to the major and stunning china highlights as well as further along the road less traveled.

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+86 28 8503 0959

Mon - Fri 9.00 - 18.00

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No 51, Section 4, South Renmin Road, Chengdu 610041 China

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China Heritage Tours

Based in China, Lead to China have managed to help hundreds of families with adopted children find their way back to China. We are experienced, professional, but most of all, we care.

We know what you want

We know what we are doing, what we know is more.

Latest Travel Stories

On August 15, 2024, Yong'an, accompanied by his mother and sister from the Netherlands, embarked on a journey to revisit his roots.   At 9 a.m., they departed from the hotel and arrived at the Kunming Children's Welfare Instit...

On June 13, 2024, Claire, accompanied by her mother and two sisters returned to Shanggao County Children's Welfare Institute in Jiangxi Province, China. The purpose of their trip was to revisit and experience the place that had once changed their l...

On June 11, 2024, Yingtan Social Welfare Institute warmly welcomed a family of six from Iceland who had adopted a child, Tianyu, from the orphanage in 2012.     The morning began with the family being greeted at their hotel a...

Return to Birthplace

What can be expectations from a homeland tour to China? To make China "real" for children, to find out more information from the orphanage about children's abandonment and/or pre-adoption lives, and to meet the nanny who took care of your child as a baby? All these themes can be offered during a return trip with us. Start now and find your child's orphanage from the provinces below for details.

• Xinjiang Inner Mongolia Gansu Ningxia Qinghai Shaanxi Shanxi Sichuan Chongqing Hubei Hunan Guizhou Yunnan Guangxi

• Heilongjiang Jilin Liaoning Beijing Tianjin Hebei Shandong Henan Anhui Jiangsu Shanghai Zhejiang Jiangxi Fujian Guangdong

Small Groups to Join

Beijing-Xian-Chengdu-Guilin-Yangshuo Summer Schedule: Jun 10th, Jun 24th Early Booking Savings Available!

Beijing-Xian-Chengdu Designed for families with orphanages around Chengdu or easy to reach. No Shopping! No Factories!

Beijing-Xian This tour is perfect for families who want to save time and visit more than one orphanage after the group tour.

Exciting Travel Activities

You can watch this performance in Red Theatre of Beijing. It costs about 70 mins, told a beautiful story about a young boy who dreams of becoming a Kung Fu master and attain enlightenment,. Well choreographed musical with stunt Kung Fu performance make the show world-famous. Your family will enjoy it.

Sichuan Opera performances are always full of wit, humor, lively dialogues, and pronounced local flavors. To portray special characters, the opera incorporates a series of stunts, including the famous "face-changing." After watching the Sichuan Opera, you will have a chance to be maked up as the performer. It will be a fun way ...

Visit the home of giant pandas at Panda Breeding and Research Center, in the outskirts of Chengdu. Visit the nursery to see the highly successful breeding program, among the bamboo groves and shady walkways, and to view the pandas at rest or play. There is a panda museum where you can learn some information about giant pandas...

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China shut down foreign adoptions. This family doesn’t want to give up.

The Maryland couple has been waiting years to bring home the girl they planned to adopt. She was 8 when they started the process. She’s now 13.

There’s a whiteboard beside the quilt-covered bed their daughter has never slept in.

On it are written a few of the promises Colin Pitts and Fan Pat made to a bright-eyed Chinese girl they committed to adopt in September 2019 — things they would do as a family once they received the final permission to bring her to America.

Read good uplifting story books

Go sledding (and survive)

But now the Maryland couple is facing a crushing prospect: They probably won’t be allowed to keep those promises.

On Sept. 5, China’s Foreign Ministry suddenly, and with little explanation, announced an end to the country’s three-decade-old foreign adoption program, which has sent more than 82,000 children to the United States, more than any other country.

Chinese civil affairs officials “will not continue to process cases at any stage,” the State Department said. That will stop hundreds of families who have been matched with children by Chinese authorities from completing their adoptions, even those in the final stage of what can be a years-long process, adoption advocates said.

The change has injected grief into the lives of once hopeful parents. But many of them, like Pitts, who grew up in Maryland, and Pat, who was born in southern China before moving with her family to Hong Kong, are still trying to hold on.

Sitting in their bright suburban townhouse in Montgomery County 45 minutes north of Washington, the couple is surrounded by photographs of the girl they’ve longed to bring home — and the practical and whimsical steps they’ve taken to get ready for her arrival.

Pitts bought her a kid-size electric guitar. There’s a hand-scrawled sign — at cat-eye level — instructing feline siblings Biscuit and Whiskey to ask her permission before entering her new bedroom, a precaution in case she’s allergic. Inside is a fish-themed reading nook at the top of a ladder, a cozy perch to get away from meddlesome parents — or to peer down at the stuffed raccoon and overstuffed dressers below. Pat bought matching blue blouses crowded with daisies, but that was years ago, and her daughter’s is already too small for her.

“It’s one thing for them to end international adoptions,” Pitts said softly, his wife beside him, noting that the number of kids who end up in orphanages has gone way down. But, breaking into tears, he could only haltingly make it through an appeal for a reprieve for the few hundred families already matched by China with children. “I mean, she knows about us. She called us Mom and Dad. They can’t — they can’t do that. They should — there are 300 of us — just, just make an exception. It would be ending — ending the program on a high note.”

This month, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning offered appreciation to foreign governments and families “for their good intention and the love and kindness they have shown” but argued that China’s move is “in line with the spirit of relevant international covenants.” She noted a few narrow exceptions, such as allowing foreigners to adopt their stepchildren.

Other families — and children — are meanwhile facing anguish on the same scale as Pitts and Pat.

Over the years, adoptions in China have transitioned from mostly healthy girls to children with relatively minor impairments such as a cleft lip to those with more profound disabilities and medical conditions who struggle to find homes domestically, according to Ryan Hanlon, president of the National Council for Adoption, an advocacy group based in Alexandria, Va., making China’s sudden shift even tougher to understand.

Hanlon pointed to the case of a Chinese boy with hemophilia who now stands to lose his chance to move in with the American family eager to adopt him. Their biological child shares the same serious bleeding disorder. “They would have been great parents to this little boy. There’s no reason this needed to end,” Hanlon said.

Jessica Beck, a part-time director at a Baptist church and lamb farmer from northern Baltimore County, has had her family’s attempt to adopt a second boy from China basically frozen since 2020. Fortified by the Bible’s call to care for orphans, she plans to keep pushing.

During one challenging stretch, she shared a meal with some friends. “The dad’s like, ‘At what point do you just give up and walk away?’” Beck recalled. She looked back at him and pointed to one of his daughters. “At what point do you walk away from them ?”

The announcement about the halted adoptions came five years to the day since Pitts, 53, and Pat, 50, signed their names in blue ink on their “Letter of Intent to Adopt a Special Needs Child.”

The girl was shy of her ninth birthday and on a special list of China’s most urgent adoptions. They saw through photos and videos the caring way she approached the younger children in her orphanage. She seemed to have an incredible spirit and a can-do attitude, and they were taken by “how easily and genuinely she would just smile,” Pitts said.

“At that point, we were done looking,” he said. They had found their daughter. “That was it. She was the first —”

“— the first and only file we looked at,” Pat said.

They tackled the heavy load of medical consultations required to prove they were ready to raise a child with cerebral palsy, a condition affecting muscle control and the way a person moves. Experts say it sometimes also leads to seizures, problems seeing and speaking, and intellectual disabilities.

The couple found a pediatrician in Germantown, Md., and a team of specialists at Georgetown University Hospital who could help coordinate her care, including intensive physical and occupational therapy, medications, orthotic braces and possible surgeries to correct conditions that could stem from the way her body develops.

They were optimistic that comprehensive treatment would improve her condition. But, if it doesn’t, they wrote to Chinese adoption officials, “this will not change our love or acceptance of [her] in the least. She is already a member of our family and is a unique, amazing girl just as she is now.”

Her identity was listed in the Chinese adoption papers as “foundling,” a child abandoned by her parents. She now shares the same surname as the other children in her orphanage. Part of her given name translates to “hope.” The couple asked that she not be further identified to preserve her privacy.

They believed they were on track to welcome her into their Damascus, Md., home by the end of 2020. They needed two last things — a letter from the Chinese government asking them to confirm the adoption and an invitation to travel to China to pick up their child.

But by January 2020, the coronavirus pandemic had begun ravaging its way across the globe. China’s strict lockdown barred movements within cities, let alone travel from overseas. International adoptions were suspended.

In July of that year, there was a sprout of hope: a letter, stamped with the official red seal of the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption, formally declaring they had been matched with the smiling girl who had become such a huge emotional presence in their lives. They checked the box, signed as Adoptive Father and Adoptive Mother, and confirmed their agreement to “adopt the above child.”

Two months later, they received a video from the orphanage.

“Mama, Baba, when are you coming to get me?” the 9-year-old asked.

What followed was an excruciating, years-long wait that would eventually have them questioning what it means to be a parent and, in their most contemplative moments, a person.

“The world’s priorities are messed up,” Pitts said. “We ourselves will be completely forgotten in a generation or two at best. It’s only those things we teach children, that they themselves pass along, that have any chance of lasting.”

They faced a towering, ever-present absence of information, let alone progress, punctuated by moments of hope that would soon be cut down again, leaving them unsure how to move ahead but finding it unthinkable to do anything but try.

Pitts said a pall would come over him, even in good times, thinking about what his daughter was missing. Pat said she sometimes lost her temper and lashed out at him through all the waiting. But in the years since falling in love, after meeting at a now-shuttered shopping mall, they still lift each other’s spirits.

They slipped into problem-solving mode.

Pitts, a mechanical engineer, got to work building the physical infrastructure and learning the skills he hoped would make him the father his daughter deserved. He installed new handrails up their staircase. Pat, a software engineer, became the spreadsheet maestro, tracking their onslaught of key documents and time-sensitive tasks, and made sure the right winter gloves and ever larger jackets were ready.

They sent their daughter monthly videos of the life she was being welcomed into. He took up guitar and composed background music for the scenes they would capture for her, including sailing through the Chesapeake Bay. They were thrilled to learn that trying to stay balanced while standing on a rocking boat could be an effective form of physical therapy for someone with cerebral palsy.

Pitts had been learning some Cantonese so he would be able to follow conversations between his wife and her family, and he began studying Mandarin so he could communicate with his daughter the moment she arrived.

He would put subtitles on the videos in slightly flawed Chinese that Pat would only partially correct, making them understandable but still raw enough that their daughter would know the words were coming directly from her father. He also scripted the Chinese on her whiteboard.

But their flurry of groundwork laying hasn’t kept the hurt of separation in check.

“Five years of no information, just indefinite waiting. Turns out that’s the hardest thing in my life that I have ever encountered,” Pat said.

“By a long shot,” Pitts said.

The couple hadn’t been urgent about having children earlier in their marriage. But then Pitts, thinking of his wife’s roots and all the kids who needed parents, suggested they adopt from China.

Once they connected to their daughter, they were all in.

They took training on how to parent older children who have experienced trauma. They are overcome thinking of the video showing her marching up stairs, gripping a little dumbbell in one hand to build strength and show them what she could do.

But their hope of bringing their daughter home in 2020 was extinguished, and with it their chance of introducing their daughter to Pat’s father, who died after a fall that year in Hong Kong. They put the girl’s name on their flowers for the funeral they couldn’t attend because of covid. Pitts’s mother died the same year, after her breast cancer returned. She had cut out fabric panels to make a quilt for her new granddaughter, including one with a little girl in a pink tutu stretching to reach a book. After she became too weak, a friend did the actual stitching.

Then, in 2021, nothing. They kept sending videos but stopped getting updates from the orphanage by year’s end.

They hoped Beijing hosting the Winter Olympics in 2022 would give them a window — if thousands of athletes could reach the Chinese capital, maybe they would get their travel authorization letter — but it did not.

All that time, they were fearful that something could go wrong, and then it did.

They received an alert from a group of waiting parents.

“I thought, this must be the happy message,” Pitts said. Their 8-year-old is now a 13-year-old. “And then it was just the opposite.”

“A couple months turned into a couple years, then more years and more years and now — the total out of control, the hopelessness, just what can we do?” Pat asked, sobbing.

Standing outside her daughter’s bedroom, she tentatively voiced the unthinkable. Their adoption path has been filled with so many obstacles.

“Right now, this one ended for us,” she said.

“99 percent,” Pitts said. “Maybe there’s still some hope.”

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Wed, Sep 18, 2024 page9

China shuts down its international adoption machine, while banning international adoptions amounts to a drop in the bucket when it comes to alleviating china’s severe demographic crisis, it reflects the government’s long-overdue recognition that people should not be viewed as a burden.

• By Yi Fuxia

The Chinese government has just announced that it would no longer allow foreign adoptions of Chinese children, except by blood relatives or step-parents. The move reflects China’s changing perspective on population growth, with anxiety about overpopulation supplanted by fears that a rapidly aging, shrinking population threatens the country’s future.

For decades, adoption was critical to China’s one-child policy. Additional pregnancies were either terminated, or the baby was given to a childless couple.

In 1981, when I was in elementary school, officials gave an infant who had survived a forced abortion in a neighboring village to an infertile couple in mine. (The baby died soon after, owing to injuries related to the abortion attempt and a premature birth.)

Illustration: Mountain People

A couple of my relatives, threatened with huge fines and confiscation of farmland and livestock, had to give up children for adoption. They were still fined for illegally giving birth, but they managed, and at least their babies were safe.

The same cannot be said of the children of families who could not afford the fines, as they were often left on roadsides. Although their parents might tuck some cash into their blankets in the hopes that someone would take in their abandoned newborn, such a happy outcome was rare, not least because families with children were not eligible to adopt.

Illegally born babies’ chances of survival improved in 1992, when the government began allowing international adoptions, effectively exporting the “burden” of “excess” children. With that, China’s government not only relieved itself of the financial pressures associated with supporting orphans, but also gained a new revenue stream: donations from foreign adoptive families.

International adoptions were so lucrative, with foreign families paying thousands of dollars to adopt a Chinese child, that some local governments started “confiscating” babies. In one case, twins were separated; one was sent to an adoptive family in the US, and the other remained in China with her biological parents.

When it came to supplying children for adoption, China was tough to beat. An abundance of babies and a centralized, predictable and relatively affordable adoption process — about half as much as adopting in the US — quickly turned China into a leading country-of-origin for international adoptions, which reached 160,000 over the past three decades, peaking in 2005, at 13,000.

The US is a leading destination: From 1999 to 2022, US families adopted 82,658 Chinese children — nearly one-third of all US adoptions from foreign countries. Including pre-1999 adoptions, it is estimated that US families have adopted more than 100,000 Chinese children, some of whom were taken from their parents by family-planning officials.

Girls have been more likely to be put up for adoption than boys, reflecting Chinese parents’ preference for sons. That preference has not been nearly as pronounced as the international community seems to believe, and it was clearly the one-child policy that fueled it.

In 2000, across the country, there were 120 boys up to four years old for every 100 girls.

However, where a two-child policy had been piloted since the mid-1980s, the ratio was far more balanced, with 103 boys for every 100 girls in Yicheng County and 110 boys for every 100 girls in Jiuquan. That is in line with the global average: across human populations, there tend to be 103 to 107 male babies for every 100 female ones.

In any case, other countries also tend to prefer sons over daughters. In 10 Gallup surveys conducted between 1941 and 2011, about 40 percent of respondents in the US said that, if they would have one child, they would prefer for it be a boy, while about 28 percent said they would prefer a girl. The difference is that, in China, the one-child policy forced parents to make cruel choices.

China’s foreign-adoption machine could not run forever. The country’s fertility rate dropped from 2.3 children per woman in 1990 to 1.6 to 1.7 in 2010, naturally reducing the number of children available for adoption. At the same time, the infertility rate rose from 1 to 2 percent in the 1970s to 10 to 15 percent in 2010 and 18 percent in 2020, increasing domestic demand for adoption.

Meanwhile, fertility rules were loosened: A “selective two-child policy” was introduced in 2014, which was made universal in 2016, with a three-child policy following in 2021. As a result, far more Chinese families became eligible to adopt.

These developments, together with the tightening of international adoption rules in 2007, contributed to a sharp decline in US adoptions of Chinese children, from 7,903 in 2005 to 6,492 in 2006, 2,696 in 2012 and just 819 in 2019. (China suspended international adoptions during the COVID-19 pandemic.)

This can be viewed as part of a broader shift away from international adoption. Some receiving countries — including Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway — have restricted or suspended the practice, largely over ethical concerns about adoption procedures.

Remarkably, while the US has not introduced such restrictions, foreign adoptions by Americans have declined precipitously, from 22,987 in 2004 to just 1,517 in 2022.

However, the goal of easing domestic demographic pressures is probably the main motive for the Chinese government’s decision to ban foreign adoptions, despite speculation by international media that it is politically motivated.

Not long ago, Russia took a similar step. From 1992 to 2012, Russia was among the leading countries-of-origin for international adoptions, with Americans adopting 60,000 Russian children. In 2012, it banned adoptions by US families. While there was a political dimension to the decision, Russia’s rapidly declining fertility rate — from 2 in 1989 to 1.16 in 1999 — was probably a leading factor.

As for China, its fertility rate continues to fall, despite the implementation of the three-child policy and other government efforts to encourage childbirth. Last year, it was 1 across China and just 0.6 — the lowest in the world — in areas such as Shanghai and Heilongjiang Province.

Given the severity of China’s demographic crisis, ending international adoption amounts to a mere drop in the bucket. Still, it is a welcome change, as it highlights the Chinese government’s recognition, at long last, that people should not be viewed as a burden. One can only hope for a broader shift toward policies that respect life and protect human rights.

Yi Fuxian (易富賢), a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spearheaded the movement against China’s one-child policy and is the author of Big Country with an Empty Nest, which went from being banned in China to ranking first in China Publishing Today’s 100 Best Books of 2013 in China.

Copyright: Project Syndicate

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An Era of Chinese Adoption Ends, and Families Are Torn Over Its Legacy

More than 80,000 children from China were adopted by American families. While many appreciate how the adoptions reshaped their own lives, they are also glad to see the program conclude.

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By Amy Qin and Vivian Wang

Amy Qin reported from Washington, and Vivian Wang from Beijing.

Amy Cubbage’s first foray into parenthood began as it had for tens of thousands of American families before her: in a hotel room in China.

In 2008, Ms. Cubbage and her husband, Graham Troop, had just been handed a 2-year-old girl named Qin Shuping, who was living with a foster family in the southern Chinese city of Guilin. The couple from Louisville, Ky., had waited more than two years to be matched with a child.

But in that hotel room, in a country the couple had never been to before, the toddler was inconsolable.

“I cried because I was like, ‘What have we done to this child?’” Ms. Cubbage recalled.

More than fifteen years later, the toddler is now known as June Cubbage-Troop, a freshman at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh who is on the acrobatics and tumbling team.

“I used to think about my birth parents, but not really anymore because I’m happy and I love my parents,” Ms. Cubbage-Troop, 18, said. “I’m pretty content with my life.”

China announced this month that it was halting nearly all foreign adoptions, marking the end of a program that forged several generations of American families. More than 82,000 Chinese children have been adopted in the United States since 1992, around the time the program began, according to the State Department.

Several of those adoptive families said they were glad that the program was coming to an end, recognizing that it was a glaring byproduct of a harsh policy restricting many Chinese families from having more than one child. Though most treasure their adoptive experience, many also see the program’s abuses and the underlying trauma that came from removing children from their birth parents and culture.

Many participating parents and adoptees described the phaseout as bittersweet. For tens of thousands of aspiring parents, particularly single people and gay couples, the program for years offered a relatively straightforward path to starting a family, free of the bureaucratic hurdles that often bogged down the adoption process elsewhere. It also provided an opportunity for Chinese children with special needs to receive the medical and financial support overseas that they needed to thrive.

The need for international adoption in China had also seemed obvious. Between the late 1970s and 2016, China limited many families to one child because of overpopulation concerns. Many of the orphans were baby girls who, adoptive parents were told, had been abandoned because of the harshly enforced one-child policy as well as the traditional Chinese preference for boys.

The program’s reputation was tarnished when reports emerged that some babies had been abducted by traffickers or seized by family planning officials during the enforcement of birth restrictions. The babies were then sold to orphanages, who marketed the children as orphans to unwitting foreign families who were willing to pay relatively large sums of money.

International adoptions from China have slowed since peaking in the mid-2000s, as China’s economy has grown and more money has been allocated to support orphans. Nearly all foreign adoptions in recent years have involved children with disabilities, according to the Chinese government.

Brian H. Stuy, a father of three girls adopted from China, grew critical of the program over time and now runs a company that helps Chinese adoptees collect information about their adoptive histories and their birth families. He believes there is still a need for international adoptions of children with medical concerns, but said that he was ultimately glad the program was over.

“As it relates to the adoption of healthy young infant girls, it should never have existed,” he said. “There was never a need.”

Many Chinese American adoptees also expressed mixed feelings. The experience of being adopted is often described as one of both immense gain and profound loss of one’s birth family and immediate environment. That loss is amplified in international adoptions because adoptees are often severed from their birth culture and language. And all of that has been compounded for Chinese American adoptees, many of whom have been unable to verify their date and place of birth, the names of their birth parents and how they ended up at an orphanage.

As a child, Charlotte Cotter knew that she had been adopted from an orphanage in Zhenjiang, a Chinese town famous for its black vinegar. She knew that she was 5 months old and one of about 20 babies swaddled in thick layers in the chilly orphanage nursery when she was adopted.

Ms. Cotter came to learn more years later, when she experienced something rare for Chinese American adoptees: Through Chinese social media, she was able to track down her birth parents. During a tearful, if slightly awkward, reunion in China in 2016, she was finally able to get answers to some long-burning questions.

Her birth parents, both farmers, told her that her birth was technically illegal under the family planning policies. They said that they had passed her to an intermediary, believing she would be given to a well-off military family in the area who could not have children of their own. Her birth parents said they had no idea that she had ended up in an orphanage and adopted abroad.

But meeting her birth family also raised more questions for her. One year after she was born, she learned, her parents had another child — a son — whom they kept. Why had she been the one given away? What would her life have been like if she had grown up with her birth family?

Ms. Cotter, 30, said that she had tried not to dwell on such questions and had largely come to terms with her adoption. In 2011, she co-founded a nonprofit to connect Chinese adoptees around the world. And like some other Chinese American adoptees, she has taken a special interest in China. She focused on East Asian Studies at Yale University, is now fluent in Mandarin and has traveled to China numerous times to study and lead volunteer trips.

“In everybody’s lives there are different forks where you could have gone one way or another, and sometimes you have control over them and sometimes you don’t,” Ms. Cotter said. “This one just happened to be particularly dramatic.”

Before adopting Charlotte, Brenda Cotter attended a conference in which she heard Korean American adoptees speak about the challenges of growing up in predominantly white communities in the Midwest. One adoptee, she recalled, described living in constant fear of being approached by Asian people and being deemed to be insufficiently Asian.

“It got me right in the gut,” Brenda Cotter, a retired intellectual property lawyer in Newton, Mass., said. “So we tried as hard as possible to make our children feel comfortable saying and feeling, ‘I’m 100 percent Chinese.’”

She and her wife, RuthAnn Sherman, enrolled their daughters, both adopted from China, in Chinese cultural classes. They made books for the girls making clear that they had birth families in China. They celebrated Chinese holidays like Lunar New Year as well as Christmas and Hanukkah. And they took a family trip to China so that the girls could learn more about their birth culture.

Other adoptees, however, were raised in areas where they saw few other Asians and had little access to resources or support for navigating racism, including within their own families. Some have described struggling with questions of identity as well as feelings of alienation and depression.

“Lots of people told me to go back to my country, lots of people also told me I was not Asian enough,” said Camille Wuesthoff, 28, an adoptee who was raised by white parents in suburban Florida. “But my parents were not equipped to raise a Chinese baby — they were not able to help me understand the racism and discrimination that I was experiencing.”

Finding birth parents in China was already difficult, but some adoptees worried that the end of the international adoption program would make that even harder. Under China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the country has taken a more authoritarian turn in recent years. Huihan Lie, founder of My China Roots, a company that has worked with more than 150 Chinese international adoptees hoping to track down their birth families, said that local officials who might have gone out on a limb before now had little incentive to act because of concerns about attracting unwanted attention from higher-ups.

Some adoptees want the Chinese government to apologize to its adoptee diaspora or at least acknowledge their pain and trauma. They have held out hope that China might one day begin an official investigation into the abuses within its international adoption program, as South Korea did in 2022 with its own program, which preceded China’s.

Questions remain about what will happen to the country’s orphans with medical needs. The government has acknowledged that Chinese families have traditionally been less willing to adopt children with disabilities than international families have been.

“It’s still a mind-set problem. Chinese adoptive families still want a completely healthy child,” said Ren Yan, who works at Lupin Foster Home in Shanghai, which cares for orphans with congenital diseases. “So if it ends internationally, there will be a large number of children who will be stranded in welfare homes.”

Ms. Ren said the children at her foster home mainly came from poorer provinces that lacked sufficient medical resources, such as Henan, Guizhou and Jiangxi. She estimated that half of the 100 children admitted since the home’s founding in 2011 had been adopted, nearly all by American families.

Since 2008, June Cubbage-Troop has had 11 surgeries for a cleft lip and palate. It has hardly been a hindrance. At the age of 4, she started taking gymnastics and by high school was training 25 hours a week. At Duquesne, she starts her days with 6 a.m. weight-lifting sessions.

And while her parents made it a point to expose her to Chinese culture and food growing up, she will now have the opportunity to establish her identity on her own. She has bonded with her roommate, a teammate who is also a Chinese adoptee, over makeup techniques specific to Asian features. Next on her to-do list is to join an Asian student association.

“I want to learn more about Asian culture and be around more people that look like me,” she said.

She has also set her sights farther afield. She has already found a study abroad program that will allow her to spend a summer in Guilin, the city of gentle rivers and limestone peaks where she was born.

Siyi Zhao and Zixu Wang contributed research and reporting.

Amy Qin writes about Asian American communities for The Times. More about Amy Qin

Vivian Wang is a China correspondent based in Beijing, where she writes about how the country’s global rise and ambitions are shaping the daily lives of its people. More about Vivian Wang

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CCAI Heritage Tours are dedicated to providing adoptive families and adoptees with authentic, professional, safe, and adoption-centered homeland tour experiences to help support the ever-evolving relationship between birth heritage, home heritage, and adoption identity. Coordinated by The Park, with dedicated staff in the US and China, CCAI Heritage Tours are proud to serve any and all adoptive families, no matter the agency used to facilitate their adoption.

Currently, CCAI Heritage Tours are only operating in China and serving China adoption families and adoptees. We hope to expand our Heritage Tour countries as our community and connections grow. Thank you for trusting CCAI and The Park to facilitate your Heritage Tour. We strive to make every tour a trip of a lifetime.

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The crowd favorite, our Grand Tours let you experience China’s most renowned world heritage sites in its most famous cities. Visit the Great Wall of China and Temple of Heaven in Beijing, the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’An, the Giant Panda Reserve in Chengdu, and the Li River in Guilin, while immersing in unique cultural experiences for an unforgettable panoramic view of China’s breathtaking past and present.

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Get lost in the metropolitan landscape of Shanghai, where Old China meets New and East meets West. Try Shanghai’s famous cuisine and be sure to stop by the Bund before our guide whisks you off on a tour through some of east coast China’s most best-kept-secret getaways. Luckiest of all, this tour brings travelers to the stunning peaks of Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and China’s “most poetic” mountain!

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Travel Tips

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Each tour group is divided into smaller travel groups, around 8-12 parties per group (depending on the number of travelers), each with their own tour guide. This tour group and guide will be yours for the entire tour.

We try our best to arrange groups based on the age of the adoptee travelers. Tour groups will have staggered bus departure times, sightseeing schedules, and often different restaurants for group meals.

Yes, of course!

Please make sure to email [email protected] to make any travel group requests. The earlier that you make requests, the more likely it is that they will be honored. We try our best to honor every request.

Yes, of course! Please make sure to register together under the same profile. The email address provided upon registration will be used for all Heritage Tour correspondence, so be sure to pass information on to your travel companions if they do not have access to that email.

Of course you can! Our Heritage Tour opportunities are for everyone.  Please spread the word! We would love the chance to help make your travel dreams a reality.

Certainly! If you need help with any additional trip bookings, we are happy to help.

Yes, you can, but please understand that unused tours are non-refundable and the cost of the Tour package is a fixed cost.

Please let us know in advance   of your decisions so that we can confirm your preferences with your tour guide.

$3-6 or 20-35 RMB per day per person in your party for each tour guide. It is fine to tip in either USD or RMB currency. You should plan to tip $1-3 or 7-20 RMB per day per person in your party for tour bus drivers. To make tipping easier for your family, you can tip your guide & bus driver at the end of each city on the tour. 

China no longer requires a negative PCR test to enter China.

Wearing a mask is suggested at airports and train stations. In more crowded sight-seeing areas, some people still choose to wear masks, especially elders and kids, but it is not required.  There are no more public COVID testing stations or daily requirements.

China has no specific immunization requirements for entering their country and the U.S. has no immunization requirements for re-entry. This includes no requirements for COVID immunizations.

We recommend that you ask your personal physician, a travel/immunization clinic, and/or the Center for Disease Control about any vaccinations requirement updates or suggestions.

CDC website for specific recommendations.

Each traveler will need:

• A valid passport with at least 6 months’ validity from departure date
• Obtain a Chinese tourist visa from a Chinese Embassy/Consulate prior to travel. For more detailed information on travel visas, please view our Visa Information page .

Please check your passport and the passports of each individual in your travel party to verify that all expire at least 6 months after your tour dates.

Due to the unpredictability of international travel, we highly recommend that you purchase international travel and medical emergency insurance. Visit our Tour Resources section for more information.

All of the hotels we will be staying at have in-house clinics for any mild medical needs. For anything more urgent, our guides are able to take you to the nearest hospital, if needed.

For any prescription medication, it is recommended that they be kept in their original containers in case of emergency. Make sure that you pack amounts slightly more than enough for the entire trip and have a plan for the drastic time change. For more information regarding medications in your carry-on or checked bags please visit TSA guidelines .  

Yes, all of our tour guides will try their utmost to help ensure that all meals are safe for any dietary restrictions. However, due to cultural and culinary differences in China, we cannot guarantee anything and suggest taking caution and packing snacks if food allergies are severe.

Please mention any and all food allergies, dietary needs, or health concerns on your registration form. This will help our guides better prepare.

We also have translated cards available for common allergies or physical conditions. Visit our Tour Resources section to find these under “Travel Tips”. If you would like a translated card that is not yet listed, please contact us.

For in-China flights:

• Checked luggage weight allowance: ≤ 44 lbs
• Carry-on size restrictions: 14in. x 19in. x 22in.

Plan to bring an additional $50-$100 if you are a heavy packer. You may lock your bag for in-China flights but you must leave your bag unlocked for your international flights.

For bullet train travel:

• Checked luggage weight allowance: ≤ 110 lbs.
• Carry-on weight allowance: ≤ 44 lbs.
• Carry-on size restrictions: 36in. x 36in. x 36in.

Your hotels on the trip will have laundry services available; however, with the quick speed of the trip, it can be challenging to get hotel laundry done in time. Plan on only being able to do laundry when you are staying at least 2 nights in a given city so that your clothes have ample time to dry.

Please keep in mind that hotel laundry services can be very expensive. Be sure to carefully review the laundry form provided by the hotel in regards to the price per item. There may be some opportunities to have your laundry done outside of the hotel in Chengdu and Guilin. These options could be cheaper.  Your guide will be able to notify you if this service is available. 

A $200/traveler deposit is required upon booking. This deposit is applied toward your tour total and is non-refundable except under extenuating circumstances.

Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about this deposit.

Unfortunately, we are no longer able to provide free trip coverage for adoptees traveling on a heritage tour.

Your tour fee does not cover:

• International airfares
• Passport and/or China Visa fees
• Suggested tip amount for Guide: $3-6 or 20-40RMB/day/person
• Suggested tip amount for Driver: $1.5-3 or 10-20RMB/day/person
• Additional $330 for single room occupancy in hotels
• Personal expenses, spending money
• Approximately $20-$40/person/day for any lunch & dinner
• Any optional tour excursions
• Transfers between the airport and the hotel before or after the main tour itinerary

Click here to view our 2024 Add-Ons Fee Schedule

*Please keep in mind that orphanage visits are not guaranteed and will be at the discretion of the orphanage.*

For an orphanage visit, you will need:

• Adoption Registration Certificate
• Abandonment Certificate (Chinese version)
• Printed copies of Adoption Registration Certificate, U.S. passport, and Abandonment Certificate to bring with you to China.
• Orphanage Visit Application Form (completed by CCAI in-China staff)

Yes, to everything except the orphanage visit itself. Pending approval of your Orphanage Visit Application, our guides can contact the orphanage for you, but the go/no go decision is ultimately up to the orphanage. 

Your Orphanage City Tour costs (including hotels, flights/trains, transportation, guide services, etc.) will be calculated specifically for your trip.

Yes! You can take a day trip to visit your/your child’s orphanage in Shanghai, Suzhou, or Hangzhou while the group is traveling in each particular city. The additional cost of this would be approximately $200-$500 per family per orphanage visit.

• Day 1: Fly into the capital city of your birth province. Get settled and acquainted with the area.
• Day 2: Drive to birth city/town, visit the orphanage, visit foster parents and finding spot (if information is available), stay overnight in the birth city or travel back to the provincial capital
• Day 3: Free day or sightseeing before flying either to join the main tour OR to fly back to the U.S.

Yes, this we are happy to plan a Birth Province & Orphanage Tour itinerary for whatever length you would like! Additional costs will be communicated accordingly.

Yes, this is possible in most cases. Please be sure to note this on your registration form  and we will work with you to make sure we understand all of your needs.

Although gifts are not required as part of the orphanage visit, if you would like to bring a gift, you can consider bringing small toys or school/art supplies for the children. You may also consider inquiring with the orphanage about any specific needs they may have. If you would like, you can purchase what is needed in China.

Gifts/donations are strictly optional. 

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Trans-Siberian Vacation Packages

Trans-Siberian rail journey is literally the adventure of a lifetime. You embark on the train and discover the most extended rail in the world together with fellow travelers and professional guides. Despite all the romantic vibes and calls for adventure, this trip requires careful planning and preparations. Usually, the journey is for at least 14 days, and it might be challenging to book all accommodations, guiding tours, train tickets on your own without knowing the local language. Our team of experienced destination specialists knows all ins and outs of Trans-Siberian journeys, speaks Russian, and has all the tools to create the perfect itinerary. The Trans-Siberian journey is a gorgeous and unique destination worth exploring and enjoying in full. Let's start to plan?

Things To Do & Places To See in China.

Don't miss out on any important sights & experiences in China.

The Trans-Siberian rail goes through many tine villages and towns, located in Russia, China, and Mongolia. Check the best Chinese highlights to include the best to your mind in your itinerary.

• Exploring Tiananmen Square
• The Forbidden City
• Visit to the Great Wall of China
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• Most renowned Beijing landmarks
• The National Museum of China
• The House of People's Meetings
• The Summer Palace
• Silk Store visiting

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Enjoy your Trans-Siberian journey with top tips from our dedicated specialists.

What to pack

Be sure you take comfortable shoes since, during the Trans-Siberian journey, you will have plenty of walking tours.

The Chinese currency is Yuan, and it's better to exchange some money before your departure to avoid high fees.

How much to tip

In Asian countries, tips are not widespread, and nobody is waiting for them. In case you liked the service, the amount of bonuses is up to you.

When to travel

We have tours during all seasons but recommend you to check the weather forecast before your planning departure to be sure the temperature level is alright.

During your Trans-Siberian journey, you'll change many climates. The Chinese one is warm in Summer, around 30°C (86°F), and average, and cold in winter - approx -13°C (8°F).

China is famous for craft goods, silk products, jewelry, green tea, spirits, and chopsticks. Choose the most impressive souvenir to have good memories from your adventure.

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Thank you, Firebird Tours for your arrangements. The trip ran very smoothly, with no issues. Your agents were always responsive before and during the trip. The guides and drivers were excellent, always on time, knowledgeable and friendly. Great job, and I highly recommend you.

Thanks a lot for your service!

The guides and drivers were simply the best. Speaking of the guided city tours included in the program, I enjoyed them a lot. But I also realized that next time I'd like to spend more time in some places, so I consider opting for a customized itinerary in the future! Thanks a lot for your service!

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All in all, we had a great time thanks to you and our excellent guides. The trip went like clockwork and we met some great people. Thanks a lot!

Had a very nice time!

I had a very nice time during the entire Transiberian journey and I'm especially grateful to you for taking care of my vegetarian meal preference. Undoubtedly, would recommend the trip to all my friends. All the Best.

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I was very impressed with the program. I only wish I had more time in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Irkutsk, and Listvyanka!!!! Thank you for your great care and service!!!!

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• Guided tour

Old Arbat District: the Art Quarter

• Description
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Holidays are bright and colourful, we all love them because they form a ray of light amongst the grey monotony of the daily grind. Arbat is a real street-holiday, where it is always noisy and fun: people meet, walk, watch the performances of talented street artists with clowns, singers and dancers strutting their stuff. Right on the pavement, artists proudly exhibit their works.

There is a very special atmosphere here that has long attracted representatives of the creative intelligentsia. L. Tolstoy and S. Yesenin, A. Pushkin and his young wife N. Goncharov, A. Blok and B. Pasternak are fondly remembered by the hallowed paving stones along Arbat. It is of no surprise that the heroes of the famous novel ‘War and Peace’ were ‘registered’.

We would like to invite you to take a walk with us along the historic Old Arbat! We will talk about the history and architecture of the most romantic street in Moscow.

• You will hear a lot of interesting facts about the grand houses that were located here and their wealthy residents.
• You will learn how a once inexpensive inn for carriage drivers has since turned into one of the best restaurants in the capital!
• You will see the famous house where A. Pushkin and N. Goncharova spent their honeymoon and stand at the wall dedicated to the memory of post punk/new wave icon Viktor
• You will be carried away down the beautiful side streets such as: Bolshaya Afanasyevsky, Nikolopeskovsky, Filippovsky, Krivoarbatsky. In a bygone era, these streets were part of Arbat and were bustling with its spirit.

B.Okudzhava dedicated some of his lyrical poems to Arbat, his favourite street from childhood. A. Rybakov, author of the famous novel ‘Children of the Arbat’ also lived here. There is also a little corner of Bulgakov's Moscow on Arbat - the former Torgsin store (now the ‘The Seventh Continent’), where the novel ‘The Master and Margarita’ unfolded.

Every house on Arbat is a piece of history, and we will dive into this history head first.

The cost of an excursion with a personal guide for 1 person

Meeting point. We'll pick you up at your hotel

Arbatskaya Square

The Porokhovschikov House

"Praga" Restaurant

Alexander Pushkin memorial apartment

Vakhtangov Theatre

Old-time mansions

The Melnikov House

End of tour

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• Excursion Old Arbat District: the Art Quarter
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