Dear Christine, Thanks for your e-mail. I'm glad to say that we had a good holiday in China thanks to your arrangements. Our tour guide John (Beijing) and Sunny (Xian) were both very good. Their English was excellent and we had no trouble understanding and communicating with them. John was extremely helpful when it came to making lunch arrangements for us so that we could try authentic local Beijing food. He was able to make the ordering and seating very simple for us even though the restaurant was very crowded and busy. We really appreciated this. On our final evening at Xian, Sunny and the driver offered to wait for us to finish our dumpling dinner so that they could take us back to the hotel, knowing that it would be very difficult to find taxis during the rush hour. We appreciated that very much as well. All the drivers were also good.