The people on the ground

Meet the licensed guides who run your trip

Every JoyoTour guide is a licensed national guide whose English was tested at interview, and each city uses a locally based specialist rather than one escort following you nationwide.

The short version

Every JoyoTour guide holds a Chinese national guide licence and was interviewed in English before joining. Each city uses a local specialist — a Beijing historian, a Sichuan food writer, a Tibetan guide in Lhasa — rather than one escort travelling the whole route with you.

The roster

The watchtowers of the Great Wall climbing a forested Beijing ridge at dusk

Beijing

Zhang Wei

National Tour Guide Certificate, English

★★★★★4.9214 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin

Zhang Wei grew up in a hutong ten minutes' walk from the Drum Tower, and he still starts most Beijing days there, before the crowds, when the lane smells of fried dough and soy milk. He has walked the Great Wall more than 300 times and keeps a hand-drawn map of which stretches are restored, which are not, and which justify an extra hour of driving. Guests tend to remember that he explains a Ming emperor's decision by first describing what the weather was doing that year.

We had seen the wall in pictures; Zhang Wei took us to a stretch where we were the only people for two hours.

Sarah M., United Kingdom
  • Imperial Beijing: the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and hutong courtyards
  • Unrestored Great Wall stretches: Jinshanling, Gubeikou and Jiankou
  • Ming and Qing history explained through buildings rather than dates
  • Photography timing — empty courtyards at opening, wall sections at golden hour
Shanghai's skyline lit up along the river at blue hour, seen from the Bund

Shanghai

Chen Jing

National Tour Guide Certificate, English

★★★★★4.8168 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin
  • Shanghainese

Chen Jing spent seven years in corporate hospitality before she sat the guide exam, and it shows: she runs Shanghai as a schedule rather than a sightseeing list. She can move a family through the Bund, the Shanghai Museum and a 1930s apartment block before lunch without anyone feeling hurried. Shanghainese is her home language, and she will happily translate what the aunties at the market are really saying about you.

Eleven factory visits in four days, and she still found us a table at 9pm on a Friday. Quite extraordinary.

Klaus H., Germany
  • Business and incentive travel: factory visits, showroom days and tight schedules
  • Shanghai architecture: Bund concession buildings, Art Deco lanes and shikumen housing
  • Museum strategy — the Shanghai Museum, West Bund and the Power Station of Art
  • Booking the right dining room at the right hour
Steaming bamboo baskets of dim sum and small plates laid out on a restaurant table

Chengdu

Wang Fang

National Tour Guide Certificate, English

★★★★★5.0132 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin

Wang Fang trained as a chef before she became a guide, and it shows when she reads a menu in thirty seconds and orders the dish the kitchen is actually proud of. Her Chengdu mornings start at a market by 07:00 and end at a hotpot table she booked three days earlier. She is also firm about chilli tolerance: she asks once, remembers, and never lets a guest sit through a dish they cannot finish.

She ordered for us for nine days and not one dish was wrong, including the one my son would eat.

Elena R., Spain
  • Sichuan cooking: market-to-table mornings, hotpot and street snacks
  • Managing chilli tolerance for mixed groups, children and first-timers
  • Chengdu teahouse culture and the etiquette of a mahjong table
  • Restaurant booking strategy at peak hours
Close-up of a terracotta warrior's face and carved armour inside the excavation pit

Xi'an

Liu Yun

National Tour Guide Certificate, English

★★★★★4.9276 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin
  • Japanese

Liu Yun worked two field seasons on an excavation team outside Xi'an before he ever led a tour, and he still carries a small trowel in his day bag in case someone asks what the soil looks like. He presents the Terracotta Army as an industrial project — kilns, quotas, quality control — rather than a miracle. Fifteen years in, he is the guide other Xi'an guides call when a museum curator comes to town.

He explained the army as a production line, not a legend. Our teenagers asked questions for two hours straight.

David K., Australia
  • The Terracotta Army: pit layout, kiln technology and the live excavation
  • Han and Tang Xi'an: the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, the Muslim Quarter and the city wall
  • Silk Road overland routing from Xi'an through to Dunhuang
  • Museum days at the Shaanxi History Museum without the queues
Prayer flags and white-walled monastery buildings on a hillside under the Tibetan sky

Lhasa, Tibet

Tsering Dorje

National Tour Guide Certificate, English and Tibetan

★★★★★4.9156 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin
  • Tibetan

Tsering Dorje was born in a village two hours from Lhasa, entered a monastery at thirteen and left at twenty-two, so he explains Tibetan Buddhism the way practitioners live it: what a full prostration costs, why you always walk clockwise, which chapels close on which days. He is also the most practical guide on the plateau. He carries oxygen, watches your walking pace, and will cut a visit short if your saturation drops.

At 5,200 metres he checked my oxygen, slowed the group down, and never once made me feel like a burden.

Marie L., France
  • Tibetan Buddhism: the Potala, the Jokhang, and the debate courtyards of Sera and Drepung
  • Monastery etiquette: circumambulation, offerings and where photography is forbidden
  • Altitude pacing and acclimatisation for guests over 50
  • Tibet travel permits and overland routes to Everest Base Camp
Tall sandstone pillars rising through mist in the Wulingyuan quartzite forest

Zhangjiajie

Yang Lei

National Tour Guide Certificate, English

★★★★★4.764 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin

Yang Lei is the youngest guide on our roster and the one most likely to wake you at 05:20 for a sunrise the forecast nearly missed. He has walked every marked trail in Wulingyuan and three unmarked ones his grandfather showed him. Guests book him for the pillars, but what they remember is the quiet: he knows six viewpoints that tour buses cannot physically reach.

He got us to a viewpoint before sunrise and we stood there alone for forty minutes. Worth the 5am alarm.

Tom B., New Zealand
  • Zhangjiajie pillar viewpoints and how the light changes by season
  • Multi-day hiking: Golden Whip Stream, Tianzi Mountain and the glass bridge
  • Drone regulations and photography permits inside national parks
  • Wulingyuan back routes that tour buses cannot reach
Karst peaks and rice paddies along a quiet country road outside Yangshuo

Yangshuo, Guangxi

Zhao Min

National Tour Guide Certificate, English

★★★★★4.8118 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin
  • Cantonese

Zhao Min has cycled the road from Yangshuo to Fuli more than two hundred times and still slows at the same bend. She sets the pace by the slowest rider in the group, never the fastest, and in ten years she has never lost anyone. Off the bike she is a working photographer — her karst landscapes hang in two Guilin cafés — so she tells you where to stand and when to stop fussing with the tripod.

Thirty-two kilometres at the pace of my eleven-year-old, and she never once made her feel slow.

Rachel P., Canada
  • Karst cycling: Yangshuo, Fuli and the Li River back roads
  • Timing bamboo-raft trips on the Li and Yulong rivers
  • Landscape photography: composition, light and tripod positions
  • Cormorant fishing and rural market mornings
Willow trees and a stone bridge on the shore of West Lake in Hangzhou

Hangzhou

Huang Zhiqiang

National Tour Guide Certificate, English and French

★★★★★5.0241 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin
  • French

Huang Zhiqiang has picked spring tea in the hills west of West Lake for eighteen years and still buys his own leaves from two grower families he has known since 2007. He plans a Hangzhou day in cups of tea rather than in sights. He is also our most experienced guide by a wide margin: more than 300 itineraries run, and he has never once arrived late.

Eighteen years of tea and he still talks about it like the harvest was yesterday. Our best day in China.

Anneke V., Netherlands
  • Longjing tea: picking seasons, pan-firing and tasting by grade
  • West Lake on foot — the quieter north shore and the temple paths
  • Silk, Song-dynasty Hangzhou and the Grand Canal
  • Slow-travel pacing for guests over 60
A giant panda chewing bamboo inside a wooded Sichuan enclosure

Wolong, Sichuan

Lin Xiaoyu

National Tour Guide Certificate, English

★★★★★4.9187 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin

Lin Xiaoyu studied wildlife biology and spent a year as a keeper assistant before she started guiding, so she talks about pandas as animals rather than mascots, including what twelve hours of bamboo does to a digestive system. She runs volunteer days with the timing of someone who has cleaned enclosures at 06:00. Children adore her, largely because her supply of panda facts survives a four-hour car ride.

Our daughter asked forty questions and Lin Xiaoyu answered every one. We learned more in four hours than a week.

Michael T., United States
  • Giant panda behaviour, diet and conservation status
  • Volunteer programme days at Dujiangyan and Bifengxia
  • Family pacing: short walks, hands-on stops and snack timing
  • Sichuan wildlife beyond pandas: takin, red panda and bamboo forest
A harbour skyline of residential towers and hills at the mouth of the Pearl River delta

Guangzhou

Zheng Jiaqi

National Tour Guide Certificate, English and Cantonese

★★★★★4.8143 reviews

  • English
  • Mandarin
  • Cantonese

Zheng Jiaqi has two children of her own and plans on the assumption that someone under ten will be finished by 14:00, so every family day carries a hard stop, a playground and a meal option that is not spicy. Cantonese is her first language, which turns dim sum mornings into a lesson in what you are actually ordering. She has yet to meet a three-generation group she could not organise.

Nine of us, aged six to seventy-eight, and nobody once said they were bored. That never happens.

Priya S., Singapore
  • Family itineraries: hard stops, playgrounds and non-spicy fallback meals
  • Cantonese dim sum and Pearl River Delta food culture
  • Guangzhou and Shenzhen orientation for first-time visitors
  • Multi-generational groups travelling with grandparents

How our guiding works

Licensed, not freelanceEvery guide holds a national licence and carries it while working.
Local by cityA Shanghai guide for Shanghai. You get a new specialist in every region.
English testedInterviewed in English, then observed on a live tour before they lead alone.
Accessible after hoursYour guide's number plus the 24/7 Beijing line, for anything at all.
No shopping commissionGuides are salaried. There is no financial reason to take you to a shop.
Matched to your groupTravelling with children or grandparents? We assign the vehicle accordingly.

Frequently asked questions

Are your guides licensed?

Every JoyoTour guide holds a National Tour Guide Certificate and carries it at work; we employ 10 guides directly and subcontract none. Licences are re-registered annually by the provincial tourism bureau, and we publish each guide's licence details.

How good is their English?

Our guides work in fluent, idiomatic English, and six of the ten also speak a third language, including Cantonese, Tibetan, Japanese and French. Specialist vocabulary — Buddhist terms, archaeology, tea grades — is something we test before hiring.

Will I have the same guide for the whole trip?

On single-city trips, yes: one guide from arrival to departure. On journeys of three or more cities you get a local specialist in each, coordinated by one planner in our office, because no guide knows six cities equally well.

Should I tip my guide and driver?

Tipping is not expected in China and nobody will ask, but it is welcome. Our guideline is US$8–12 per traveller per day for the guide and US$4–6 for the driver, handed over in cash at the end of the trip.

Can I request a specific guide?

Yes. Name the guide when you book and we hold them if they are free; about 40% of our repeat guests do this. If your choice is already booked, we propose an alternative with the same specialism and send their profile first.

Are guides available early in the morning or at night?

Early starts are free — we run 05:00 Great Wall and sunrise departures regularly. Guiding after 20:00 costs US$25 an hour. Overnight or 24-hour guide availability can be arranged for photography and filming trips, quoted separately.

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