The Winter Camp China Tour 2004, I found this to be an exciting group tour where I was part of a group of 18 young Chinese New Zealanders all unknown to each other, where we bonded together in a period of 4 weeks to find and hunt down our Chinese ances~'al background and to discover more about who we are and where our family roots lie.  This report will outline specific parts of the tour where I found extremely fun and other areas that could possibly be improved for future tours. I hope this report will help for future planning. I think this is a valuable opportunity for Chinese-New Zealanders and hope this tour carries on for other New Zealanders to fred out more about themselves.  Foshan, I have many great memories of this city, as it was the frrst Chinese city we visited there were a lot of culture shocks here-hence the memories. Kung Fu would be the biggest memory here, I had an awesome time learning this art, I did not realise that the "training" would be so serious and intense at times. Even though I enjoyed the kung ill, I think that there was too much training, especially on the days where we were practicing about 6hours a day. We were in Foshan for just under a week and I feel that we did not get a proper look at the city, the only time we got to look around was at nighttime after dinner and by this time most of us were exhausted from the training.  We were told that we were going to learn Cantonese and Mandarin and I was very disappointed with these lessons. For both languages we only had one lesson each and were left at that. The Cantonese lessons were very unstructured and everyone was talking over each other, the teachers (government officials) confused us by writing up Chinese characters (that no one knew how to read) and could not write them in English, at times the students that knew a little bit of Cantonese were helping the ones that could not. The Mandarin lessons were slightly more structured. Over all I feel that we needed more Chinese lessons- with Cantonese so everyone could communicate basically with people in their village and mandarin because we spent a lot of our time in mandarin speaking cities.
Going back to my village was great, I was lucky enough to have a family friend that took me back to both my parents village and show me around the whole neighbourhood, I had about 1 V~2hours to look around, I would have liked more time here. I noticed that some people were rushed around their village- only given 20 minutes and thought th/s was very unfair. Going back to our village was one of the main reasons we all decided to go on the trip and to be rushed around is not fair, there was one instance where we were rushing through villages because government officials wanted us to hurry up and some of them wanted to see a Chinese spacecmt~ that had been to the moon before it closed, so they cut half the village tour short and dragged some of the tour party to see the spacecraft- this was unscheduled and no one was interested, the village was more important but the officials did not see that. I know it is time cousummg but it would be nice tO,have spent at least haifa day in the village.
I think time allocation in the cities could have been arranged better. Guangzhou was one
city were we did not get a good look, there seemed to be lots to the city but we did not get
one free day here, either we should have had more days or some of the sight seeing spots
could have been left out- especially Sun Yet Sin, I unfortunately found this to be slightly
boring, I think this is because I did not do any research prior, but mainly I did not know
anything about the Chinese history and what I saw I did not understand or did not have an
interest. We needed more time in Hong Kong, this is such a wonderful place, and yes I
have to say and I know I did not go on the tour to shop but it is part oftbe experience and to travel such a long way shopping should be included. We only had I ~ days in Hong Kong and it was felt by many that this was not enough time to experience the full Hong Kong atmosphere. Ill were allowed to shuffle some of the days around I would have left Beijing a few days early and had more time in Hong Kong.  I enjoyed the sightseeing, but I must admit at times visiting all the temples became quite boring and they all started to look the same, no disrespect to the Chinese history but I think visiting a couple of the main temples would have been sufficient. The Great Wall of China was my favourha sightseeing spot- to see this wonderful part of hiatory with my own eyes brought a slrange feeling to my body.
Overall I think we needed more free time, especially in the cities that were mentioned above. Looking back out of four weeks, we only had six and a half firee days, a few more free days would have made some of our visits to some cities less rushed and that we would have felt that we made the most of our stay in the city.  I had a fantastic time on tour, I think it is a wonderful idea to take back Chinese-New Zealandem such as myself back to where our ancestors came from, because all I knew was die New Zealand way of life and did not understand or have a great interest in my Chinese background until I went back to my village. Going back to my Mum and Dad's village was the highlight of the tour for me- 1 could not wipe the smile offmy face and I think I was lucky enough to do it in "Chinese style"- on the back of a motorbike with no helmet. I have now come back to New Zealand with a different view on my culture, deflaitely with a lot more knowledge, respect and I am now more proud of my Chinese background. As well as visiting China a reason for going on tour was to meet Chinese New Zealandars 1 kc myself, I have grown up in an area where my family was the only Chinese family and did not associate myself with other Chinese. It is nice to meet others with similar backgrounds as myself, I have met SOme wonderful people on this trip and they did make up over hulf the fun on tour, I now have 17 new friends.
Amanda Dong