Published on Dec, 2023
Today, as a New Year's gift to our college's international students, and foreign professors, the Zhejiang College of Finance hosted a day at the Hangzhou Grand Canal site and environs. We were especially blessed to have as our guide for today's sojourn: Taylor Jin of Taylor-Made Tours.
Taylor is an erudite guide, full of captivating knowledge and interesting anecdotes about the history and importance of the Grand Canal in both China's history, and in particular its relevance to the development of Hangzhou as an important city for commerce and trade throughout China's history.
Taylor arranged our visits to the Museum of the Grand Canal; the surrounding "ancient" port area of Hangzhou, and a Qing-Dynasty residential area nearby; the Museum of Swords and Scissors; and the highlight of our day, the Hangzhou Workmanship Demonstration Pavilion, where we were given an interesting workshop about Chopsticks and were shown how to decorate our own chopsticks with an ancient technique involving burning a design onto the bamboo sticks. We all came away with a beautiful, and useful souvenir of our day.
Taylor is a truly knowledgeable guide whose spoken English is very good, and whose explanations of what we were seeing were captivating.
As an experienced guide myself; I once ran my own tour company in Houston, Texas; I can honestly say that Taylor is a consummate professional with the interests and feelings of his clients at heart. He was a truly wonderful guide, and a great day was had by all.