It has been about 15 years, so I'm sure things have changed. But here goes. My wife and I got cheap tickets to Beijing. This was before the internet, so I made a few calls to the NY Consulate. I was assured arrangements for tours would be "no problem". Having no clue, we booked a room at the Intercontinental. (It was pretty dated but had an amusing mix of guests.) We landed in Beijing and got to the hotel. Somehow we went to the Jiang guo? Hotel which had a tourist office. Apparently the tourist offices are government run to keep track of us foriegners. Within 1 hour we had all our arrangements laid out. We could have gone anywhere at reasonable rates. We did an overnight trip to Xian. They gave us a guide and driver and the price was right. The travel desk also lined up all the city and Great Wall tours we took. I had a good city map and we did a little exploring of our own in Beijing. Watch out for pickpockets especially coming out of any evening shows! Sorry, this is probably totally dated. But the lesson we learned was that arrangements were "no problem." Have fun.