First time in China / Beijing. Hire a guide or not ?
 

I will be traveling to Beijing with my wife in September. This will be our first time in China and we are debating the need to have a guide for our 5 days in Beijing.

Your thoughts, feedback, advice and anecdotes are all appreciated.

depends ?
 

It depends, there are some very good comments/ideas on this FT china forum.

If your on the frugal side, then maybe not. If you can't speak chinese, then it may help to hire one for a few days. Some hotel concierge's are great, just do not use the 2nd shift ones at the cheap hotels. & expect the 5 star pre-planned hotel tours to be overpriced by double.

China is a money worship society, leverage that to get a good guide & if its a poor guide let the wife select another one the next day.

Please search this forum using the term "guide" and you will discover our collective opinion. If you don't fancy doing this, the short answer is "no".

See:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...t-threads.html

Then look for post 12 for "tours"

Here's post # 12: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16201074-post12.html :D