Perhaps the remarks need to be re-read, since most of this is moot, and there's anyway no claim of illegality (a term anyway of little use in China), merely impropriety.

The argument is with the pace and content of tours being driven by such considerations, and tourists being hustled into the sideshows (and restaurants, hotels, gift shops) that make the highest bids. This isn't some regulated 'standard agency commission', and the incautious tourist loses out on every front.

Peter N-H
http://www.datasinica.com

I would imagine a state owned sight administrator could get
kick backs from tour operators by telling them if they didn't pay
they would be banned from the sight for some type of safety
violation or other made up reason.

I think for the subway, you left out a decimal point. It's about US $0.30/ride on the subway as it's 2 RMB to go anywhere in Beijing except the airport. That's DIRT CHEAP! ^ The subway's got English signs and there are English maps.

I just got back from my 1.5 week trip to Beijing and Shanghai and for Beijing, I took a single tour from grayline.com that went to the Great Wall at Badaling and the Ming Tombs. Of course, the tour also stopped at a jade factory (not surprising given what my guidebooks said) and inline w/your statements. Amongst all 3 tours took (2 in Shanghai), I recall also going to a cloisonné factory and a pearl retailer, also no surprise.

I visited Tian'an Men Square, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace all on my own, mostly via subway or foot (hotel was near the 1st two locations). I had to take a taxi from the Summer Palace's closest subway/light rail since it's too far to walk.

FWIW, I did appreciate some of the insights my guides gave and the buildings that they pointed out along the way. My Gray Line guide for my single Beijing tour was excellent and a really nice guy.

On a side note, after having been to the places myself, I think some tours try to cram WAY too much in one day, leaving you little time. For instance, grayline.com has the tour "02 CLASSIC BEIJING - FORBIDDEN CITY, TIANANMEN SQUARE, TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, AND SUMMER PALACE".

Sure you'd get to see the major sites, but that's a little crazy IMHO. I spent ~5 hours at the Forbidden City and didn't look at anything that carefully. Chinese art history buffs (I'm definitely NOT one) could spend an entire day or more there.

The Summer Palace can take all afternoon on a hot day given the long stairway climbs and the length of the long corridor.

To the OP, my English is excellent, but Mandarin is poor and I can't read/write Chinese worth beans. Cantonese is (not surprisingly) useless in Beijing and Shanghai. I got around more/less ok. If you have the addresses and locations written down in Chinese (even if it's just on a map), that should be good enough. If it's translitered into English, I found that it was useless for every taxi driver.

There's an unfortunate tendency to take Gray Line tours in Beijing presumably because it is assumed that a familiar foreign name will provide something of reliable quality. But the tours are monstrously priced, still include shopping stops as mentioned, and have the added disadvantage that the guide's drivel is in English so you can understand it.

Almost every hotel in Beijing offers tours to one destination or another, although this often only means finding a taxi for you and adding a large mark-up; or at some you may be in a minibus with other hotel guests, have an English-speaking guide and be given lunch. Prices vary wildly, but can be a much as ¥700 per person to the nearest site at Ba Da Ling, less as numbers increase.

Tours to the same site on big buses from companies like Grey Line cost around ¥350 and still include a tedious shopping stop at a jade factory at which you should purchase nothing at all (unless value-for-money is absolutely no object).

A private tour from a Beijing agency in car or minivan with English-speaking guide and lunch included will be ¥350 and up per person (¥420 and up for the Jin Shan Lin to Simatai walk).

Budget hotels offer trips for around ¥180-200 in their own minibuses (usually Mutianyu or Simatai, so just two or three in a taxi will be cheaper), but ordinary Chinese tour buses will get you to Ba Da Ling for around ¥160, to Juyong Guan for ¥125, and to Mutianyu for ¥100, all including entrance fees, and a visit to the Ming Tombs or Hongluo Si, and no shopping shenanigans. So that's less than half the price of Gray Line, and without the time-wasting shopping 'opportunity'.

But Ba Da Ling and its neighbours can be reached for as little as ¥12 or less one-way by aircon express buses that leave every ten minutes or so, and give you all day at the Wall if you want it before costing you only ¥12 to get back. That's real Beijing pricing, although it can be done still cheaper on a regular bus.

Surely some mistake? Bei Gong Men station is directly outside the palace's north gate.

Peter N-H
http://www.datasinica.com

A friend and I used the Beijing offices of Cox and Kings (a UK company with a major US office) for a tour. My friend has had several other tours of Beijing and said that they were so much better than the other tours that he had that it wasnt even the same type of tour. They have been a luxury tour operator since the 1700s. They did a really outstanding job. Not cheap but absolutely first rate.