Six remarkable visits to China since June 2000 have taken me through many of China's beautiful and historic regions. How can I describe the magnificence and exhilaration of my visits to Beijing, Kaifeng, Luoyang, Yichang, Qingdao, Qufu, Ta'an and Tai-Shan, Shaolin, the Three Gorges, Xi'an, Guilin, Guiyang, Guizhou Province, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai? Best by saying it was a privilege for me to share these journeys with you as tour creator and Scholar-In-Residence.

Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 08:47:18 -0400 • Dear Joy, I often think about the wonderful time I had on our trip to China. Our guides were excellent. Fine hotels and great Chinese food. Fun shows, too. Thanks to everyone for a beautifully planned trip - even the weather cooperated. I feel so fortunate for this great experience. (I was especially fascinated by Shanghai, its history, architecture and ambience.) Thanks again. Sincerely, Roz Sedlezky, Sarasota

Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:17:15 EDT • I had a wonderful time and I am thrilled that I actually went and that I did it with you and your arrangements. I have beautiful memories of all the places we went to and of the guides and your singing on the way to Kehillat Beijing and of the delicious oily vegetables, etc. My cholesterol levels dropped, probably from little meat and more walking, and my other blood tests came out perfect, I'm sure, due to the trip. My photos are fun to watch and I'm still unsure of all the labels I should be putting on, but each and every day was delightful and full of discoveries. You are an inspiration that we should pursue our curiosities and learn all we can of a foreign culture. Thanks so much for everything. Welcome home and have a peaceful, happy pesach. Fondly, Linda Borsykowsky, New York

Our scenic group visits the scenic tea plantations of Guilin!
|

Temple Beth El of Boca Raton's Jewish Discovery of China Tour, Summer 2001
Photos ©2001 Joy Katzen-Guthrie & Regent China Tours. All Rights Reserved

Amazing Experiences

We have experienced the 5,000-year-old history of this land and its many nationalities and the millenium or more of history of the Jews in China, who are known to have lived in China since at least the 8th century and may have existed there as early as several centuries before the common era. For thousands of years, traders, adventurers, and refugees traveled the thousands of miles of the Silk Road between the Mediterranean and China or rode ship into Chinese ports. Jewish refugees from Europe during the Holocaust were welcomed within China, which today remains one of the only nations in the world that has never persecuted Jews for their faith.

These visits to China have been a life-changing experience for me, and I know they will be for you as well. Each tour is a means of discovering how people overcome seemingly unbreakable barriers to create lifelong friendships. We too create friendships with the Jewish communities of Beijing and Shanghai and with the Chinese. We visit magnificent buildings designed by Sephardic Jewish entrepreneurs from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, walk where Ashkenazic Jews fleeing persecution in Russia, Poland, and the Baltic States built a flourishing presence. We visit the memorial to some 20,000 Jews from Nazi Germany, Austria, and Nazi-occupied countries who found shelter in Shanghai's Hongkou Ghetto and walk today's busy alleys and thoroughfares where "stateless" refugees, who left Germany and Austria with their citizenship revoked by Nazi Germany, once formed a thriving ghetto community that came to be known as "Little Vienna."

In addition to creating and serving as Scholar-In-Residence on these Jewish Heritage Tours of China, I have continued to create these tours for individuals, families, and groups of all sizes. I maintain friendships with many in China as well as those with whom I had the joy to travel. My appreciation of China has led me to continuous study of the religious philosophies and cultures of Asia, including Taoism, Confucism, Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and other faiths of Asia. I now share a bond with individuals from around the world who have been to and loved China - some of whom, like myself, have returned again and again. I look forward to leading groups into the heart of the Northern and Southern Silk Roads, within inland and coastal communities where Jews thrived, and into remote regions inhabited by peoples who live untouched by the world surrounding them.

I hope you will want to see China through these kinds of unique and lasting discoveries. If so, we have the chance to travel together. My deepest thanks to all who have expressed their enjoyment of this site and what it has meant to them in planning their travels and gaining a better understanding of the Chinese people as well as their connection to the Jewish community.

The tour pages of this site remain as a resource to you. Online Photographic tours that were on the site previously are being converted to beautiful slide shows that will make it much easier for you to access and navigate the site. They are located in the Tour Gallery of the site, which now contains several first slide shows while many more are being created. Links, history, tour recollections, and testimonials are easy to locate.

Joy Katzen-Guthrie

Click to Visit Traveler Comments & TESTIMONIALS
Click to Visit Joy's Spectacular Gallery of PHOTOGRAPHS FROM CHINA
Click to Visit Joy's Compilation of CHINA'S JEWISH HERITAGE
Click to Read Joy's TOUR RETROSPECTIVES
Click to Visit Joy's Compilation of JEWISH CHINA RESOURCES
Click to Read about Heritage Tour Scholar-In-Residence Joy Katzen-Guthrie.
Click to Read What Is Extraordinary About Regent China Travel?
Click for any additional information or questions about this tour or any of our tours to China