Olivia,
We are back home adjusting to our 15 hour jet lag after our wonderful trip to China.
All the arrangements that you made for us worked out perfectly.  All were very enjoyable, with one exception.  I have attached a picture of our view of China on the train from Shanghai to Beijing.  Unfortunately, our seats were in the first row, the only row on the train with no windows (see picture).  But, I am told that one cannot request seats when tickets are purchased.
The hotels were all very nice, especially the Shanghai Seventh Heaven right on Nanjing Road and the view from our room at Lupinglou was fabulous (see picture).  The Suzhou Garden hotel was beautiful and just across the street from Lingering Garden and a moderate walk from an ancient market street catering to tourists with several restaurants.  But the hotels in Nanjing, Beijing, and Hangzhou were not within reasonable walking distance of restaurants nor evening markets.  West Lake was extremely crowded during the daytime and it would have been nice to have a hotel within walking distance of the lake so that one could walk around early in the morning or evening without the tour bus crowds (see picture).
The guides were very knowledgeable and very nice people.  We became good friends with Eddie in Beijing, Stanley in Suzhou and Shanghai, and Nick, the local guide in Huangshan and continue to keep in touch with them.  I am sorry that we were not able to meet you
We were very surprised by the extremely large number of tourists and tour busses in China.  We had no idea that the tourism industry is so large in China.  Typically, there were at least 50 tour groups at the Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum in Nanjing (see picture).  We spent hours in traffic around West Lake on the weekend.  Fortunately, in Huangshan, we were ascending the mountain when hundreds in the tour groups were waiting hours to descend in the afternoon and we were descending in the morning when the tour groups were in lines to ascend.  Your China today is certainly a very different China as compared to the China that we knew from 1940's to the 1980's.
Thank you for a job very well done.
Chuck & Sandy Burton