Danling Cai was born and raised in Beijing, China. She and her family have lived in Minnesota since 1987. She has worked in the international adoption field for the last decade, and has built very strong professional relationships with officials at all levels in China. In the last few years Danling has been closely involved in the heritage tours with adoptive families from China.

Her rich knowledge about China and its children, her many years of adoption experience, and her professional relationships in China have enabled these tours to be a good mix of cultural exposure, sightseeing, as well as allowing families like yours to connect the red thread of adoption.

Not only does Danling watch over the everyday happenings while back in her office in Minnesota, she also personally accompanies every travel group that goes to China. She believes strongly in the need to personally oversee every detail during the trip to make sure that every group receives the highest quality of care possible. This is also the reason why our travel dates never overlap!

Danling has made it her life’s work to assist adoptive families. From her many years of placing children with parents, she feels a strong attachment and a sense of responsibility to these families. It is her hope that she will be able to support and encourage adopted children throughout their lives as they grow into adulthood.

Given this mission, it is the services in Red Thread Tours & Services that makes our travel business so unique and personal. Danling strives to instill in every child a sense of pride in their Chinese heritage, and this comes from a series of experiences and gradual unfolding of their understanding of China. It is also her goal to educate the adopting parents to better understand all aspects of their Chinese roots so that they can better support their children’s emotional needs.

Danling and the entire RTTS staff take great pride in knowing that we put the feelings of the children first and not just the mechanics of moving everyone along on a sightseeing tour.

We truly believe (and so do our previous families!) that heritage homeland tours are best taken as a group. It allows the children to bond and form new relationships during the trip, which enhances every aspect of their homeland visit. Furthermore, having companionship on the trip reinforces the fact that, while being unique and special, they are not alone in being a Chinese child adopted by a loving forever family.

We have numerous tour packages ranging from our Classic Tour which covers the most popular cultural destinations in China, to some of the more exotic options such as the Yangtze River Cruise, the Panda Conservation Center, and Guilin – a city with such beautiful scenery that you can find it on the 20 Yuan bill.

However, nobody is the same, and no family is the same, and this is something we are intimately aware of. Thus, while we do organize group tours, we also are ready to, happy to, and very experienced in customizing the details to suit your individual family’s needs and desires!

Furthermore, we completely understand that group travel does not suit the personality of every family, and of course there are also those who are unable to travel with us on our group schedule. Thus we also offer customized single family trips. Just let us know how we can best serve you!

We hold numerous In-Person Workshops throughout the year in the Midwest and on the East Coast. We really enjoy meeting new families, and we also really enjoy having new families get to know us. Our work is our passion, and we’d like to convince you of this!

However, if we have not established a presence yet in your community, there are other options available as well. In addition to our In-Person Workshops spread throughout the year, we also hold bi-monthly Online Workshops for the more geographically distant families (you’ll never be distant from us on a personal level!)

Additionally, if there is enough interest in your community (10 or more families), we would be happy to fly out to you on our dime! We can bring our In-Person Workshop to you, still completely free of charge!

Upon deciding to travel with us, you’ll have the opportunity to attend two workshops to prepare you for your trip. One of these will be the orphanage preparation workshop, and the other will be the travel orientation workshop. 

During both of these meetings, the children will be actively engaged in a plethora of fun and educational activities. We have an experienced child activities coordinator on staff who is a licensed educator and an adoptive mother herself. These activity sessions allow the children to get to know each other a little bit before the trip starts, and provides initial preparation regarding what they might see and how they might feel on the trip.

The Orphanage Preparation Workshop is where you will learn about all of the services that RTTS provides before, during, and after the tour. This workshop covers the registration process and details regarding orphanage arrangements. Our social worker or our pediatric psychologist will also do a presentation on how to prepare parents and children for feelings and concerns that may arise during the trip.

Our social worker has worked in adoption for more than 30 years, and has been actively involved with children in post-adoption services. Her knowledge and experience has been invaluable in preparing our families for what to expect before the trip. Our psychologist has been practicing for close to 30 years, and she has adopted four children from China herself. She brings both her professional expertise as well as her point of view as an adoptive mother.

Furthermore, after the trip is complete and your family has returned to the United States, we continue to offer the expertise of our social worker and psychologist to you free of charge. If you feel that you would like to consult any of our support staff, they will be readily available.

From the moment that you decide to travel with us and send in your deposit, our dedicated Chinese representatives will start their fact finding mission to attain as much information as possible for you regarding your child. Each rep spends an average of one month’s time gathering information while attempting to locate foster families, previous orphanage directors, care givers, and anyone else instrumental in the care of your child before the adoption. As soon as any information is uncovered, it is immediately sent to Danling, and subsequently transferred to you within 48 hours of initial discovery. The search is as thorough as can possibly be, but even so, please keep in mind that results vary.

Speaking of our representatives...

All of our Chinese representatives are vigorously trained before they start, and many of them work full-time for us. We believe that for you to have the best homeland heritage tour experience possible, we need to make sure that the individuals instrumental in making this happen are the best and the most hardworking.  

Our full-time reps all have many years of prior experience in adoption, and have now joined us in creating heritage tours. Their dedication to our RTTS families is unmatched. If you have a desire to contribute back to your orphanage or foster family, our reps will personally shop with you or for you to purchase the items you wish to donate. This way you can be certain that your financial support is used appropriately and wisely for the needs of the children.

While in China, we do our best to make sure that your child has not only a fun, but also an educational experience and a rich cultural exposure. To accomplish this, we have a dedicated child counselor that accompanies every group tour (again, personally interviewed and well-trained by RTTS).

Throughout the trip, our counselor arranges child friendly activities that engages the children and challenges them to think about the experiences they are having. She will work with the children to complete our “Travel Workbook” which includes a number of puzzles, games, and thought provoking questions.                                            

At the end of our trip, we hold a “Candle-Lit Party” where the children are encouraged to reflect on their thoughts and feelings of China. This has often been a time of really great discussion for some children, and a chance for thoughtful written commentary for others. However, regardless of whether they quietly reflect or actively discuss, they become more comfortable with their uniquely special identity as a child of both the East and West.

Something very unique to RTTS is that we do not contract out to any large tourism agencies in China for our tour guides. Instead, our CEO Danling hand-picks only the best tour guides from the most reputable companies, and specifically reserves their time during our group trip dates. In fact, these guides are so good, that nearly every single one of them has won numerous national awards and recognition for their work in the field of tourism. This guarantees that RTTS families will always have the best educational and cultural experience while traveling throughout China.

Instead of just telling you that we are highly attentive to your needs, we’d love to “show” you with an example. On our 15 day trip (we consider your initial flight over as day 0, which we don’t count in our 15 days), we cover every single meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner) except for 4.

We do not cover the first two dinners when you first arrive in China. This is because we know how jetlag feels, and we know when it strikes. And we know that the last thing you would want to do is to force yourself up for a group dinner. So instead, we removed these two meals from your itinerary so that you can rest and recuperate in peace.

The other two meals that we do not cover are the dinners just before and just after your orphanage day visit. We know that this is a very personal, and often a very emotional, time. We know that you need privacy and time to be with your loved ones as you prepare for and as you reflect upon a very special and significant event. We want you to have this time.

We use exclusively 5-star hotels during your trip (Xian, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guilin, Guangzhou, Nanchang, Hefei, Changsha, Nanning, etc…).  The only major city in which we do not use a 5-star hotel is in Beijing, where instead we stay at a 4+ star hotel (which is somewhere between and 4 and a 5 as you may have guessed). We specifically chose the hotel that we did in Beijing because it is strategically located in city center, close to all of the major attractions, while at the same time avoiding the areas of heavy traffic congestion.

It’s not that we want to surround the children with opulence while they are in China for the sake of luxury. However, we know that one of the most important things necessary to ensure an enjoyable trip is the ability refresh and recuperate at the end of a day. Thus it is incredibly important for us that our families have the best accommodations and a non-smoking hotel room. Furthermore, we know that your stay in China is brief, and thus we only pick the hotels that are located in areas which allow you to maximize your sightseeing time.  

While visiting your child’s individual orphanage city, it may very well be the case that the best hotel in the city is a 3-star hotel (sometimes less for very small rural areas). However, you can be certain that we will always get the best hotel possible for you in your orphanage city. This is often a time when a child will come to realize that China is a very dichotomous society with places of wealth and places of poverty. We have found in our experience that this actually opens up a very important avenue of discussion and allows for further understanding of the country.

Each family will meet privately with Danling and our core representatives in China right before the group breaks up and heads off to their individual provinces for the orphanage visit. Danling will personally guide you through the day of the visit regarding who you will meet, what to expect, how you might feel emotionally, and how your child may feel emotionally. Many times, parents will have last minute questions as nerves start to act up, and this is exactly the time to have them answered.

Furthermore, the dedicated team of Chinese representatives that was mentioned earlier continues to be hard at work even until the last minute. Our reps will continually contact every individual orphanage even while the tour group is in China, and will notify Danling of any changes on a daily (if not hourly) basis. And at these meetings, Danling will share with you exactly what to expect, accounting for any last minute adjustments, so that you are fully prepared for what will undoubtedly be an emotionally charged day.

One of the most praised and popular parts of the group travel tour is the Citizen’s Panel that we give in Beijing. And like the big, bolded words above mention, we are the first and only group to offer it! At this point, you may be thinking to yourself: “What exactly is a citizen’s panel?” “Are they going to give me the outer frame of an expensive watch?” Not quite… please read on!

This panel is your opportunity to learn about the lives of the everyday Chinese individual, and to hear about their opinion regarding any topic you so desire, including that of adoption. Some of the more popular past subjects have included discussions on the One-Child Policy, the social status of women, life during the Cultural Revolution, and the pressures of a burgeoning populace.

We always invite a very diverse group of citizens to our panels to ensure that you will hear from numerous different points of view on every topic. And while every session varies depending on which individuals attend, the end result is always the same: a riveting discussion that will leave you with a much deeper impression of China.

Past panelists have included retired central government officials (who know the inner workings of public policy), high school students (who themselves are only children, and feel the exceedingly high pressures of academia), college students (who face the challenge of an oversaturated job market flooded with talent), farmers (who have experienced rural challenges both pre and post economic boom), and even mothers who themselves, out of necessity, have abandoned their children in the past.

While the incredible amount of positive reviews that we receive from our families never ceases to bring a smile to our collective face, it is truly the constructive feedback that we value most highly. We know that no matter how successful a trip runs, numerous aspects undoubtedly could have been better. Thus we tireless strive to improve upon ourselves and on our services to bring you the best experience possible.

Now that you have considered all of these aspects of our service, please realize that this is absolutely not an exhaustive list. We could write on end about ourselves because we are so confident in our spectacular customer service, but our own previous homeland heritage tour families provide a much richer description than we could ever illustrate ourselves.