About Us

Always and Forever Adoption Homeland Tours was founded by Michael Z. Han as part of China Passion Cultural Services, Inc. – a company that provides comprehensive cultural support to families with children from China and others who share a passion for China. We specialize in arranging heritage tours for families with children adopted from China.

From 1994 to 2003, Michael devoted his career to the work of finding forever families for orphaned children from his homeland China. As a program coordinator, co-founder and Executive Director of various agencies, Michael played a key role in placing over a thousand children from Chinese orphanages with American families. He built an excellent reputation for providing personalized services and arranging impeccable adoption trips. As the adoption process became well established and the demand for cultural support increased among adoptive families, Michael began to look for new challenges by providing adoption homeland tours and cultural services.

Michael was born and raised in Beijing. He studied Intercultural Communication and International Organizations at the graduate school of the prestigious Peking University and holds a Master’s Degree in Communication Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Led by Michael, our professional team combines their own Chinese heritage with years of work experience in facilitating adoptions and arranging tours to China. To us, providing homeland tours and cultural services is not just a business. It is a worthy cause which we hold close to our hearts and pursue passionately.

MISSION

The purpose of our adoption homeland tours is to help the adopted child’s discover his or her heritage, enhance the adoptive families’ understanding of China, its people, culture and customs, foster their love for China, and create positive memories of the adopted child’s homeland. We are committed to integrity, professionalism and personalized service. We strive to provide the best service possible with a personal touch at competitive costs.

Why travel with us?

Professional team of adoption, culture and travel specialists: We come from a diverse background. Several of us have worked 10 to over 25 years in adoption and tour industry. Some of us are adoptive parents. We understand what the homeland tours really mean to adoptive families and possess the unique skills and qualifications that are hard to find in travel agencies.

Child and family oriented and culturally focused tours: Our tours cater to the interests and needs of adoptive families. In addition to the must-see tourist sites, we include, in each itinerary, child friendly activities, places where local children frequent and interactions with local people so that the families can observe, experience and learn the real life and culture first-hand.

Arrangements of Adoption City and Orphanage Visits: Through years of working in adoption and tour industry, we have established a reliable network not only with travel agencies but also adoption officials and orphanages. We make the arrangements for families to visit the adoption city and orphanage, and to meet with people related to the adoption.

Personalized Services with Small Group Size: We control the tour group size to ensure that the families fully enjoy personal attention from the guides and to allow flexibility and efficiency for daily activities. Our tour managers travel with groups on all premium escorted tours. Our bilingual local guides are carefully selected, based on their experience, knowledge and personality. They provide local service in each city during the trip.

Diverse Packages Allowing Flexibility and Choice: We offer a wide variety of tour packages with different departure dates and routes for people to choose from. The individual explorer tours offers various extensions for people to add before or after the scheduled tours to meet their individual needs. We also custom design tour programs for individuals, groups and agencies for special events, reunions or other occasions.

Efficient Tour Operations and Customer Services: In addition to our headquarters in the U.S.A., we have two representative offices in China — Beijing and Guangzhou. Given the time difference, we literally work 24 hours a day between the two countries, which adds to the efficiency of our operation, giving us the ability to meet customer’s requests in a timely manner and take proper actions immediately when emergencies occur.

Reasonable Costs and Competitive Fees: We strive to control overhead costs while maintain quality service. We work with a network of carefully chosen, well established travel agencies and calculate travel costs carefully and reasonably. Our homeland tours typically cost less but offer more compared to similar tours offered by our competitors.

Charitable Projects Supporting Orphanages and Children with Special Needs: Having served the China adoption community since the beginning of 1994, our founder and owner Michael Han actively involves in charitable work and consistently find ways to give back to this community. Every year, we make monetary donations or donate our time and services to non-profit organizations to support their efforts of improving the conditions of Chinese orphanages and helping children with special needs. We have made donation contributions to the following non-profit organizations:

Love without Boundaries Foundation. Founded by adoptive parents with children from China, Love Without Boundaries (LWB) is a worldwide group of volunteers who have realized that people who have a pure love for helping children can truly make a difference. Since 2005, we have made monetary donations every year to LWB to support its projects that improve the lives of Chinese children with special needs. We have also helped its volunteers make travel arrangements for their annual medical mission trips to China.

Associated Services for International Adoption (ASIA). Based on Portland, Oregon, ASIA is a non-profit adoption agency that specializes in arranging adoptions from mainland China and Taiwan. We donate 3% of the tour fees from ASIA adoptive families who joined our homeland tours to support ASIA’s mission to find loving homes for children with special needs.

Small World Adoption Programs. Small World, Inc. is a non-profit, public benefit charity with offices in Tennessee, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Washington, which provide a number of programs assisting children and families. We make monetary donations to this organization to support its humanitarian aid programs.

Families with Children from China Oregon and Southwest Washington. We are a proud sponsor of FCC-Oregon’s annual Chinese New Year event with monetary donations and raffle prize contributions. We also donate our time and services to FCC-Oregon to assist its charitable program with Chengde Social Welfare Institute in Hebei Province, China.

Families with Children from China New York. Each year, we donate homeland tour gift certificates to FCC-New York’s annual Chinese Cultural Day and fund raising event.

Families with Children from China Northern California Each year, we donate homeland tour gift certificates to FCC Northern California’s Between Two New Year’s party and fund raising event.

Families with Children from China Southern Illinois. We participate in FCC Southern Illinois Moon Festival party. We contribute a portion of our sales proceeds at the event to this organization to support its humanitarian projects that help Chinese orphans.

Team

	Michael Z. Han President and Tour Specialist – Portland, Oregon From 1994 to 2003, Michael devoted his career to the work of finding forever families for orphaned children from his homeland China. As a program coordinator, co-founder and executive Director of various agencies, Michael played a key role in placing over a thousand children from Chinese orphanages with American families. He built an excellent reputation for providing personalized services and arranging impeccable adoption trips. As the adoption process became well established and the demand for cultural support increased among adoptive families, Michael began to look for new challenges by providing adoption homeland tours and cultural services. Michael was born and raised in Beijing. He studied Intercultural Communication and International Organizations at the graduate school of the prestigious Peking University and holds a Master’s Degree in Communication Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Besides his past career in adoption, Michael has worked over 15 years with China’s travel industry and over 20 years in Chinese-English translation and interpretation.
	Peter Peng USA Office Manager and Tour Specialist – Portland, Oregon Peter is originally from Hubei Province, China. Once a journalist and a radio host in Wuhan, he also worked with American families on adoption trips in China before he came to the USA in 2002. He manages Always and Forever’s office in Portland, Oregon, process visa applications, and travels as a group leader on homeland tours. He had a big assignment in July-August, 2012: traveling with a group of over 130 people in July-August, 2012 on the Yangchun Reunion Tour. He enjoys traveling in China with adoptive families and finds it rewarding to help the children reconnect with their heritage and make forever friends. Besides working in the office and leading tours in China, Peter also enjoys running, traveling, music, and Karaoke.
	“XiXi” Yinxi Wu Tour Operator and Manager – Guangzhou, China Xixi is a native of Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, one of the most picturesque areas in China. She was a full-time tour guide for years before becoming a tour operator working for China Travel Service. She has over 15 years of experience working in the Chinese tour industry. Since 1995, she has helped many foreign families adopt children from China, escorted hundreds of groups from the U.S.A. and Europe, and become their lifetime friends through the journeys of adoption. She has also visited and worked in the U.S.A. In January 2002, Xixi brought home Michaela from Jiangxi Province and became an adoptive mother herself. Today, she is busier than ever, being a parent and traveling around China assisting families on their adoption trips as well as homeland tours.
	“Cindy” Yandi Xin Tour Operator and Manager – Beijing, China Ms. Xin has worked with many adoption groups since 1996. She is experienced in arranging tours for adoptive families. She has close contacts with adoption officials and orphanage directors in various provinces. Ms. Xin and Xixi work together to coordinate our tours. They also obtain approvals for orphanage visits and arrange these visits.
	Vivian Robinson MSW, Social Work Advisor - Illinois Vivian has worked 25 years in adoption and child welfare. She is an adoptive parent of five children (four from China). She was awarded the “Angel In Adoption” honor in 1999 by the U.S. Congress. She is the founder and chairman of the Southern Illinois Families with Children from China. She advises families on how to prepare for orphanage visits and assists them in dealing with sensitive issues related to the trip to China.
	Bilingual Local Tour Guides The bilingual tour guides we use in each city on our tours are all professionally trained and duly certified by China Travel Bureau. Most of these guides have worked for at least five years with adoption groups.