Agree that Chinese tour groups should be avoided. Often late middle age, and a habit of trying to visit too many sites in one day, quick photo at the gate, and back on the bus. Being herded like sheep between the bus, the market (tour guides often get commission, supposedly now illegal but TIC), and too little time at sites. Also the obligatory eating houses with local delicacies (low quality and/or overpriced food).

However, there are small transport providers who can hire a van and guide to you. All you need to do is find a few fellow travellers to join you and you have your own private tour.

There's no excuse for staying in a hostel in China, surely?
You can stay in a perfectly good hotel room for next to nothing.
But, If you want to listen to vegans in yoga positions tell you how they travelled to Mali and Somalia and found them wonderfully misunderstood utopias and how lentils are the cure for everything while in the presence of their overwhelming smell, tye-dye dish dash and filthy matted hair, then by all means a hostel is the place for you.
Ill stick with the hotels thanks.

Oh my dear little poor man...So sorry for your sad but poetic hostel experience in China. I presume u r a premium guest. But "the grove big any bird had". Be more adaptable.

Yes, maybe "home-running-hotle" would be more accurate if you get me.

@Huiman
What on earth are you talking about? And who are you aiming it at?

11posts? Another Matt alias? Ha.Ha.

Strongly advise against organized tours, unless you use short ones as simple geographical introductions to a complex place about which you plan to do some investigating on your own (e.g., a conventional city tour of, say, Paris - but if you go all the way to Paris just for this sort of thing, after which you leave, than I would have to refrain from making derogatory remarks about your intelligence).
Probably better just to wander around and get lost - if you have too tight a schedule, better not to go at all.

There are some very convenient organized tours in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia - and where not else - that work just perfect. For a few bucks a great daytour. A few more and a nightover or two. Plenty of these are great experience.

Unfortunately these types do not really exist in China, but crossing the border to, say, Laos, you can have a great Kayak adventure in Luang Namtha and what, and where, not else.

There are people why try to go to, say, Halong Bay by organizing it themselves, and its usually total chaos. This experience is more for masochists.

In short, organized tours can be just fine, its more of the composition thing, target and some other factors that mess this a bit in China. So far these rarely(?) work out so well, and which Chinese organizer would anyway choose to focus on a few tens laowais who wont buy jade, rather than ten thousand mainlanders.

People who get over fifty-sixty in age, are also ready to pay for a nice tour rather than go through the backpacking hell in a tropical or semi-tropical country, with a strange language, numerous touts and chaos. Plenty middleaged and older Western women are also so short tempered and spoiled these days, that few husbands would even dare to try fixing things on their own.

Organized tours _can_ be perfectly fine.

I see coach tours all the time. Hong maozi, yellow flag, and the human herd. This isn't back packing but it is olds.

Actually there are companies who organize luxury tours. There was advertising for guides on here a while back. The tours are all over China by BJ Jeep or motorbike and sidecar.

There is also a local guy who will haul you around. I think his name is John Xie.

Have checked with www.wondersofyunnan.com/
unfortunately, they said at this moment they only manage a group tour (not a join-in-group tour).

Ended up buying my own ticket to Lijiang and... Lijiang, here I come!

I recommend you find a nice guesthouse in Shu He rather than in the Old Town. You can take a local bus (1 yuan) from Shu He to the Old Town and no need to pay for a taxi 10-15 yuan). The guesthouses in Shu He are newer and cost less than staying at the Old Town. Also, the noise in Old Town is terrible.

If you are going to Bai Sha village, do not take a taxi as they ask for 50 Yuan. Take a local bus which stops at all the scenic spots such as Bai Sha Village, Yu Feng Monastery, Jade Water Village, and Yu Hu Village, the former residence of Joseph Rock.