SHANGHAI, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- As the scent of freshly steamed bean paste buns drifts through the People's Park in downtown Shanghai and laughter erupts from a nearby English-language stand-up comedy club -- not at the unfamiliar, but at the recognizable -- China's latest chapter of inbound tourism begins to take shape.

These are scenes of proximity, marking a shift in how international visitors encounter the country: away from checklists and fleeting curiosity, and toward participation and sustained engagement.

Behind this shift is a loosely connected group of people who do not fit neatly into media narratives or influencer culture. They are present in everyday encounters, helping visitors bridge the gap between assumption and experience.

In China's media and academic cultural communication circles, people have begun calling them "cultural ferrymen."

Some are Chinese professionals who have turned away from conventional tourism; others are foreigners who have built their lives in China and now find themselves translating it. Together, they are reshaping how international visitors experience the country -- not as a spectacle, but as a lived reality.

One of these cultural ferrymen is Liu Sen, a former finance professional who now plans guided journeys designed around observation. During walks, he asks foreign visitors to guess how many electric vehicles pass through a single intersection in any given minute. The answer -- nearly half -- often surprises them.

The exercise is one of many ways Liu and his colleagues invite visitors to update the assumptions they formed long before their arrival.

Liu is the co-founder of Eastbound and Beyond, a four-person team whose members come from different professional backgrounds but share the conviction that showing the world the authentic China requires proximity rather than performance. Many of their European and U.S. clients, Liu told Xinhua, arrive with outdated impressions of the country and are unaware that the level of daily convenience in major Chinese cities now surpasses that of many global metropolises.

Their itineraries reflect that belief. Instead of bus tours packed with landmarks, they visit familiar sites such as the Bund and the centuries-old Yuyuan Garden, delighting in unplanned encounters. Tourists practice Tai Chi with retirees in the historically and culturally rich Fuxing Park, browse handwritten notices in the matchmaking corner of the People's Park, and walk through neighborhoods in the former French Concession area while hearing the stories of Shanghai's traditional residential communities -- details even many locals overlook.

This approach is what appeals to visitors like Baha Korkmaz, a traveler from the Netherlands who has visited about 50 countries. "We don't want to go on the tour bus to see the city because everyone can see the Bund," he said. What drew him and his partner, he added, was the chance to see the city with Chinese people and understand more about local life.

Like many visitors, they were initially inspired by social media images of China that combined futuristic technology with everyday warmth. The reality, they found, was more compelling and harder to leave.

Similar tourism initiatives are unfolding beyond Shanghai. Sun Shuli, who has worked in inbound tourism for years, now leads teams offering in-depth "citywalk" tours and cultural experiences in Beijing and Shanghai. Her group has hosted more than 38,000 international visitors to date. For Sun, telling China's story means "understanding not only the country itself, but how it connects to the wider world."

Sun prefers conversations about alleyway life, small shopkeepers and retirees sitting in parks to reciting macro-level statistics. She finds that these slices of ordinary life resonate most deeply and linger longer in visitors' memories.

Through a local meal, a casual chat with a street vendor or an impromptu shared dance in a park, abstract ideas about safety, convenience and vitality become tangible.

As Chinese guides are reshaping how visitors see China from the inside, expatriates are building bridges from another direction. Many foreign nationals who have lived in the country for years feel compelled to share what they have come to know about it.

One such expat is Clarisse Le Guernic, a 29-year-old French woman who arrived at Fudan University at the age of 19 and has lived in Shanghai ever since. Over time, Shanghai became a home of her own making. She later founded Arcade, a tourism company she named after Arcadio Huang, a key figure of Sino-French cultural exchange and one of the earliest Chinese grammar and Chinese-French dictionary compilers.

Le Guernic leads mixed groups of Chinese and international tourists through Shanghai's streets, treating the city as a living text. What began as cultural tours to learn the French language have expanded to roughly 30 themed routes covering history, architecture and literature.

One of the most distinctive routes follows the trail of "The Blue Lotus," a Tintin comic set in 1930s Shanghai. Tour participants carry the book as they move through the streets that influenced it, locating traces of the era and comparing illustration with reality.

"I often say that I was born in France but made in China," Le Guernic said. "I could even say that I'm made in Shanghai, because now, I consider Shanghai as my new home." Her dual identity as both foreigner and insider allows her to answer questions that first-time visitors may hesitate to ask, easing unfamiliarity through a shared perspective.

Elsewhere, cultural translation can be found under stage lights. In Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu, English-language stand-up comedy has emerged as a shared cultural space for expat, Chinese and international tourist audiences. The Spicy Comedy stand-up collective has staged more than 1,000 performances in Shanghai alone.

For performers like Jorge Castellanos from the United States and Ian Badenhorst from South Africa, personal storytelling is the fastest way to connect with listeners, and talking about family life, hobbies and cultural misunderstandings invites understanding.

"One of the best things is performing in front of a full room of people being able to say something that you think is personal," Castellanos said. "After the shows, people are very comfortable with you because they can share their personal stories or funny stories. And it's a nice way to feel connected to the city."

Badenhorst, who has lived in China for 20 years and is married to a Shanghainese woman, draws heavily on daily life and cultural friction. "Comedians talk about family, college, interests, and then you realize, this is the real people of China talking about real experiences. I think it's a good way to exchange," he said.

Speaking to Xinhua, U.S. tourist Jon Baldridge said that the show he attended had been unexpectedly relatable. "The comedy here is very multicultural. It's very easy to understand, especially for being a foreigner," he said. "It feels like you're back home; You can all share experiences together."

Cultural understanding emerges through both explanation and shared experience. Liu Sen remembers one Norwegian couple who, after taking a Shanghai tour, commissioned the same experience as a customized wedding gift for friends who were planning a honeymoon in China, complete with personalized messages woven into their itinerary.

Sun Shuli describes her work as "planting a seed." Many of her customers come to China only briefly, on layovers or business trips, yet they leave with a sense of unfinished discovery. "They often say the real China they saw was very different from what they had imagined," she said. Her hope is that the seed she plants will travel home with them.

For Korkmaz and his partner, it already has. What was meant to be just a few weeks in China has now stretched into six months. "China is our favorite country to travel and to live in, and it's number one for many reasons," he said, pointing both to the country's futuristic technology and to the preservation of its long history. The couple has begun seriously considering settling in Shanghai.

The transition from traveling China to building a life in China is what deep cultural engagement enables, said Deng Xiujun, deputy dean of the School of International Journalism and Communication at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Increasingly, he noted, foreign tourists are no longer satisfied with surface-level sightseeing. They seek equal interaction, authentic narratives and participation in everyday life.

The new generation of cultural ferrymen, Deng argues, represents a form of international communication in the era of social media. "Through personal, non-institutional storytelling, they allow the world to not only see high-speed trains, mobile payment infrastructure and urban skylines, but to also sense the temperament of our people, the warmth of our society and the resilience of our culture." ■