Michael Rahn, a foreigner who teaches English in Beijing, spent
a memorable three days in Shenzhen during this year's National Day
holidays with the help of the Shenzhen Greeter program, a voluntary
service for visitors to Shenzhen.
Before coming to Shenzhen, he filled in an application form at
the program's nonprofit Web site, and when he arrived was greeted
by Yang Fang, the founder of the Shenzhen Greeter program.
During his stay in Shenzhen, Rahn was shown by Yang the parts of
the city that he was interested in. He climbed Wutong Mountain,
visited Fairylake Botanical Garden and went shopping at
Dongmen.
"Shenzhen Greeter helped me experience real life that Shenzhen
residents truly have and gave me a deep insight into what locals
really treasure," said Rahn. "I had a wonderful time."
Unlike services provided by travel agencies, Shenzhen Greeter is
a voluntary service. An employee of Lenovo, Yang said yesterday the
purpose of the program was to help foreign visitors get a better
understanding of the city.
Yang started the program, the first of its kind in Asia, in
April, after numerous business trips and holidays in the United
States. She discovered a Greeter program in Chicago.
She was impressed by Nancy, a grandmother with the Chicago
Greeters program who showed Yang the architecture of the city and
took her to restaurants.
"I have a better understanding of Chicago than I did previously
and Nancy has become a good friend. Shenzhen was misunderstood as a
city by foreigners in some ways," said Yang.
Yang single-handedly started the program but she soon realized
it was a mission impossible without help from volunteers.
She talked about her program with friends and gained wide
support. There are now seven young people working for the
program.
"The immediate problem we need to handle is to find more
volunteers from a variety of backgrounds with knowledge of Shenzhen
in specific fields such as history, culture, food and restaurants,"
said He Tao, a fundraiser of the program who works for an
accounting company. "The volunteers should, of course, have a good
command of foreign languages."
(Shenzhen Daily November 7, 2007)?
