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)