Tourists play detective on city walks with a difference
Clarisse Le Guernic (right) from France leads her participants to pose for a Beatles-like picture on Xinle Road in Xuhui District.
Legendary actress Hu Die (1908-1989) received threatening letters and you are a detective trying to find out who is behind them. Now start from Yuyuan Garden and follow the hints and clues to nearby sites to solve the case.
This is a script Clarisse Le Guernic wrote for her city walk participants in Shanghai. Fluent in French, Chinese and English, the young woman from France is now running a cultural agency aiming to introduce a more detailed and real Shanghai, mostly to expats and foreign visitors.
Having been living in Shanghai for nearly nine years, Le Guernic has always been willing to share her experiences and knowledge about the city to her family and friends. After graduation, she became a bicycle tour guide in the city, but the company she worked for folded due to the pandemic.
"At that time a Chinese friend of mine encouraged me to start my own business and I believed it's worth a shot," she said.
Le Guernic shows a group of city walk participants landmarks on Sichuan Rd N. on her tablet.
Le Guernic named her company "Qimen (亓门)," with the English name Arcade. She said the English name was decided on first as "arcade" is an element that can be found in a lot of old buildings in Shanghai, and it was also the name of one of the first Chinese going to France, Arcade Huang (Huang Jialue).
Also known as Arcadio Huang, the man was born to a Catholic family in Fujian Province in 1679 and went to France with missionaries in early 18th century. He helped edit a Chinese-French dictionary and served Louis XIV as his Chinese translator. He married a woman from Paris and the couple had a daughter. After he died at the age of 36, he was buried in a cemetery in the French capital.
"Huang was a bridge between Chinese and French culture so I named my company after him," said Le Guernic. "And then when I chose a Chinese name for the company, I chose the character '亓' because it looks like an arcade."
Le Guernic has developed around 20 itineraries for participants, covering almost all the historic zones in Shanghai. However, she found that a traditional-style city walk might not be for everyone.
"Many of our participants brought children to the tours and for the first time those children were excited, but when they came for the second, or the third time, they'd find it boring," she said. "So I was wondering if I could make something that is more interesting."
Tours designed by Le Guernic often include less-visited sites, such as Saint Nicholas' Church, a former Russian Orthodox Church in the city.
She came up with the idea of a scripted tour, and the one involving legendary actress Hu Die was one example. During the tour that lasts for about two hours, participants will be guided to various sites and old buildings, where staff members – or non-player characters – will give them clues to solve the case. As they try to solve the case, they will be brought to many places and introduced to their history and stories.
Le Guernic has written three different scripts and the company has ordered more scripts from other institutions. The scripts are available in Chinese, English and French, and the non-player characters, who are from both home and abroad, also speak the three languages.
"Participants told me that they had never thought that city walk tours could be carried out in this way," Le Guernic said. "They said that they passed the sites visited during the tour like a month later, and their children were still very excited and said: 'Oh, this is that person's home!' And I'm very happy about the feedback."
Le Guernic said she started to learn Chinese in her childhood. When the school asked them students a second language, she chose Chinese – along with only about 10 children – because she believed that understanding Chinese was "very cool."
Later, she chose Chinese as her undergraduate major and obtained an opportunity to exchange at Fudan University in Shanghai. After graduation, she decided to work in Shanghai.
Maintaining a travel business during the pandemic was not easy, especially as Qimen's customers are foreigners.
"We need to update our content frequently to attract more regular participants," Le Guernic said. "It's impossible for people to be interested always in the same itineraries."
She said the market didn't see much of a boom by the end of last year as most foreigners in Shanghai were business customers or people coming to see their families, rather than tourists. But this year she expects things to get better due to a more favorable visa policy.
In November, it was announced that China will expand the scope of unilateral visa-free travel for citizens from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Malaysia on a trial basis from December 1, 2023, to November 30, 2024.
"I hope that we'll have more guests this year, especially from France," she said. "I believe that the two countries will have many cultural exchanges in the future and I'm looking forward to showing more French people around the real Shanghai."
