In the winter of 2019, Feng Jiachen was "nobody". She stood on a curved base in the bustling streets of the Grand Tang Dynasty Ever Bright City in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, swaying gently, leaning back and forward, repeating the same motions hundreds of times a day. Dressed in a traditional Tang Dynasty (618-907) costume, she was what the industry calls a non-player character, a costumed performer who interacts with visitors.
"Every day, I danced the same dances on a fixed stage," she recalls. "There was always an invisible wall between the audience and me."
But millions of people online now know her as the "roly-poly sister" after she broke through that wall.
"I always felt that performance should not just be the repetition of moves, but the transmission of emotion," she said at a recent chief tourism branding officers conference hosted by the China Tourism Association in Tangshan, Hebei province.
To improve her craft, Feng began visiting museums and studying historical documents, trying to understand the spirit and bearing of ancient figures. She then added small gestures — a nod, a smile, a reaching hand — to her performance, while stepping down from the high stage and interacting with the audience, come rain or shine.
Then she went viral. Overnight, crowds rushed to see her.
"Even on a tiny stage, as long as you put your heart into it, you have value," she says. "Our generation of cultural tourism characters cannot just be fleeting symbols of internet buzz. We must be transmitters and inheritors of culture."
Her six-year journey mirrors a quiet but profound shift across China's cultural tourism sector: from chasing clicks to cultivating content, from cookie-cutter performances to deep, culture-based storytelling.
Wang Haonan knows that shift firsthand.
A music graduate from Tangshan, he plays the legendary Tang poet Li Bai on the buzzing Hetou Old Street in his home city. Dressed in a white robe with a wig tied in a classical bun, he stands in the lantern-lit night, surrounded by visitors reciting poetry.
When visitors ask him questions, such as what to do after a breakup and how to handle family pressure, he answers with poetry.
"The human heart is like the moon over the horizon; gatherings and partings are like dust on the road." His responses, literary and witty, made him an online sensation and a living landmark at the attraction.
