Tweaking the idea of flash-mobs is flash-play, meeting a stranger in an unfamiliar city for the day. Mu Qian explores further

This weekend, why not fly to a random city and spend the day with a stranger, part at the end of the day and never see each other again?

It sounds like a romantic film, but this is a novel activity for some young urban Chinese called "shanwan", or "flash-play".

The flash-play community on douban.com is one of the most popular in China and has signed up thousands of members, while websites devoted to flash-play have also emerged. On QQ, the country's most popular instant messaging service, several flash-play groups have been established.

These flash-players even have a slogan, which is splashed on the home page of bbs.oyesgo.com: "To meet a stranger in a strange city for coffee."

"Because of my high-pressure work, I use weekends to adjust my life. Fortunately, there is fast transport, the airplane, which can take me to another city and back in a short time," says Li Xu, a 26-year-old banker in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

"For me, going to a strange city is less about traveling. It's more about relaxation."

Li usually books a flight and then contacts one or two companions through the Internet to see if they want to go too. He prefers to travel with someone, but if not will go on his own.

"The fun of traveling lies not only in sightseeing, but also in meeting people. The fun of a trip will be ultimately realized when you get to know a strange city and strangers," Li says.

He invented the term flash-play, inspired by terms like "flash-mob", which refers to a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public space, perform a pointless act, and then quickly disperse. He created a page for flash-play on the knowledge-sharing website zhidao.baidu.com, and contributes content.

According to the web page, flash-play means: "A form of trip in which people find companions quickly through the Internet, and use advanced transportation to travel to another city together."

It is characterized, firstly, by brevity of time. A flash-play is usually limited to one day and does not extend overnight. If flash-players get along well during the day, they can continue to be together the next day, but that is not considered flash-play any more.

Second, an airplane is the preferred mode of transport, because of time considerations. In typical flash-play, participants fly to the destination after work on Friday and meet up with their prospective companion on Saturday morning. The flash-players may fly back home in the evening when the flash-play ends, and take a rest on Sunday before beginning work again on Monday.

Third, because of the previous two conditions, the destination for flash-play is usually a city with an airport or facilities for other forms of convenient transportation, and preferably a place unfamiliar to the flash-players. The relative strangeness of the city will be compounded by the unfamiliarity between the flash-players, which makes the trip more exciting and challenging.

Fourth, the participants go Dutch on any fees during the trip.

Li's first flash-play happened on March 1, last year, in Guangzhou. His companion was a young woman named Shu Fan, from Shantou, Guangdong province. After meeting at a Guangzhou subway station, they visited the Chen Clan Academy in the morning, had dimsum at noon, and went to Yuexiu Park in the afternoon.

All that Li knew of Shu after the trip was that she was "a 20-something interpreter of Japanese", but he enjoyed the trip and her company, especially her tales about traveling.

"There might be surprises and disappointments in a flash-play, but I believe one is rewarded most of the time," he says.

Since then he has had other flash-plays, including trips to Qingdao, Dalian and Xiamen. After each trip, he rarely contacts his companions again, except on QQ.

"Why do we have to know each other better?" Li asks.

"The essence of flash-play is to get in a good mood. The companion is just an assistant, a passenger in your life, but that's enough as long as he or she leaves you a good memory," he says.

Li is the founder of the flash-play group on douban.com, where most of the members are single white-collar workers, or freelancers in their 20s.

Tang Yao, a 23-year-old clerk at a Beijing company, took a one-day trip to Tianjin with three other flash-players last November. Taking the bullet train, they arrived in Tianjin within half an hour, and spent the day at Tianjin's scenic spots, streets and a park.

It was Tang's first flash-play experience. She says she chose to go to Tianjin with flash-players because her friends didn't have time to go with her, and she was also curious about traveling with strangers.

"I don't care so much about whom I travel with, as long as they are not disagreeable," she says. "I have a lot of pressure at work and an occasional short trip to another city refreshes me. Life should be like this," Tang says.

On douban.com there are hundreds of posts calling for flash-plays, but they often fall flat.

Li Xiaoyan, a young woman who works in Beijing, called for companions for a flash-play but later cancelled.

"I'm still not prepared for flash-play. I like to travel with close friends, which gives me a feeling of safety and makes me happy wherever we go," she says. "Flash-players probably have a different attitude."

Flash-players generally fall into two main groups: Those who like to travel, and those who want to network or party.

Xu Xueyi, a 26-year-old financial consultant from Suzhou, Jiangsu province, belongs to the former group. She says that before embarking on a journey she usually goes on forums to find a companion, who she meets at the destination.

"It's different from traveling with friends. Meeting a stranger to travel holds more surprises and has more of an 'on the road' feel," she says.

When she traveled to Lanzhou, Gansu province, a local companion who she found on the Internet took her to eat authentic local food and introduced to her interesting places, such as a music festival. The same sort of thing happened in Lhasa.

Others like to organize cyber-friends from the same city for activities such as dinner and sports, and call such activities flash-play, although it is different from how the pioneers define it.

"For me, flash-play means meeting cyber-friends that you do not know in real life," says Li Guokui, a 29-year-old consultant in Beijing.

For this Chinese New Year, Li didn't return to his home in Henan province, but instead stayed in Beijing. He hung out with some people whom he got to know after posting an on-line request.

"I just wanted to find some people to kill the loneliness together. Who cares whether it is flash-play or not?" he says.