With just a map and curiosity in hand

Zhang Xiaowan had never played basketball. But on a village court in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture, Guizhou province, there was no referee, no shot clock, and barely any rules.

Most players were women with flat, hat-like Miao buns dressed in traditional ethnic attire. They pulled Zhang, an actress just passing through during her travels, onto the court. To the beat of gongs, drums and roaring cheers from the sidelines, she sank her first basket ever. Her team won.

This is the Auntie Basketball Tournament: a five-on-five women's game with barely any formal rules. It began as a gathering for married daughters of the Miao ethnic group returning to their home villages, a chance to play ball, catch up, and be unapologetically, confidently themselves.

On Aug 3, the prefecture officially released the Guidelines for Auntie Basketball Activities, the country's first set of standards for this folk-style recreational basketball event created for women.

During the trip through Qiandongnan, Zhang also participated in Village T, a fashion show for the villagers, where she walked the runway with her good friend, actress Chen Lin. The event is open to both locals and visitors, who sign up for free and participate voluntarily.

"I've loved modeling since I was a child, but I'm not tall, so I never had the chance to walk a runway. Coming to Guizhou let me walk one for the first time, wearing traditional Miao clothing. I felt a sense of cultural confidence," Zhang says.

Zhang's trip, packed with fresh experiences, unfolds in the first episode of the travel reality show Off the Beaten Map, recently aired on CCTV-4.

The show selects 14 destinations, including Qiandongnan, Shanwei in Guangdong province, Enshi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture in Hubei province, and Xuancheng in Anhui province, sending participants on freewheeling rambles in each episode to showcase each place's unique cultural threads and vitality.

The show offers no fixed itineraries or must-visits, but provides only a map and lets the participants explore on their own. Every time they discover a hidden-gem destination or activity, they draw it on the map by hand, eventually completing a "treasure map".

On Oct 16, lifestyle platform Meituan released its 2026 county-level consumption report, which shows that in the first half of 2026, the number of tourists to China's county-level areas grew by double digits year-on-year. Tourist spending accounted for nearly 30 percent of overall consumption in those areas and has expanded from dining and accommodation to leisure and entertainment, sports, fitness, and lifestyle beauty services. Keyword searches, such as "Must-Eat List" and "Must-Stay List", rose 423 percent year-on-year.

For Ren Weijiao, producer of Off the Beaten Map, this reflects a shift in how the public chooses travel destinations: a preference for hidden-gem, small cities with quality cultural and tourism resources that are not yet widely known.

The show follows the same logic when selecting destinations.

"The city must have a distinctive cultural facet and vitality. We place more value on the lifestyles and spiritual outlook of the people there, and on whether the city has a unique character of its own," says Cao Xinxin, the show's director.

She cites Qiandongnan's character keyword as "passionate" and Xuancheng's as "poetic", adding that when selecting participants for each episode, the team also looks for people whose personalities match these characteristics.

Ren, who is also the producer of the channel's documentary program Across China and has traveled across the country, says that experience gave her team a deep understanding of various cities, which is why they can accurately distill the urban character of each destination.

She adds that earlier this year she sensed new changes in contemporary young people's travel consumption: what used to be check-in, package-deal tourism has become highly immersive and personalized.

Ren insists on the reality show retaining a documentary texture.

"The meaning of travel lies in allowing us to discover another way of life. I hope that after watching the show, viewers will no longer travel to another city in a check-in manner, but will build more connections with the city, slow down, and feel how locals go about their daily lives," she adds.

In the show, through conversations between participants and locals such as restaurant owners, street graffiti artists and craftspeople, viewers catch a glimpse of ordinary people's lives.

He Suliu, director of the China Documentary Research Center at the Communication University of China, says the show has a touch of documentary-style warmth.

"It does not deliberately hunt for tear-jerking stories, nor does it package ordinary people's lives as inspirational legends. Instead, it respects their lives as they are, letting viewers discover that beyond the familiar order of their own lives, people can still make different choices, live different rhythms, and connect with the world in different ways.

"When the show places its lens on these details, what it offers is not just an answer to 'where to go', but also inspiration on 'how to live'," He adds.

Beyond the full episodes aired on television, the production unit has also made a vertical-screen spin-off for short-video platforms, using the popular micro-drama format to explore each destination's food. In it, reporter Zhou Xuemei must complete challenges in several cities and obtain the flavor treasure unique to each city before she can break the loop and return to normal life.

"We wanted to present local food more vividly through a micro-drama format. Young people love it, and each episode runs just three to four minutes. It is now performing much better than short clips cut from the main show," says Cui Ming, director of the program's new media production.