In Chongqing's Jiefangbei CBD, bustling with young people dressed in trendy, stylish clothes, 23-year-old crosstalk performer, Li Yuanyuan, wearing qipao-a traditional Chinese, body-hugging, one-piece dress, has just finished a gig at a bookstore.

Li and her partner, Yu Zhenghao, staged the crosstalk show, which includes a series of original works they have created based on the observation of people's daily lives, in various local dialects. For instance, they will imitate the differences in the way people living in Chongqing and the nearby Sichuan province haggle, greet each other or act on dates to generate gags that make the local audiences laugh out loud.

"The combination of local characteristics and the traditional Chinese comedy is refreshing for many audiences," she says.

As a female crosstalk performer, she is a rarity. Li's interest in the art form was cultivated at a students' club at the Chongqing Normal University where Li and Yu often staged crosstalk performances for the teachers and their classmates.

After graduation, she refused to bow to parental pressure to hunt for a stable teaching job back in her hometown, Sichuan province's Mianyang city, instead insisting on chasing a career in the spotlight, founding a comic group in Chongqing.

The group has sought any opportunity to stage gigs, no matter the location. She says that they have performed in public squares, in cafes, bookshops and bars, sometimes even on the street.

Wherever they go, Li, with her hair up in double buns, makes an impression with her cute appearance and distinctive style of performance.

As many public places were shut down during the COVID-19 outbreak, Li decided to produce more original scripts and short videos of their performances, which helped her to reach more than 460,000 followers on the short-video platform Douyin.

Fortunately, Li's comic group has found a small theater at which they are able to host regular performances, making their debut on Feb 26.

Li's story is just one of the many presented in the documentary, Marvelous City, which aims to uncover the wonders of six cities by telling the compelling stories of their inhabitants, delving into the connection between people and where they live.

The six cities are Guiyang in Guizhou province, Southwest China's Chongqing, Xiamen in Southeast China's Fujian province, Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, Karamay in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Qingdao, East China's Shandong province.

"Li radiates an infectious enthusiasm for performing crosstalk and has the courage and determination to pursue the dream, which in my view more or less shows the personality traits of people living in Chongqing and Sichuan province," says Xiao Han, director of the documentary.

Xiao, as director of Masters in the Forbidden City, a hugely popular documentary from 2016 which shared the stories of the usually unsung professional restoration experts, is good at discovering charismatic people and portraying them on film.

"We did much research to find people from various walks of life whose stories somehow reflect the characteristics of a city," says Xiao.

They include an oil worker in Karamay who is also a band leader trying to integrate elements from traditional ethnic music into modern electronic and rock genres, a standup comedian who tries to find inspiration for his scripts at the Shaanxi History Museum, a foreign bar owner with a Chinese wife in Xiamen, and a 60-year-old Qingdao native who is fond of winter swimming and collecting antiques.

"We try to film people who are not that well-known and provide a full display of their charms and talents," says Xiao.

The documentary, which has achieved a score of 8.7 out of 10 on the review site Douban, has been aired on the streaming platform Youku.

It also follows the journeys of singer Zhou Shen, pop idol Xiao Zhan, actors Wu Lei, Bai Yu and Xu Weizhou as well as actress Wang Xiaochen-most of whom were born and grew up in the aforementioned six cities.

Each city has large groups of people who have chosen to migrate to, leave or stay there. The celebrities represent the group of people who grew up in the city, but later chose to leave to pursue their dreams, says Xiao Han.

He adds that he hopes the inclusion of the celebrities will attract their large fan bases, mostly consisting of young people, to watch and enjoy the series, becoming a fan of the documentary genre and factual filmmaking.

Before the filming, Xiao Han asked the celebrities what they normally eat, where they often go and who they meet when they return to their respective hometowns.

"We tried to remove the fame aspect when documenting them exploring the cities. I wanted them to feel free to show their true selves in the documentary," says the director.

In the episode filmed in Qingdao, actress Wang and her childhood friends spent their day going beachcombing, carefully selecting fresh seafood in a local market and retracing their steps toward the children's palace, a learning center for arts and crafts, where they attended dance classes together.

During dinner, they competed with each other to see who could shell a shrimp the fastest, a game that seems a bit silly, but as coastal city inhabitants, they loved it.

As the shade of evening fell upon the group, they came across a vendor from whom they bought bowls of wonton to eat. Sitting at a rough table at the roadside, Wang had a heart-to-heart talk with her best friend.

"We met each other at the children's palace at age 4, but we are now living very different lives to each other," she says to the friend in the documentary.

She envies the normal, happy life of her friend, while her friend admires the glamour and star status Wang embraces as a renowned actress.

Nevertheless, when they were asked, given a chance to travel back in time, whether they would change their life choices or not. Both of them reply with a resounding "no".

"We often admire the lives led by other people. Now I realize that we should have the courage to face up to the inadequacies of the past," Wang says.

Meanwhile, actor Xu also opened his heart to his father during their road trip on the Duku Highway in Xinjiang.

At the foot of snow-capped mountains, the son broached the subject of his father's seeming indifference to his good study performance in primary school, noting that it still rankled with him. His father then began to reflect on his strict parenting methods.

Reviewing the journeys to these cities, the director says he was often moved by the stories and personalities of the people he filmed.

In Xi'an, as the production unit was documenting the daily life of a local craftsman, surnamed Wu, who makes a living by making headwear and hat accessories used in the performance of Qinqiang Opera, Wu drank with several of his opera-loving friends in a small room.

"They were talking in a very impassioned way about their plans to record a craft that is about to disappear, which was so contagious that I almost cried," recalls Xiao.

"At that moment, I was convinced, again, that our vigorous country is composed of individuals who have a strong passion for life, just like Wu," he says.