Shanxi Scenic Area’s 30M Yuan NPC Gamble Draws Scrutiny

A scenic area in Jincheng, Shanxi province, has offered 30 million yuan (roughly US$4.2 million) to hire 100 so-called NPCs—non-player characters who perform and interact with visitors—with top annual salaries reaching 10 million yuan. The announcement, made by the village party secretary who founded the attraction, has ignited a nationwide debate over whether the move is a genuine business strategy or a publicity stunt, according to an on-site investigation by The Paper.

The offer at Situ Town (司徒小镇), a national 4A-level scenic area, targets characters drawn from Shanxi history—including the warrior Guan Yu, the storied beauty Diaochan, and the Tang poet Wang Wei. Applicants are expected to improvise skillfully, perform well on camera, and manage social media accounts capable of accelerating online virality. Recruitment is split into three tiers: S-level, A-level, and B-level.

A Village Built on Coal—and on Reinvention

Situ Town’s story begins underground. Situ Village once prospered from coal, then fell into crisis when resources dwindled in the 1980s and 1990s, leaving it with “no underground resources, no above-ground industry, and no path for development.” In 2009, using a Jincheng urban renewal pilot program, the village built an agricultural eco-park atop a mining slag hill. That project eventually grew into the 4A-rated attraction it is today.

The area is best known for its iron-flower fireworks performance, “Millennium Iron Soul” (千年铁魂), which has set Guinness World Records twice. Recent figures are strong: The Paper, citing Shanxi Daily, reported that in 2025 Situ Town received 2.2 million visitors—double the prior year—with comprehensive revenue of 350 million yuan, supporting over 220 million yuan in nearby accommodation and catering income and expanding jobs from 500 to more than 1,000, roughly 30 percent of the village workforce.

Yet the books tell a more complicated story. Zhou Xiaoming, party secretary of Situ Village and head of the scenic area, was candid about the losses. “In 2023 we lost 500,000 yuan, in 2024 we lost 500,000 yuan, and in 2025 we lost money, though not much,” he said.

The Problem: Empty Days, Packed Nights

According to an analysis published by Huxiu, republished from the travel outlet Wenlü, the attraction’s reviews are sharply polarized. Praise centers almost entirely on the nighttime iron-flower show; criticism focuses on daytime, where visitors say there is “too little to do” and a lack of immersive, participatory projects. Visitor traffic clusters on weekends and holidays, and few young people come.

“Translation: no one during the day, packed at night. Families come; young people don’t,” the analysis noted. It described the attraction’s core weakness as its reliance on a single nighttime hit—a visible ceiling, given that 81 percent of its operating revenue in early 2025 came from ticket sales. Visitors spend mainly on “getting in,” with little worth spending on afterward.

Zhou said the scenic area lacks NPCs who can “max out the tourist emotional experience,” and that existing performers—mostly nearby villagers, aside from some university students—generally lack the grounding to “fire up the atmosphere.” He rejected the notion that the campaign is a gimmick. “I just think this is the dumbest method, not a good method,” he said. “If we don’t spend 30 million to find NPCs, we may face the problem of 1,300 employees not being able to eat in the future.”

Experts: Advertising Effect, With Caveats

Tourism specialists see a clear marketing logic—and clear limits. Huang Huang, a researcher at the China Tourism Academy, told China News Weekly that some scenic areas’ enthusiasm for sky-high salary recruitment values not the person but the advertising effect: “a sky-high recruitment ad itself can bring traffic.”

Zeng Bowei, a professor at Beijing Union University’s Tourism College, said any scenic area has marketing budgets and may now feel that investing in “30 million to recruit NPCs” generates more traffic through event fermentation. He called the 30 million price “definitely very high” but said that if a 10-million-yuan NPC actually delivers corresponding traffic and exposure and drives visitor growth, the attraction may consider it worthwhile.

“Marketing is important, but one can’t think marketing solves all problems; what follows involves whether it can be effectively delivered,” Zeng said. He recommended maintaining tolerance for the NPC phenomenon, allowing small-step trial-and-error and rapid iteration, and guiding NPCs toward deeper culture-tourism integration. “Though called non-player characters, their true meaning in a scenic area is precisely to make every tourist a player,” he said.

The Real Benchmark: Wansui Mountain

Much analysis measures Situ Town against Kaifeng’s Wansui Mountain Martial Arts City, which operates what analysts describe as a closed-loop content system rather than a single hit. Wansui Mountain has roughly 1,500 NPCs, more than 2,000 daily interactions, and a 30 percent annual program renewal rate, according to the analysis. Its “silver-ticket task chain” has visitors earn silver tickets through poetry, riddles, and spending to redeem gifts—extending average stays from three to four hours to more than eight. In 2025, Wansui Mountain drew 24.52 million visitors, up 146.9 percent, on comprehensive revenue of 1.27 billion yuan.

A companion analysis on Toutiao framed the 30 million yuan as “a one-year strategic trial.” It noted the sum equals close to 9 percent of Situ Town’s 2025 revenue and that the broader industry is in the grip of an NPC boom: since March 2026, more than 50 scenic areas nationwide have posted NPC recruitment notices, with roles heavily homogenized around figures like Sun Wukong, Li Bai, and the Tang Monk.

That analysis argued success should be measured a year later by three metrics: average visitor stay duration, secondary consumption ratio, and year-on-year holiday visitor growth. It also cited a cautionary example—Jiangxi’s Gexian Village publicly apologized over vulgar NPC interactions—and a success story: Jiangsu Suqian’s Xiang Yu Hometown drew more than 70,000 visitors during the May Day holiday, up over 171 percent, with its “Xiang Yu NPC team.”

What to Watch

The recruitment drive is producing tangible interest: Zhou said more than 7,000 applicants have registered, with plans to interview at least 50 by video call and no application deadline set. “We mainly want the best NPCs; if it’s three, five, or eight or ten, we’ll lock in the 30 million—we might stop recruiting,” he said, adding that step two is to “build our own NPCs.”

Analysts say the decisive question is whether the money buys a hundred photogenic characters or a system—personas, scripts, training, interaction boundaries, short-video distribution, and secondary consumption links to sustain them. Situ Town’s genuine edge, the Huxiu analysis noted, is its village-collective model: nearly 200 iron-flower performers are former villagers whose authenticity outside NPCs cannot easily replicate.

As one observer put it, when scenic areas everywhere are competing for NPCs with high salaries, what is truly scarce is not the NPC but the content system that keeps them alive. Whether Situ Town’s 30 million yuan buys one hundred roles or a lasting capability may not be known until the visitor data arrives—a year from now.