China’s tourists flock to experience a pretend typhoon as ‘dark tourism’ flourishes

When Leon Lv was looking for somewhere to travel last year, she turned to the Chinese social media app RedNote for ideas. The algorithm took her to videos of people struggling to survive typhoon-strength winds and flash floods.“I never experienced a typhoon. I don’t know how it will feel and what will happen. I just have seen it on the news,” says the 28-year-old from Chongqing in south-west China. “So that’s why I want to go there to have a safe place to experience it and learn something.”She travelled more than 1,300km to Hangzhou in the east, and joined a group of 20 to take part in a disaster simulation that featured a typhoon-fuelled flooding scenario.Participants brace for surging water in a flash flood simulator at the Lvxing centre in Hangzhou. Photograph: Go Nakamura/Reuters Photograph: Go Nakamura/ReutersStanding in a simulated flood, her mind momentarily went blank as hundreds of tonnes of water swept people off their feet, and carried them towards a safety barrier. As the surge hit, she forgot she was in a simulation. “One thing I learned is how to stay calm and protect myself during a flood. I learned how to use the right body position to stay safe,” she says. “No book and no school [can] teach me like that.”Across Chinese social platforms phrases like “paying to suffer”, or “paying to buy fear” are trending online as part of a wave of interest in experiences known as “dark tourism”.Lvxing Base, a company in Hangzhou offering simulated disaster experiences has gone viral. The founders spent 10 years making documentaries in some of the world’s most extreme environments.At a 200,000 square metre facility, which opened in 2024, they simulate extreme weather conditions like typhoons and mudslides, giving participants the experience of what it would be like in a disaster.“I don’t deny that many people come because they want excitement,” says general manager Wang Kuanghan. They want to see what this place is like, what a real typhoon and torrential rain feel like, and whether they themselves can withstand it. Most of our individual customers are between 20 and 30 years old.”It plans to open five more centres across China within the next three years. It also plans to create earthquake and fire simulations.People want to feel ‘what a real typhoon and torrential rain feel like’, says general manager Wang Kuanghan. Photograph: Go Nakamura/ReutersThe offering are not limited to private companies. At Beijing’s Haidian public safety museum, tourists experience simulated earthquakes, tsunamis and fires using a 4D theatre, equipped with moving platforms and sound effects. Last year the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou opened a five-storey centre to teach visitors how to respond to emergencies and disasters. Its earthquake simulator can recreate ground shaking equivalent to a 7.2 magnitude quake.Extreme weather has become increasingly common in China. In 2025, China recorded its highest number of hot days since records began, and was hit by 10 typhoons, well above the long-term annual average. China’s ministry of emergencies reported that 67 million people were affected by such disasters across the country.In 2024, local governments were instructed to promote immersive disaster education, instructing safety centres, museums and training bases to use simulations to teach people how to respond in a real crisis.‘A new generation of travellers’“The new generation of Chinese travellers want to experience a place rather than simply see famous attractions,” says Robert Li, director of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.But some travellers have found a way to blend the two approaches; rather than indulging in the white-knuckle ride of a simulated typhoon, they are travelling to real sites of death and destruction.In May 2008 a magnitude 8.0 earthquake devastated towns in China’s Sichuan province, killing more than 70,000 people. Alice*, a 30-year-old writer from Sichuan walked around Beichuan, one of the affected towns, the ruins of which the government had preserved. Metal beams hold collapsed buildings in place for the public to visit. She saw the site where schools collapsed, crushing students inside.A classroom inside a destroyed school building lies preserved following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake at Beichuan. Photograph: Wu Hong/EPAIn Yingxue close to the epicentre, a broken clock surrounded by the remains of a middle school is frozen at 2.28, the moment the earthquake struck.“I felt scared because of the power of nature and how many children and students could not escape from it,” says Alice, who plans to start a Chinese language Substack account detailing her journeys into tragedy. “Everything was so broken. It became like a ghost town, because nobody lives in the old town any more.”Alice believes dark tourism helps a country reconcile with its past, even if the government decides what can be remembered.In recent years, tour guide Samantha Wang has seen an increase in Chinese tourists attending the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. In 1937 the Japanese Imperial army captured Nanjing, and Chinese official accounts say 300,000 civilians and soldiers were killed over weeks of massacres. Japan’s official position is that it acknowledges that large numbers of civilians were killed but says the number of victims is “difficult to determine”.People choose chrysanthemums to dedicate to victims at the Nanjing Massacre memorial hall in September 2026. Photograph: VCG/Getty ImagesEntry to the hall is free but tourists must book online The local government reserves 25,000 places a day. In August, tickets to attend the museum are frequently sold out in advance, she says.“There are more tragic sites in China, and I see more people interested to know about that. That’s a new trend” says Wang.Inside the memorial hall hang photos of victims. “They [visitors] feel sad when they see those pictures, when they see those kids who were killed … After the visit, they feel relieved, and they feel encouraged that they should work harder to make China stronger,” she says.*Name has been changedAdditional reporting by Yu-chen Li in Taipei