Company in China plans to open 5 more disaster simulation centers — Taipei Times
Lvxing Base, a company in Hangzhou, China, plans to open five more disaster simulation centers over the next three years. Visitors are offered a safe opportunity to experience simulated typhoon, flood and landslide conditions, Taipei Times reports.
Typhoon simulation
The 200,000-square-meter complex in Hangzhou opened in 2024. Before that, the founders of Lvxing Base spent 10 years making documentaries in extreme conditions in different parts of the world. The company also intends to create earthquake and fire simulators.
Lu, 28, from Chongqing, traveled more than 1,300 km to take part in training that simulated a typhoon-caused flood. She said that during the flow of water, she momentarily forgot that she was in a simulation. According to her, the training taught her to remain calm and choose a safe body position during a flood.
Lvxing Base general manager Wang Quanghan said that many visitors come for thrills and want to test whether they can withstand strong winds and heavy rain. Most of the center's individual clients are between 20 and 30 years old.
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Similar formats are also offered by state institutions. At the public safety museum in Beijing's Haidian District, visitors are shown simulations of earthquakes, tsunamis and fires in a 4D cinema with moving platforms and sound effects. Last year, a five-story emergency preparedness center opened in Guangzhou, where a simulator can reproduce ground motion equivalent to a magnitude 7.2 earthquake.
Interest in tragic sites
The article notes that phrases such as “paying for suffering” or “paying for fear” are gaining popularity on Chinese social media. Robert Li, director of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, links this to the desire of a new generation of travelers not only to visit famous landmarks, but also to gain an experience connected with a place.
Some tourists visit actual sites of tragedies. In Sichuan Province, the ruins of Beichuan, which was affected by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in May 2008 that claimed more than 70,000 lives, have been preserved. In Yingxiu, near the epicenter, a clock that stopped at 14:28 — at the moment of the earthquake — remains among the remnants of a secondary school.
Tour guide Samantha Wang also reported growing interest in the Memorial for Victims of the Nanjing Massacre. To visit the memorial, a free ticket must be booked online in advance, and local authorities allocate 25,000 places daily. According to her, places are often booked in advance in August.
