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,” said the 28-year-old from Chongqing in southwest 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 1,300 kilometers to Hangzhou in the east, and joined a group of 20 to take part in a disaster simulation that featured a typhoon-fueled flooding scenario, according to The Guardian.
Standing in a simulated flood, her mind momentarily went blank as hundreds of tons 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 said. “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 meter 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,” said 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 centers across China within the next three years. It also plans to create earthquake and fire simulations.
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.
The new generation of Chinese travelers want to experience a place rather than simply see famous attractions,” said Robert Li, director of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
But some travelers 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.
“I felt scared because of the power of nature and how many children and students could not escape from it,” said 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 anymore.”
Alice believes dark tourism helps a country reconcile with its past, even if the government decides what can be remembered.
