How NPC changed from "explosion" to "long-lasting": new trends and challenges in scenic area interaction

"Li Bai", "Su Dongpo" and "Ancient Knights" come to tourists -

Scenario interpretation, how "explosion" becomes "long-lasting"

[Reporter Observation]

During the holidays, more and more tourists stop by for interactions.

At Hetou Old Street in Tangshan, Hebei Province, tourists lined up to exchange poems and chat with "Li Bai"; at the "One Thought of Dunhuang" Grotto Art Exhibition in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, the "King of Growth" skillfully used Cantonese and English to conduct a "dialogue across time and space" with tourists, which aroused constant amazement...

Poems such as "Li Bai" and "Du Fu", mythical characters cruising and interacting, ancient knights wielding swords... all kinds of NPCs (Non-Player Characters) are active in the streets and alleys of the scenic spot, becoming the most attractive scenery.

Why did NPC become the "new top trend" in the scenic spot? How can scenic spots use NPCs to turn "traffic" into "retention"? Focusing on these issues, reporters conducted research interviews.

1. He is good at "catching up ideas" and even "creating dreams"

"We meet today, would you like to have a drink with me?"

In the city that never sleeps in the Tang Dynasty in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, tourist Wu Xiaoyan just raised her mobile phone when the NPC "Li Bai" came towards her. Dressed in elegant clothes, he recited "The Wine Will Come in" aloud and raised his glass to invite her to "drink with each other". Although there was no wine in the cup, at that moment, the atmosphere of the prosperous Tang Dynasty came to my face. "I feel like I was suddenly dragged into the Tang Dynasty," she said.

NPC, originally a game term, refers to a character that is not controlled by the player and is driven by a preset script to promote the progress of the game. In recent years, this concept has been introduced into the cultural tourism scene on a large scale, becoming a new way of connecting scenic spots and tourists.

In the Yinji Animal Kingdom Scenic Area in Zhengzhou, Henan, 24-year-old Huang Ziyi played the role of "Black Swan". After putting on his feather coat and makeup every day, he would shuttle around every corner of the park - chatting with tourists, taking them to play games, and also participating in stage performances and float parades. “An active conversation and a game interaction turn a casual look at animals and gardens into a unique experience of truly participating.” In his view, constant real-time communication with tourists is the core work of NPCs.

In Zhejiang Hengdian Film and Television City's Qingming River Scene Park, NPC "Su Su" also has a deep understanding of this. "The tourists are the protagonists when they come, and we are the supporting actors. We follow them and create a film and television dream for them." He told reporters that Hengdian calls NPC "dream makers", which is to turn tourists from bystanders into "actors".

"NPCs in scenic spots are plot promoters, atmosphere builders and emotional connectors, and are also an important carrier for the implementation of experience economy and emotional economy in the field of cultural tourism." Wen Weihua, associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages ​​and Journalism at Beijing Jiaotong University, pointed out that NPCs provide tourists with a "face-to-face" interactive experience, as well as multiple emotional values ​​such as pleasure, surprise, and resonance.

Nowadays, from historical sages to literary masters, from mythological figures to ordinary people, from intangible cultural heritage craftsmen to spiritual animals and auspicious animals, the spectrum of NPC characters is increasingly enriched, and tourists' expectations have become more diverse. Some people value the sense of immersion and require that the NPC's speech, movements, and expressions all fit the character's settings; some care more about popularity and hope that the NPC's performances can be understood by the elderly and children; others expect on-the-spot reactions and can "pick up jokes" at any time - they can answer questions about history, and they can respond with their character's identity when joking.

"Li Bai" in Tangshan Hetou Old Street Scenic Area just meets this expectation. He is called the "worry-relieving poetry fairy" by netizens. No matter what questions tourists ask, he can always answer them easily with poetry. However, this calmness is not all based on improvisation. Xu Xiaowen, president of Kaigeer Group, which operates the scenic spot, revealed that the team classified tourists' questions in advance according to categories such as relationships, life, work, etc., prepared corresponding poems for each type of question, and also reserved some "universal poems" to prevent an awkward moment.

In Xu Xiaowen's view, the threshold for a qualified NPC is not low - one must be familiar with the character's life experience and master his classic works, and he must always maintain enthusiasm during offline interactions and be able to quickly bring tourists into the situation; he must also be flexible in the face of various emergencies on site, and his appearance must match the prototype character to a certain extent. It is this requirement of "both internal and external" that makes excellent NPCs a scarce resource.

Wen Weihua fully agrees with this. She noticed that the current NPCs in scenic spots can be roughly divided into four categories: plot narrative type, cultural science type, game task type, and scene atmosphere type. "A mature NPC can often assume multiple functions such as telling culture, promoting plots, playing games, and providing emotional value at the same time." She said that NPCs are gradually becoming "living entrances" that can be dialogued and empathized with in the cultural scenes of scenic spots.

2 The “people in the drama” become the “traffic password”

"I'm so busy." "Susu" wiped her sweat and it was time to play again.

In the Hengdian Qingming River Scenery Park during the summer, "Su Su" performs "Su Dongpo's Culture" four times a day, and also participates in parade interactions and host performances. Often, as soon as we finish reading poems with this group of tourists, we turn around to greet the next group.

"Su Su" was originally named Wan Weibing. Six years ago, he graduated with a major in acting and became a full-time NPC in Hengdian Scenic Area. He has played the role of Taibai Jinxing and the Immortal Official Waiter. After taking over the role of "Su Dongpo" in 2022, he began to buy poetry books, memorize poems, and study Su Dongpo's life, just to get closer to the thousand-year-old literary giant on the stage. Gradually, more and more tourists came to interact with him, and everyone affectionately called him "Susu". Tourists posted videos of the interaction on social media, and he became an internet sensation.

The story of Wan Weibing is a microcosm of the current NPC craze in scenic spots. NPCs, which used to be "embellished", have now become "standard features" in scenic spots: the Long live Mountain Martial Arts City in Kaifeng, Henan, has built an all-weather "martial arts world" with more than 1,500 NPCs and over 3,000 live performances per day; Tangshan River in Hebei Toulaojie Scenic Area has established different NPC systems around poets, Tang culture, urban figures, mythological characters, etc., and has now formed an interactive matrix of more than 1,000 actors and actresses; since March this year, more than 50 scenic spots across the country have gathered to recruit NPCs...

The popularity of NPCs in scenic spots reflects the general trend of the cultural tourism industry upgrading from "sightseeing tourism" to "immersive experience". According to data from the China Tourism Academy, 68% of domestic tourists last year listed "immersive experience" as the primary criterion for selecting scenic spots, far exceeding the 23% of "landscape viewing". A report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that as of November 2025, my country's experience economy market has reached 18.4 trillion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 22.6%, and is expected to exceed 22 trillion yuan this year.

"NPC takes experience construction as its core, integrates culture, fun and storytelling, emphasizes interaction and immersion, and turns tourists into 'people in the story situation.'" Wen Weihua said that NPC interaction has opened up a "co-presence-co-creation" model - tourists have changed from recipients of knowledge and viewers of performances to temporary participants in cultural situations, echoing the current tourists' deep demands for personalized and interactive experiences.

From "visiting here" to "getting involved in the play", the in-depth interaction between tourists and NPCs is reshaping the communication logic of scenic spots. The reporter found that on social media, posts such as "The NPC in XX scenic spot is too friendly" and "How to meet XX NPC by chance" are common. The immersive experience of tourists has spawned a large number of pictures, texts and short video contents, and has achieved fission dissemination with the help of social media, driving many tourists to "second visit" or "plant grass".

During the interview, many scenic spot directors said that NPC has significantly extended the time tourists spend in the park, and a high proportion of tourists who participated in the interaction returned to visit. "Flow" is quietly turning into "retention." Tangshan Hetou Old Street Scenic Spot will receive more than 8 million tourists in 2025, and annual revenue will increase by 53% year-on-year. Multi-format performances have made it a cultural tourism destination with over 85% of foreign tourists; in Kaifeng Long Live Mountain Martial Arts City, the average daily stay time of tourists participating in NPC interactions has been extended by 2.3 hours, and the annual revenue of the scenic spot has jumped from 80 million yuan in 2022 to 1.27 billion yuan in 2025...

3 How to say goodbye to “barbaric growth”

Behind the popularity of NPC, another side of industry development is also exposed.

"Different scenic spots always have the same few lines of poetry; what travels through is not dynasties, but the same copy-pasted studio." A tourist complained, revealing the embarrassment of the homogeneity of NPCs in scenic spots - under the lively appearance, many are "mass production" with repeated characters and similar lines.

What's more, in order to attract attention, some scenic spots use body shape, coquettishness, and "side-stepping" actions as selling points, and design NPC interactions into ambiguous scenes such as wall-dong, kissing, etc., and the public cultural and tourism space has become a "curious show." Excessive physical contact and ambiguous behavior frequently occur, which not only makes adult tourists uncomfortable, but is also unsuitable for parent-child and other public scenes.

NPC is not only a practitioner of the scenic spot, but also a content disseminator in the Internet era. His words and deeds display the image of the scenic spot and convey the value orientation. The chaos caused by traffic logic is consuming the trust of tourists and forcing the industry to re-examine the positioning of NPCs.

"A good NPC represents not only a scenic spot, but also the embodiment of local cultural heritage." In Wan Weibing's view, interaction with tourists should adhere to the three standards of warmth, knowledge, and boundaries - it must not only bring emotional value, but also convey cultural connotation, while maintaining an appropriate scale of interaction. Huang Ziyi believes that NPC cannot rely solely on appearance and short-term popularity. "You have to learn more new things to find a way out."

“The life cycle of NPC will be as long as the culture is rooted in.” Xu Xiaowen said that scenic spots should strive to create “cultural NPCs”. The practice of Hetou Old Street shows that traditional culture can also become a traffic entrance. Poetry itself may not necessarily have a natural advantage in online communication, but when it is put into real-life topics such as "What to do if you are urged to get married" and "What to do if you are under great work pressure", it will gain a new expression context. Many children took the initiative to recite poems in order to interact with "Li Bai", and culture has changed from "knowledge that needs to be learned" to "a game that I am willing to participate in."

Institutionalized norms are also indispensable. Wen Weihua suggested that scenic spots should establish a content review and training mechanism to incorporate lines, interaction scale, physical contact range, etc. into specifications, while also incorporating cultural accuracy and visitor experience into the assessment, rather than just evaluating the success of NPCs based on Internet popularity. Some experts also suggested creating a local NPC matrix and creating an exclusive character system based on local characteristic culture and folk customs; establishing a local NPC reserve library to create a new cultural and tourism team that is down-to-earth, cultured, and sustainable.

"Cultural resources are the roots, theme narratives are the bones, scenic space is the field, NPCs are the touch points, tourists are co-creators, and social media platforms are amplifiers." Wen Weihua called for only by keeping the cultural core, respecting the historical background and local cultural logic, can NPCs change from "popular" to "long-lasting".

(Our reporter Fang Li, our correspondent Tang Ruiyu)