ZHEJIANG, East China — At China’s largest film and television production base, veteran director Zheng Zhongfu was taking his two leads through a confrontation between a prince and his wronged wife.

“In my previous life, you gouged out my heart and left me to die in the wilderness,” he recited, showing them how to deliver the line and where to look. “In this life, I will take back everything that belongs to me.”

Qi Kexin and his wife listened closely. But once the cameras rolled, they caught each other’s eye and burst into laughter, forcing Zheng to call cut. Again.

“The emotion has to land … your gaze has to focus,” he reminded them. “Whatever you do, don’t laugh. Let’s go again.”

Qi, 48, and his wife were tourists at Hengdian World Studios in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, where visitors can pay 388 yuan ($60) per person to star in a short drama of their own. Qi had booked the shoot on a whim after spotting the experience on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.

The package includes costumes, makeup, and filming, with studio performers filling the supporting roles. Visitors spend about an hour in makeup and on set, sometimes longer if they add scenes or need additional coaching. Two days later, they receive a finished two-minute drama with a complete storyline.

Earlier tourist shoots required groups of three to five and at least two hours, said Wu Yizhuo, who oversees the service at Hengdian World Studios. “Individual tourists with packed schedules found that hard to accept.” His team developed shorter shoots that a single visitor could book.

Visitors can now choose from nearly 30 scripts written by staff screenwriters, drawing on themes from Chinese social media and the country’s booming ultrashort drama industry, including palace intrigue, martial arts fantasy, and romances featuring domineering CEOs.

Wu’s team asks visitors whether they want to play a hero or a villain. Most choose villains as a way to relieve stress, he said, with “satisfying revenge” stories especially in demand.

Amateur hour

Qi chose a palace intrigue script in which he plays a prince who wants to divorce his wife for another woman. His real-life wife plays the wronged spouse, who turns the tables on him with an emperor’s order and a sword.

After a nervous start, the pair began to settle into their roles as Zheng coached their dialogue and movements. Their sleeve flicks and sword draws became more assured. “You nailed it!” he called from behind the camera after one take.

By the time the shoot wrapped, Qi had a new respect for professional actors. “You have to memorize lines, vary your tone, and add emotion. You can’t attend to everything at once,” he said.

“Actors really have it hard. It truly takes skill,” Qi added. “We’re just playing around — we’re far behind the professionals.”

Zheng had spent years directing trained actors before he began filming tourists in Hengdian this summer. He breaks difficult lines into smaller pieces, sometimes splitting a sentence across three shots to ease the pressure on visitors, and aims to finish filming in about 30 minutes.

Professional crews are serious and not particularly cheerful while filming, Zheng said. With tourists, the focus is on participation and keeping the set lively. “They may not care much about the final film’s quality. The main thing is to come here and be happy.”

Zheng is open to visitors adding scenes or lines, or switching into dialect. “As long as the final film works well, it’s fine,” he said. “The more drama there is, the more fully they perform — and the more they share it on social media.”

On the day Sixth Tone visited Hengdian, Zheng moved straight from Qi’s shoot to his next performer, Zhang Zhongfeng. The 58-year-old farm owner had driven more than 2,000 kilometers from the southwestern Sichuan province with her daughter for the experience. She had never acted and was nervous when she learned her daughter had booked a shoot for her.

Zhang chose palace intrigue, and Zheng tailored a role to her age and temperament. Once filming began, her commanding presence surprised him. Onlookers mistook her for one of the studio performers.

Her daughter, Su Jing, 35, filmed a princess scene at another set the next day. “It’s a bit more complicated than filming yourself with a phone, but much simpler than a big movie — no huge number of lines to memorize, and staff guide you throughout,” she said. “It’s like an upgraded version of travel photography.”

Zheng said the experience was drawing growing numbers of visitors, particularly during holidays. Nearly 3,000 people have taken part since the package launched in July.

Around 2010, Hengdian mainly hosted big-budget films and large TV productions with long shooting schedules, Wu, who oversees the tourist service, recalled. Before one production finished, the next was already booked. “Vertical-screen short dramas have since become more common, while large productions have declined,” he said.

In recent months, cheaper AI production and cuts in platform financing have reduced live-action shoots. In Hengdian, the weekly average number of filming crews reportedly fell nearly 25% year on year in the first half of 2026.

On peak days, Wu’s team handles 30 to 40 groups of tourists. When its regular staff cannot cover the bookings, the studio calls in local part-time workers. Zheng films tourist dramas as a member of one such outsourced team.

Giovana Velasco, a tourist from Peru, first visited Hengdian last year, when the experience wasn’t available, she recalled. After spotting it on Trip.com this year, she booked a shoot and chose to play a rejected daughter seeking revenge.

She rehearsed lines in Chinese, Spanish, and English, battled nerves and laughter, and sometimes relied on body language to stay in character. Her shoot took twice as long as those of Chinese visitors. She is already planning another trip to play a scheming sister and surprise her TikTok followers.

A Shanghai tourist surnamed Xia chose a scene from the 2011 Chinese period drama “Empresses in the Palace” in which her character slaps a maid who has struck her first. She booked the shoot after seeing influencers perform in Hengdian on social media. “Just for fun, out of curiosity,” she joked.

Before she delivered the slap, the director demonstrated how to draw her hand back to make the movement look bigger on camera. The finished film arrived two days later, sooner than she expected. Xia was impressed by the picture quality, the background, and her own styling and makeup.

When she shared it with close friends, many wanted her to take them along to film one themselves. They asked, “Where’s the next episode?”

Additional reporting: Xu Ruishuo and Xiao Chuhan; editor: Apurva.

(Header image: A crew films tourists in Hengdian, Zhejiang province, September 2026. Wu Huiyuan/Sixth Tone)