Recently, a scenic spot in Jincheng, Shanxi Province has caused heated discussion. They announced that they would spend 30 million yuan and plan to recruit 100 NPCs (non-player characters), with an annual salary of up to 10 million yuan.
As soon as the news came out, there was a stir online, but questions also emerged: Is this a sincere recruitment effort, or is it a high-profile marketing gimmick? With this money, why not invest in infrastructure construction? Can this 4A scenic spot built on a slag mountain replicate the next “Wang Po”?
I decided to visit the site and chat with the scenic area staff, applicants, and tourists, trying to find out whether the “30 million yuan recruitment of NPCs” was a simple “topic marketing” or a real breakthrough plan for the small town scenic area.
Situ Town Scenic Area All pictures in this article were taken by The Paper reporter Wei Jiaming
This is not the first “high-profile promotion”: from 5 million solicitation videos to 30 million NPC recruitment
Situ Town is located in Situ Village, Beishidian Town, Jincheng City. Situ Village once prospered due to coal, but was also trapped by coal. In the 1980s and 1990s, as coal resources gradually depleted, the village fell into the dilemma of “no resources underground, no industry above ground, and no way to develop.” In 2009, relying on the opportunity of the Jincheng urban renewal demonstration project, the village built an agricultural ecological park on the slag mountain, and later gradually developed it into a national 4A tourist attraction – Situ Town.
The scenic spot is about 10 kilometers away from Jincheng East Station and about 5 kilometers away from Jincheng North Station. A local online car-hailing driver said that during the summer, “the traffic near the scenic spot is so severe that I can’t get out after entering for a long time.” With holidays approaching, a B&B at the entrance to the scenic spot is doing good business. The clerk said that “basically every holiday is full.”
“Shanxi Daily” reported a set of data: “In 2025, Situ Town will receive 2.2 million tourists, double the previous year; the comprehensive income of the scenic spot is 350 million yuan, driving an increase in income of surrounding accommodation, catering and other industries of more than 220 million yuan; the number of jobs has increased from 500 to more than 1,000, accounting for about 30% of the village’s labor force.”
I contacted Zhou Xiaoming, secretary of the Party branch of Situ Village and person in charge of Situ Town Scenic Area. Behind the dazzling report card, he talked about the profit and loss of the scenic spot, “We will lose 500,000 yuan in 2023, 500,000 yuan in 2024, and we will lose money in 2025, but not much.”
In the current fierce competition in the cultural tourism industry, Situ Town Scenic Area may also need its own “Wang Po” or “Snow Cake Monkey”.
Zhou Xiaoming said that the idea of recruiting NPCs for 30 million yuan was originally proposed by a staff member of the marketing department, but the final plan was not decided by “brain-picking”, but the result of continuous summarization and repeated discussions this year. He said that they have observed that tourists lack emotional value when they come to the scenic spot, and most of the existing cast and crew, except for some college students, are surrounding villagers, and generally lack the foundation to “driving atmosphere”.
During the exchange, Zhou Xiaoming emphasized that this was not a gimmick. “I think this is the stupidest way. It’s not a good way.” He said that others may be able to promote it with a good slogan and a good picture, but they need to spend real money.
In fact, this is not the first time that Situ Town has played the “traffic game”.
Taking advantage of the development of short videos, Situ Cun once created the “Situ Cun Lao Zhou” IP, starring Zhou Xiaoming. In the video, he distributed benefits to tourists, explaining highway toll reimbursement, free snacks and performance upgrades. The account has more than 1.16 million fans on the platform and has been exposed more than 1.8 billion times online. The information about “30 million yuan to recruit NPCs” was also released by this account, and it was followed up with the extended content of “Looking for talents with high salary, please don’t make pranks”.
In August 2026, Situ Town announced that it would offer a 5 million reward for a national short video creation competition. They put 5 million yuan in cash into a bulletproof glass box and displayed it at the ticket gate, launched a national short video reward, and set four levels of rewards based on the number of likes and views: 1 million yuan, 100,000 yuan, 1,000 yuan, and 500 yuan.
At that time, many netizens questioned his motives. For example, the special prize of 1 million yuan requires 10 million likes and 300 million views, which is said to be almost an “impossible task.”
Zhou Xiaoming responded that these standards were not set arbitrarily, but were “scientifically determined” after communicating with the platform. When asked how much he had spent so far, he said he had only spent more than 100,000 yuan. There was a lack of “big internet celebrities” participating, and the participants were more ordinary tourists. Most of the tourists came not for the 5 million yuan, but for the ironwork and other tangible benefits. “Currently, the activities are still continuing, but judging from the growth rate of tourists, there is no obvious effect.”
There are still relevant activities and promotions at the entrance of the scenic spot
30 million yuan, where did it come from and how should it be used?
“Shanxi Daily” once reported on Situ Village’s “village collective + enterprise + farmer” joint-stock cooperation model. The village collective establishes a company, and village cadres take the lead in investing and taking risks. Villagers participate in shares in various forms such as land management rights, idle funds, labor force, etc. The whole village has raised a total of more than 1 billion yuan in development funds and distributed 35 million yuan in dividends.
Regarding the source of funds of 30 million yuan, Zhou Xiaoming said that the scenic spot will have some publicity funds, but the current profit is insufficient, and the “capital” and “start-up funds” are used.
Regarding the recruitment progress, Zhou Xiaoming said: “We mainly want the best NPCs now. If there are three to five or ten to eight, we will set the 30 million yuan, and maybe we will not recruit again.” Zhou Xiaoming said that there are currently more than 7,000 people registered in the background, and he plans to communicate with more than 50 of them via video first. There is no deadline for registration.
As for how to distribute the 30 million yuan, Zhou Xiaoming said that the maximum annual salary is 10 million yuan; below 10 million yuan, there may be two 5 million yuan, or one 5 million yuan; and the following is an annual salary of 1 million yuan or 500,000 yuan. I further asked about the NPC salary grading standards. Zhou Xiaoming did not give specific details. He said that it depends on the traffic, the emotional value it brings to tourists, and the popularity of tourists.
Regarding the question of “why not use this money to provide benefits to employees”, Zhou Xiaoming responded: “Just like I feed my children, I can only feed you now, but if you want to wear famous brands, your father does not have the ability. If we don’t spend 30 million to find NPC, we may face the problem of 1,300 employees not being able to eat in the future.”
In the scenic spot, I met Gao Shan (pseudonym) who came from Yuncheng to apply for an NPC job. He claims to be a director, planner, and can also write scripts. Gao Shan told me that he saw the news about 30 million yuan to find NPC, and wanted to challenge his courage, “I want to make this money.” He said that he was self-recommended and had already talked with the person in charge of the scenic spot. He is also a blogger himself, and he came over to film a program, “I can get 30 million yuan, but if I can’t get it, it doesn’t matter.”
There are also some NPC employees in Situ Town. After learning about the 30 million yuan recruitment, NPC Egg Roll (pseudonym) and Xiao Niu (pseudonym) thought that “Secretary Zhou has said it, it must be true.” When talking about their work, both felt that their professional abilities were still lacking.
Egg Wan recently played the game character “Pei Qinhu” in the park. He hung a bag of “bank notes” around his waist and prepared various games to interact with tourists, such as poetry duplication and song title guessing. Egg Roll said that in the off-season, he would give out three to five hundred banknotes every day, and in the peak season, he would give out at least two or three pockets. Maverick plays a role in the play “Gunsmoke Taihang”. During the performance, some members of the audience will be randomly invited to enter the play and become part of the performance. After interacting with the NPC, some tourists hope to add sports items; others believe that the NPC should bring tourists into the characters to make them more immersive.
Scenic area NPC is interacting with tourists
Zhou Xiaoming said: “Recruiting 30 million NPCs is the first step, and the second step is to build your own NPCs.” He said that employees are actually the biggest NPCs, but they need a good environment and good examples to imitate. Spending 30 million yuan is just to set a better example for actors and employees.
When asked about the revenue expectation of “30 million recruitment”, Zhou Xiaoming felt that it was still difficult to say. “Because every time you do something, as people often say, you may not succeed in everything you do, but in order to succeed, you must always be on the road to doing things.”
Expert: Don’t think that marketing can solve all problems. The follow-up involves whether it can be effectively realized.
Huang Huang, a researcher at the China Tourism Academy, said in an interview with China News Weekly that some scenic spots are keen on recruiting at sky-high prices, and what they value is not necessarily the people, but the advertising effect – “The sky-high recruitment advertisements themselves can bring traffic.”
Zeng Bowei, a professor at the School of Tourism at Beijing Union University, pointed out that in fact, any scenic spot will have some marketing funds invested. In the past, they may have invested in other channels, but now they may feel that investing in “30 million NPCs” can bring greater traffic to the scenic spot through event fermentation.
Zeng Bowei believes that spending 30 million yuan to find NPCs is “definitely very high.” But if we can really recruit an NPC with a so-called 10 million yuan, and bring corresponding traffic and exposure, further driving the growth of tourists, the scenic spot may think it is cost-effective.
In addition, Zeng Bowei emphasized that from a business logic perspective, “30 million looking for NPCs” is a marketing behavior. Although marketing is important, we cannot think that marketing can solve all problems. The follow-up also involves the issue of whether it can be effectively realized.
Zeng Bowei suggested that, first of all, the NPC phenomenon should be sufficiently tolerant, allowing scenic spots to trial and error in small steps and iterate quickly, and encourage them to cultivate screenwriters, directors, actors and operating talents, leaving room for growth of good ideas; secondly, the balance between market innovation and government cultural supervision should be explored. NPCs are highly improvisational. Like cultural performances, it is unrealistic to rely solely on prior approval, and it is easy to “die” if they are controlled. However, if they only pursue getting out of the circle and do not set boundaries, they may also “become chaos if they are released”. Thirdly, NPCs should be guided to pay more attention to the experience of deep integration of culture and tourism. The most important value of NPC is not to let actors stand in scenic spots in ancient costumes, but to transform abstract culture into perceptible and participatory life scenes.
“Although NPC is called a non-player character, its true meaning in the scenic spot is to make every tourist a player.” Zeng Bowei believes that when the character is established, the story is told vividly, the interaction is measured, and the culture is well-founded, the NPC is no longer a short-term gimmick chasing hot searches, but can become an important carrier of the deep integration of culture and tourism.
“Thousand-Year Iron Soul” Performance
Before leaving Situ Town, I watched one of the ace performances here, “Tiehua”. Tourists at the same venue described it as “shocking” and “spectacular”.
Master Jiao, who makes iron flowers, is 60 years old this year. He said that he does not understand what an NPC is, but when it comes to the old craft of iron flower making, he knows it very well. “At least 2.5 tons of iron are used every day, and the iron is heated to 1,600 degrees, otherwise the iron flowers will not look good.”
I remembered Zhou Xiaoming’s words again: “I think this is the stupidest way.”
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