During the National Day holiday, some people spent 218 yuan to experience the "slap in the face" activity.

This National Day holiday, Hengdian Scenic Area is crowded with tourists who are eager to get a taste of being in a drama.

For a while, in the real-life shooting sets of the Qingming Riverside Landscape Garden and the Ming and Qing Dynasties Palace, the leading roles are no longer professional actors, but grandparents in their fifties and sixties, young parents with children, and even foreign tourists who cannot speak Chinese.

In August this year, Hengdian World Studios launched the "Short Drama Experience" program. According to its official mini-program, tourists only need to pay a minimum of 218 yuan (excluding makeup and styling) to "invest in the entire production team", get one director assigned, and several NPCs to act opposite them, to restore the real shooting scene of short drama production. About 2 days after the shooting ends, tourists can also get a finished video of about two minutes. If tourists want a more immersive plot experience, they can upgrade to a 388-yuan package that includes full makeup and styling services.

It should be noted that the above two packages do not include scenic area tickets. Tourists who want to experience the program still need to purchase an additional 239-yuan all-area pass, or choose the 499-yuan package that covers a single park access plus short drama shooting experience. During the National Day Golden Week (October 1 to October 5), the price of this package has been raised to 549 yuan.

Before the National Day holiday, the staff of Hengdian Micro Film told Time Finance that the most popular experience for tourists at present is the *Empresses in the Palace* series, and there may be queues for official shooting during the National Day period.

218 yuan to fulfill the "actor dream", half of the scenes have "slapping in the face" plots

Tourists can realize their costume drama dream by paying just over 200 yuan, and Hengdian World Studios has turned the short drama shooting experience into a low-cost retail project.

According to the latest script list provided by the customer service of Hengdian Micro Film, tourists can choose from a total of 24 clips, all of which are costume dramas. Among them, there are 4 classic clips from *Empresses in the Palace*, and 12 clips in total are the "tear off the white lotus and green tea" segments that contain the slapping plot. In addition, there are classic clips from TV dramas such as *My Fair Princess* and *The Secret History of Xiaozhuang*.

In addition to young people, elderly groups who come to experience the project also account for a large proportion. "I actually saw many elderly tour groups coming to play in the scenic area. After I told my mom about the experience of filming dramas here, she was also very interested." Juzi, who came to Hengdian to experience short drama shooting in mid-September, told Time Finance.

According to Time Finance, the official mini-program of Hengdian World Studios opened the reservation channel for short drama experience on August 2 this year. In the two months after its launch, the project invited multiple KOLs to visit and experience on site. Zhang Jiaqi, the world champion of diving, also participated in the experience and produced related content, and a single video on a certain social platform received more than 100,000 likes.

Juzi is one of the tourists who were "attracted" by social media. "I previously saw many bloggers posting videos of their short drama experience in Hengdian, and I thought it was very interesting. I feel that short dramas have relatively low cost, fast pace, low experience threshold, and you can fulfill your dream for just over 200 yuan."

Hengdian has gone through different stages in turning the short drama experience into a retail product.

The earliest can be traced back to the "Star Dream Workshop" in 2011. At that time, it was mainly oriented to corporate team building and group tourists, shooting micro films, and making profits by high unit price for group customers. Around 2016, Hengdian promoted immersive tourism, where tourists holding mobile phones to take selfies and edit their own videos could be seen everywhere in the parks, and the Hengdian Micro Film Company then moved towards standardized and corporatized operation.

In 2024, vertical-screen short dramas became a huge hit. The project further streamlined the shooting process and optimized equipment configuration, compressing the original half-day shooting to about one hour, and the consumption threshold also dropped from the thousand-yuan level to the hundred-yuan range.

However, limited by the pricing, this experience project is also trying its best to reduce various costs.

When Time Finance consulted the official about the price as a consumer, the staff informed that "there are NPCs available", but Juzi revealed to Time Finance that the NPC resources in the scenic area are relatively tight, and some scripts that require multiple NPCs cannot be selected at all. Many NPCs are on duty to participate in scenic area interactions during the day, and they are not free until night. She filmed alone, and finally could only choose a script with only one NPC assigned.

Xiaoyu (pseudonym), who came to Hengdian for experience in mid-September, also encountered the same situation. "Unless we are KOLs who have notified them in advance, it is possible to find some professional people to act with us. Ordinary tourists can hardly find NPCs to act opposite them."

In order to balance the limited actor manpower and tourists' plot experience, many on-site directors need to play multiple roles at the same time, and also serve as screenwriters to revise the script on the spot, which also increases the actual shooting time for some tourists.

In addition to the paid short drama shooting experience project, many tourists told Time Finance that the on-site acting experience with NPCs at many fixed check-in points in the scenic area is already included in the scenic area ticket, and tourists can participate for free. Such experience will not provide a finished video, but the on-site interaction with NPCs is also very strong.

The micro film team of Hengdian World Studios once publicly disclosed that as of late August, the number of people who have experienced the project has exceeded 2,000. According to the plan, during this year's National Day holiday, Hengdian will transform the first batch of 19 NPC shooting sets into short drama experience sets, with more than 500 actors to act opposite tourists.

The official account of Hengdian revealed that during this year's Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday, Hengdian will cooperate with TVB, invite veteran actors such as Chan Pak Cheung and Frankie Ng, as well as influencers such as Hu Kaixuan who has 6 million fans across the network, to come to the scenic area to interact with tourists, and include "drawing a blind box to pick your acting partner" into the experience gameplay.

Professional film crews act for tourists, and extras start delivering takeout

"(The director and makeup artist) used to work with film crews, but now they are shooting short dramas for tourists." Xiaoyu noticed this phenomenon during the shooting.

Yang Yang (pseudonym), a regular employee of Hengdian World Studios who has worked in Hengdian for six years, revealed to Time Finance that there is an institutional organization called "Hengdian Actors Guild" in Hengdian, and most of the NPCs in the scenic area are currently sent by the "Hengdian Actors Guild". Under the system of Hengdian Actors Guild, extras, background actors, and featured actors form three levels of actors.

Extras have the lowest threshold. As long as they are in good health and complete the registration at the Actors Guild, they can start work. They have no lines, no close-ups, and their shots flash by quickly. Most ordinary extras get a basic salary of about 130 yuan for 10 hours, and after deducting 10% management fee of the guild, they get about 121.5 yuan in hand, with an additional 13.5 yuan per hour for overtime. This means that they can only earn two to three thousand yuan a month if they have shooting opportunities every day, and it will be difficult to make a living once the number of shooting notices decreases.

Foreground actors need better appearance conditions, and they can get 200 to 400 yuan a day. Young women gather in this group, and the competition is more intense. Featured actors have higher requirements for acting skills, they can take on separate roles with a small number of lines, and their daily salary ranges from several hundred yuan to more than one thousand yuan.

It is a common reality in the industry that income cannot cover expenses.

Yan'erjie (pseudonym), a short drama actor, said to Time Finance, "Most of the extras who stick to their jobs in Hengdian will not only do this job. I know many extras have part-time jobs delivering takeout, driving ride-hailing cars, or working in nearby restaurants. Short drama shooting has a fast pace and high intensity. Wearing armor in high temperature, getting wet in the rain, kneeling, staying up late... Over time, everyone's body can't stand it."

In the past few years, the film and television industry was in a cold winter, and the living space of bottom actors was gradually compressed. Until the rise of vertical-screen short dramas, a large number of employment opportunities were provided for some actors who could not get roles in long dramas. Data shows that the market size of micro-short dramas exceeded 100 billion yuan in 2025. According to the calculation of the National School of Development at Peking University, its entire industrial chain has driven more than 2 million jobs in total.

However, the dividend of micro-short dramas faded much faster than practitioners expected. Yan'erjie is a post-70s Hengdian short drama actor. She started her career in Zhengzhou at the end of August 2025 and moved to Hengdian in April 2026. She told Time Finance that she was lucky to catch the "tail" of the short drama boom.

In recent months, her most intuitive feeling is that - the film crews seem to have "disappeared" overnight.

"At Jumei Airport in Zhengzhou, there might be five or six crews shooting one day last year. When I went back after the Spring Festival this year, there were only one or two crews a day in March and April, and the whole industry was very depressed. Many shooting bases are struggling to survive, and even many newly built bases have no crews to shoot in. From August last year to February this year, I filmed 80 dramas in half a year. After February, there were suddenly no more shooting opportunities. From February to now (the end of September), I have only filmed 46 dramas in total." Yan'erjie shared.

The salaries of actors and industry practitioners have almost been cut in half. Yan'erjie told Time Finance that her original salary base was not very high. Last year, her daily salary was about 500 to 800 yuan, and this year it has dropped to 300 to 500 yuan. Many leading actors she knows have suffered a more obvious decline. Their daily salary could reach 4000 to 5000 yuan before, but now even if the salary is only about 1000 yuan, many people will compete for the job, and the overall salary shrinkage is very obvious.

One of the triggers of the industry shock comes from the policy adjustment of leading platforms. In March 2026, Red Fruit Short Drama under ByteDance adjusted the minimum guarantee mechanism for small and medium-sized production companies, and a large number of live-action short drama projects that relied on the minimum guarantee to survive were stagnant. According to the data disclosed at the press conference of the State Council Information Office, 430,000 micro-short dramas were launched online in the first 8 months of 2026, of which AI short dramas accounted for more than 90%.

Many practitioners in the film and television industry said that the overall situation of the industry is still not optimistic. In addition to working as NPCs in scenic areas, Yan'erjie introduced that many of her peers have also poured into other fields to make a living: some participate in the shooting of live-streaming dramas and short video clips, and perform according to the scripts. The actors only get film pay, do not participate in goods sales, and do not get commission, and the final goal is to help the account owner sell goods and realize monetization.

A WeChat group for extras (photo provided by the interviewee)

"There are only five or six interactive sessions a day in the off-season, but the number may increase to more than a dozen during the National Day, and the number of NPCs will also double." Yang Yang is calculating his workload for the National Day holiday.

For most non-permanent employees, it has become the norm to wait for invitations from film crews while seizing temporary survival opportunities such as being NPCs and shooting short video clips for live streaming.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Time Finance APP" (ID: tf-app), written by Li Weiqi and Li Qian, authorized to be republished by 36Kr.