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Day thirteen began with the most elegant trick of the whole trip: our luggage traveled better than we did. The hotel arranged a premium DiDi to carry our bags straight to the Bulgari Hotel in Shanghai, while we took a second DiDi to the rail station with nothing but day packs and cameras. Then it was a high-speed train out of Hangzhou and a morning arrival in a small city with an outsized second life — Hengdian, home to the largest film and television studio complex on Earth. If you're not an avid fan of Chinese film and drama, you may never have heard of Hengdian — and that is precisely its charm. At the station, a driver and a guide were waiting to organize our day — essential, as we'd soon learn, because Hengdian's palaces and parks are scattered across different parts of the city, far beyond walking distance of one another. If yesterday was a thousand years of real history, today was a thousand sets built to recreate it.
A Forbidden City of One's Own: Ming & Qing Palace
Hengdian opens with its crown jewel. The Ming & Qing Palace is a full-scale recreation of Beijing's Forbidden City — golden roofs, vermilion walls, courtyard behind courtyard rolling out along a ceremonial axis — built in the late 1990s purely so cameras could have a palace of their own. We walked it in the early morning quiet, before the tour groups and the heat: up the marble bridges, along the great axis to the Meridian Gate, past a giant carved-marble ramp where dragons coil through clouds in white stone.
Inside, the illusion only deepens — throne rooms dressed and waiting, a Nine-Dragon Wall, displays of court costume. And then the quiet broke, gloriously: the Eight Banners horse show, riders thundering across the grounds in Qing-dynasty banners and armor. This is the working secret of Hengdian — the sets are free for film crews; the town earns its living from the hotels, restaurants, costumes and equipment around them. More than a thousand productions have shot here, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to Story of Yanxi Palace. Standing in an empty Forbidden City at 9 AM, you understand why they come.
And Hengdian is far more than a studio. It is a living, breathing city of tens of thousands of people who all work in the industry — extras, actors, producers, writers, directors, and the staff who keep the whole dream factory running. All day, between the palaces, we sat through shows and educational experiences inside the parks that pull back the curtain on how these dramas and films are actually produced. You don't just walk through the sets here; you learn how the magic is manufactured.
One practical salvation, as the day climbed to 100°F and stayed there: inside each park, you can rent a golf buggy to cover the distances. These palaces were built for emperors and armies, not for strolling in July heat — and in that heat, the buggy was nothing short of a lifesaver.
Where Chang'an Comes to Film: Spring & Autumn · Tang Garden
Getting into Tang Garden at all was the day's first small drama. Entry is never guaranteed — this is a working production base, and when dramas are filming, the gates can simply stay closed. Our guide had to go up to the security office and plead our case, and at first the answer was no. So we explained ourselves: we were drama fans who had come halfway around the world for exactly this experience. The security team waved us out of the van and into the office, sat us down, and asked for our passports — and why we wanted to go in so badly. In the end, fandom prevailed: because we had a guide, and because it was just the two of us plus him, they said yes.
Inside, we had traveled a thousand years backward, to the Tang dynasty. The Spring & Autumn · Tang Garden is a working film base of Tang palaces, market streets and still courtyards — some 580 mu of old Chang'an, and the ground where the hit drama Joy of Life （庆余年） came to life. Between shoots it is wonderfully peaceful: a gate pavilion over a green pond, carved pillars, empty lanes that exist only to wait for their next century.
And then the best moment of the day simply happened in front of us: a drama unit shooting on the street. Costumed actors — she in flowing red, an umbrella held against the fierce sun; he in pale scholarly robes — stood a few feet away while the crew in modern T-shirts fussed, adjusted and rolled. We later learned from the crew's own vehicle pass that the production was 《皇子妃夯爆了》 — roughly, "The Prince's Consort Is a Smash Hit" — and honestly, standing there watching a scene being born, we believed it. This is the Hengdian no tour bus finds: not a set, but a set at work.
And the day had one more gift in store for a pair of drama fans: on set, we met actress Yang Yutong 杨雨潼， in full hanfu costume between scenes — and she graciously stopped for a photo with us. For two people who have spent years watching these dramas from a couch in Pittsburgh, standing on a Tang-dynasty street chatting with one of its stars was the kind of moment no itinerary can promise and no money can buy. That photo stays in the family album — but the memory leads the highlight reel. She loved meeting us, and even quickly went live with us on her Douyin for all her fans to see.
The First Emperor's Stage: Qin Palace
If the Ming & Qing Palace is splendor, the Qin Palace is power. Built for Chen Kaige's The Emperor and the Assassin and immortalized in Zhang Yimou's Hero, it is Hengdian at its most monumental: rammed-earth walls the color of dust and iron, black banners snapping overhead, beast-headed reliefs flanking a gate built to swallow armies. And then the staircase — a vast ceremonial sweep of steps climbing to the throne hall, the one you have seen in a dozen films without ever knowing its name.
Outside the gate sits Hengdian's answer to Hollywood's Walk of Fame: a wall of fame with handprints from the stars who have filmed here. Jing Tian. Zhao Liying. Yang Zi. And Dilraba, her golden handprint set beside her portrait. Half of China's screens have passed through this gate — and after watching their dramas at home for years, walking this wall felt oddly like visiting old friends at work.
A Painting You Can Walk Through: Qingming Scroll Park
We ended the day inside a masterpiece. The Qingming Scroll Park rebuilds Zhang Zeduan's beloved Song-dynasty scroll — Along the River During the Qingming Festival — at full, walkable scale: Kaifeng's markets, canals and teahouses gathered around the great Fan Tower, which rises over the Bian River exactly as it does in the painting, nine hundred years on.
The light did the rest. Late afternoon turned to gold over the water, where enormous lantern sculptures — a phoenix, great fish — waited for dark. Dancers performed in a hall; lanterns by the hundred strung over the gate as the sky softened. A painting is something you look at. This one, you stroll through at golden hour, and it looks back.
The Train Back to Shanghai
Hengdian's last gift was the simplest: an evening high-speed bullet train, sleek and quiet, carrying two happily exhausted travelers back up to Shanghai — where, thanks to that morning's DiDi, our luggage and our room were already waiting for us at the Bulgari. Travel light, arrive ahead of your bags' worries, and let the day end on rails.
Day 13 Verdict: The Factory of Dreams
Day thirteen was pure joy for anyone who has ever lost an evening to a Chinese period drama. Four worlds in one day: an empty Forbidden City at dawn, a Tang-dynasty street with a scene being filmed on it, the First Emperor's staircase, and a Song-dynasty painting at golden hour — historic houses, ancient palaces, throne rooms, underpasses, bridges and lakes, one after another. Hengdian is often called China's Hollywood, but that undersells it — Hollywood never built its backlots at this scale, or opened them to anyone with a ticket and a free day. It was something we had always wanted to do, and we made it work on this trip — squeezed into a single day.
The Final Takeaway: Do as we say, not as we did: two or three parks in a day is the sweet spot. Hengdian makes an easy day trip from Hangzhou or Shanghai — but we squeezed in four parks and still left corners unexplored in every one. When we return to China, we'll do Hengdian properly: stay a night in town and split the parks across two days. If you watch the dramas, come and stand inside them. Pair it with Hangzhou as we did — real history first, then the glorious recreation — and travel light between the two. Your luggage can fend for itself; the Bulgari will be expecting it.
Note: We've decided to review hotels separately in individual featured posts, once we wrap up the journal of the trip itself. Therefore you'll find a review for the Bulgari Hotel Shanghai, upcoming.
A Look Ahead to Day 14: Shanghai, At Last
Tomorrow, the journal changes tempo entirely: Shanghai. We wake up on Suzhou Creek at the Bulgari — a jewel-box tower beside the restored 1916 Chamber of Commerce building — with the Bund a short stroll away and a whole new city to collect. After two weeks of lakes, temples, tea fields and film sets, Day 14 is Shanghai's turn to show off.
📸 View the full Hengdian photo gallery → https://mrtravelagent.pixieset.com/hengdian/
