Factory tourism combines fun and learning

For Lin Mengqi, a mother of two from Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, summer vacation usually means visiting popular tourist attractions. This year, her family chose something different: a factory.

At Xiaomi's smart home appliance factory in Wuhan, Hubei province, Lin and her children watched robotic arms dart between machines as an air conditioner took shape piece by piece. A sightseeing shuttle carried them between workshops, while wireless headsets explained what was happening behind the glass.

"The children were fascinated by the robots, but what impressed me most was that they could see the entire process, from raw materials to finished products. It was both fun and educational," Lin says.

In one workshop, the lights can even be switched off, leaving machines and robotic arms working almost entirely on their own. Elsewhere, visitors can watch appliances undergo high — and low-temperature tests, aging tests and other quality checks.

The Wuhan factory opened to the public for industrial tourism on March 18 and has since received more than 20,000 visitors, including 354 from 13 countries and regions, according to Xu Ying, director of Xiaomi's smart factory in Wuhan. During the summer holidays, monthly attendance exceeded 3,000, with families and school groups among the biggest audiences.

"We want to make the manufacturing process transparent, allowing users to see how a product goes from components to a finished product," Xu says.

For a group of students from Manchester Metropolitan University who visited this summer, the experience offered a close-up look at technologies they had previously encountered mainly in textbooks.

"This intelligent production line, in particular, far exceeded all my expectations," said chemistry student Lucy Anne Fentem.

For electrical and electronic engineering student Muhammad Umar Hussain, seeing automated control systems at work made a different impression. "I have learned countless theories on automated control from textbooks, yet witnessing them in person delivers an entirely different impact," he said.

Across China, factory tourism is increasingly moving beyond simply looking at production lines. Technology is becoming part of the attraction itself.

At Mengniu's dairy facility in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, automated production lines, driverless carts and control rooms form the backdrop of the tour.

For visitors, the technology can turn an ordinary production process into something resembling a science fiction set.

"I honestly didn't expect a factory tour to be this much fun," said Zhen Ping, a tourist from Gansu province, who visited this summer. "It felt like we had stepped into a sci-fi movie — robotic arms everywhere, driverless carts zooming around and machines doing almost everything on their own."

At the control room, Zhen watched milk movements, temperature, production time and batch information in real time.

"I came here thinking I'd just see how milk is made, but I left feeling like I'd been to a science museum," she said.

Yili, another dairy company, has taken the idea further at its Yili Modern Smart Health Valley in Hohhot, where digital technology is used not simply to display the factory but to reshape the visitor experience.

A digitally simulated cow demonstrates animal behavior in the liquid milk exhibition area, while robotic arms and multimedia displays explain production processes in the powdered milk section.

On the factory floor, AR devices overlay real-time operating data and quality control animations onto physical equipment. Glass walkways and an interactive 3D experience bring visitors closer to the production process, while a milk-filling line capable of processing 40,000 packages an hour has become another attraction.

"Visitors are no longer simply looking at finished products. They can now experience the dynamic, tangible process of intelligent manufacturing," says Sun Huiling, an administrative official at the facility.

But industrial tourism does not always require robots or screens.

At M-Grass Ecology And Environment (Group) Co in Hohhot, the "factory" is a very different kind of production site: a place dedicated to restoring grasslands.

Visitors encounter seeds, soil and plants rather than conveyor belts. The company established a drought-resistant plant research institute and its first seed bank around 2008, initially attracting researchers and industry professionals. After a nearly 67-hectare grass botanical park opened in 2015, families began visiting, turning a research facility into an unusual classroom.

Today, the site's seed bank holds more than 2,300 types and 65,000 samples of plant resources, alongside 170,000 geographically tagged plant specimens and 1.65 million soil samples, according to Wang Yixiu, director of the company's visitor reception department.

Among the exhibits are 34 plant samples that traveled into space aboard missions including Chang'e 5 and Shenzhou 13, 14 and 16 for mutation experiments.

"When technology becomes something people can see, experience and understand, the factory is no longer just a place where products are made. It becomes a place where curiosity begins," Wang said.

Liu Kun in Wuhan contributed to this story.