Immersive Theme Park Settles in Yangzhou iQIYI CEO Gong Yu: Breaking Down the Barriers Between Film, Literature, and Cultural Tourism

On February 8th, along the banks of the Yangzhou Jinghang Grand Canal, the world’s first iQIYI Theme Park officially opened to visitors. This indoor theme park, centered around “National Innovation IP + Cutting-Edge Technology,” brings classic film and TV IPs such as “Wild Bloom,” “Cang Lan Jue,” and “Lotus House” from the screen into reality. Gong Yu, founder and CEO of iQIYI, stated in an exclusive interview with Modern Express that the park’s establishment is an inevitable choice for the development of the film and television industry at a certain stage, and also a new exploration for upgrading the cultural tourism industry and innovating the cultural industry.

Activating the Full Lifecycle Value of IP

Standing in the immersive stage performance area of “Lotus House,” watching scenes of rain suspended in the air and flowing robes, the audience below gasped in amazement. In Gong Yu’s view, film and TV content and theme parks are inherently “bound together.”

When preparing for iQIYI in 2009, the “park” concept was already included in the development framework. Today, the realization of Yangzhou Park reflects deep thinking about the value of film and TV IPs. Over the past decades, the Chinese film and TV industry’s IP value exploration mainly stayed at online broadcasting and copyright trading levels. The emergence of iQIYI Theme Park transforms IP from “content on screen” into “tangible experiences.”

How does a film and TV IP “transform” into a real-world experience? Gong Yu explained that they integrate diverse content such as animation, comics, and live-action through immersive theaters and light-shadow interactive spaces, allowing visitors to enter scenes like the Chang’an ghost market in “Records of the Tang Dynasty Mysteries” or the vast grasslands in “My Altai,” becoming participants in the story. This experience not only extends the emotional value of the IP but also adds a new dimension to film and TV creation—iQIYI plans early in content development to convert props and scenery into digital assets, reserving entry points for offline experiences, and enabling a two-way empowerment between online content and offline experiences.

Meanwhile, the park opens a new commercial track for the film and TV industry, extending IP value from memberships and advertising to offline experiences and derivative product consumption, fully activating the full lifecycle value of film and TV IPs. As Gong Yu noted, Disney parks and merchandise have become core segments accounting for over 70% of profits, confirming the huge potential of offline film and TV IP experiences. iQIYI’s lightweight asset model makes this exploration more suitable for China’s market environment.

Covering Emotional Value Across Food, Clothing, Housing, and Transportation

Why choose Yangzhou as the location? At the opening event, many young people arrived by high-speed train in groups, and many local visitors brought their families to experience it—perhaps the best answer. Gong Yu said that choosing Yangzhou was a rational decision after multiple considerations: “It has a sufficient population and GDP scale, ample tourist flow, and relatively few immersive entertainment options locally, so market demand has not been fully met.” The size of a medium-sized city also provides an excellent environment for refining this new model.

Unlike Disney and Universal Studios’ heavy assets and large-scale parks, Yangzhou Park focuses on “small size, rapid iteration, and strong interaction.” The indoor space of 10,000 to 20,000 square meters supports year-round operation, avoiding seasonal fluctuations in visitor flow. The use of VR, AR, XR technologies allows small spaces to create immersive experiences. The IPs within the park will continuously iterate to keep pace with changing public aesthetics and maintain the park’s appeal.

At the opening, visitors experienced a full cycle—from checking into film scenes, engaging with technological interactions, to purchasing IP merchandise and tasting themed cuisine—completing a comprehensive experiential consumption. The operational logic of iQIYI Theme Park is to create a closed loop of “online buzz—offline experience—social sharing,” attracting visitors through the traffic effect of film and TV IPs, and driving secondary consumption through immersive experiences, transforming cultural tourism from mere sightseeing into emotionally valuable “experiences.”

Gong Yu revealed that future plans include opening theme parks in Kaifeng, Beijing, and other cities. This model gives cultural tourism destinations a more distinctive cultural identity and provides a replicable example for the industry’s shift from “check-in economy” to “experience economy.”

Building a New Ecosystem for Digital Cultural Experiences

In the future, over 1,000 virtual characters from Taodou World will “come” to the audience’s side, allowing people to extend online interactions into offline experiences via their phones. This plan embodies Gong Yu’s vision of “technology empowering cultural dissemination.”

Gong Yu stated that the core of the park is “National Innovation IP + Cutting-Edge Technology,” using virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies to make Chinese stories more vivid and widely spread. Whether it’s the Chinese-style suspense in “Records of the Tang Dynasty Mysteries,” the ethnic customs in “My Altai,” or the martial arts sentiments in “Lotus House,” these IPs rooted in Chinese culture are restored and interpreted through technology, allowing visitors to feel the charm of Chinese culture in immersive experiences. This mode of dissemination is more impactful than simple content output and truly brings culture into the public’s life.

Although still in the early stages, Gong Yu believes that “experience-based” businesses like theme parks will inevitably become a major trend and will serve as another growth curve for iQIYI after its overseas expansion. For the entire cultural industry, the exploration of new theme parks proves that the industry can break out of traditional models, using lightweight assets and rapid iteration to deeply integrate culture, technology, and entertainment, making the cultural industry a new driving force for consumption upgrading.