Escape Room Chain Store Owner

*All conversations published have gained the consent of speakers.

    Escape rooms have been a popular trend among young people aged twelve to thirty. I myself am a huge enthusiast, having been to thirty escape rooms spanning China and the US. I sat down with a chain store owner, “Boss,” whose escape room I’ve been to three times to check out three different themes. He prefers to stay anonymous.

    “First, what do you want people to know about Chinese escape rooms? I’ve been to about five American ones and have found the experience to be drastically different.”

    “Hah! I would say that, pushed by the trend and market of youngsters wanting to be scared, not only Chinese but East Asian escape rooms in general focus on an experience of horror or crime-solving. We strive to create the most realistic experience possible. I spend days shopping and making furniture or decorations to make the experience more real. Look at this room by Mr. X, one of our rival chains, for example—I know it’s one of your favorites because you’ve shown it to me a ton of times—for a room like that, it would include anything from comparing which fake bamboo is more realistic to finding the right rocks to put under your foot.”

A Japanese folktale-themed room by Mr. X, another popular chain store

    “Yes. I do think that the majority of Boston escape rooms lack realisticness and don’t give me the same kind of immersive experience. However, though I’m a fan of criminology, I appreciate American escape rooms’ variety of themes outside of crime; I don’t get to experience that as much here,” I wondered aloud.

    “Come on! You, little expert, should know we have a lot of different themes inside crime and horror, too. We’ve got variety. So many genres spanning the East Asian continent,” Boss began to count, “the Japan folklore one you like, high school horror stories is another prevalent type—especially the classrooms and the girls’ dormitories, Republic Era ghost brides, Chinese opera actresses, hospitals...”

    “Wait!” I cut him off, “Why are the majority of ghosts female?”

    Boss scratched his head awkwardly. “Well... Perhaps most ghosts in the East Asian horror culture are female?” he offered.

    “But why?” I pressed.

    “You sure got a load of questions. I think that women turning into vengeful ghosts is a terrifying theme for many precisely because they’re perceived as traditionally more docile and weaker. The customs in our cultures don’t help either: Republic Era brides were often sold by their parents to be married to corpses—ghost weddings—because the old generation thought that a man must marry before he passed completely into the afterlife, but no one cared that the brides spent the rest of their lives lonely and seen as bad omens—this gives us the stories of ghost brides coming back to defy this ghost marriage tradition. Similarly, the Japanese folklore anthology room contains the story of Kiyohime, whose love was deceived by a monk. Powerless to take revenge otherwise, she turned into a half-serpent monster and burned him to death. I guess with this trend, most fear that a normally composed person goes crazy and behaves extremely, taking all their rage out to the world.”

Reborn ghost bride takes revenge, unknown escape room’s live footage

Kiyohime the half-snake

    “Poor them! I definitely understand where the fear is coming from now. I also noticed that the settings are either very normal, like school or one’s home, or they’re entirely alien, like a different era or world altogether. Can you explain that to me?”

   Boss nods. “They both come with fearing the unfamiliar. The latter is pretty obvious; you don’t know what you’re up against. The former has a subtle level of fear because it’s your most trusted places turn foreign.”

   “Yeah, I definitely don’t want to wake up to my teachers and peers all turned into ghosts. Or, my doctor. Or, really, anyone I know in real life,” I joked, pretending to hide under the table.

School-themed escape room, the famous Changteng Ghost School

Live footage from Mingxiao Women's Prep School, SecondWorld. Ghost stepping outside of mirror

A hospital-themed escape room

    “I bet you don’t!” Boss howled with laughter, then showed me a few pictures. “The industry really does put a lot of effort into making these immersive experiences, though. You’ve seen the Japanese one; check out this Chinese Opera one. Look at all the decorations and mechanics designers put into the spaces.” 

Chinese-opera-themed escape room

Village-themed escape room

    I was, honestly, really impressed. The way Boss’s eyes sparkled when he spoke about the brainchildren of designers in the industry was a sure indication that building escape rooms was a craft to him. He wiggled his eyebrows, exclaiming that there was an even better part. “NPCs, or Non-Player Characters. We and most escape rooms in East Asia hire professional acting school students to interact with the players in real time. How else can the story be pushed forward this engagingly?”

    He was right. “Speaking to a villager who was just as scared as we were or facing the ghost herself, who was chasing us with a knife, really helped amp up the fear,” I said.

    “Designers spend time perfecting costumes as well,” Boss pointed to a picture on his phone, again from the rival chain store Mr. X, of five characters out of seven in one Europe-themed room under the brand.

NPCs in another Mr. X escape room

    I admired their efforts while asking Boss about his competitors. I had heard that the industry was getting extraordinarily competitive. “Is it true that a new brand hired fifty actors to fill up a three-story building? The one whose entry per person is nine hundred yuan because there’s so much freedom in what you could do it’s almost a role-playing game?”

    “Yeah. You know what’s crazier? There’s this other brand that put an entire room in snow and kept the weather at -40 degrees so that all the participants have to wear special gear to enter the room. Good for them, though,” Boss looked a little envious, despite being an award-winning escape room designer already.

Xinhe Hospital, the three-story escape room

The Frozen Palace

    There was one question I was more concerned about. “Do you know anything about the most recent trend? The one where designers use houses where murders or hauntings have happened as the room itself?”

The house depicted above was a crime scene / site of mass murder and now is used as an escape room. It’s the infamous 林家宅37号 (No. 37, Lin Family Residence), one of the ten top haunted places of Shanghai

    Boss nodded, then shook his head disapprovingly. “That’s just disrespectful,” he said, “I don’t believe in everything, but I still think it’s best to avoid certain things. You never know what might happen.”