In 2025, it attracted 5.5 million visitors, 70 percent of whom came from outside Tangshan. On its busiest day, it welcomed 50,000 people.

Old wooden houses, some more than a century old, have been dismantled and reassembled here. In re-creations of some "grandpa" or "grandma" shops, elderly artisans demonstrate traditional crafts.

"We collected six century-old houses from the countryside," Wang says."Every brick and tile carries the trace of time. These scenes are designed to evoke childhood memories and to make people feel something."

On the second floor, a replica of Xiaoshan'er, a commercial district that once rivaled Beijing's Dashilar and Tianjin's Quanyechang in the 1930s, has been rebuilt.

Literally meaning "Little Hill", Xiaoshan'er rose to prominence in the late 19th century as the northern terminus of the Tangxu (Tangshan-Xugezhuang) Railway, China's first standard-gauge railway. A commercial explosion then ensued, with department stores, bathhouses, theaters, teahouses, and restaurants packed into just a 500-meter-long stretch.

"In those days, if you came to Tangshan and didn't visit Xiaoshan'er, you hadn't really been to Tangshan," she says.

Every snack at Tangshan Feast has a story. For instance, gezha, a mung-bean pancake, is said to have been named by the Empress Dowager Cixi.

"The Empress had a habit of taking at most two bites of any dish. When she tried gezha, she liked it so much that she took a second bite and said 'ge zhe' — meaning 'set it aside'. The eunuch thought she was naming the dish — and the name stuck," Wang recounts.

The "Fourteenth Prince" dry-braised chicken derives its name from Emperor Kangxi's 14th son, who was sent to guard the Qing tombs in Tangshan.

"He didn't have much appetite until the palace chef took a local dry-braised chicken recipe and combined it with imperial roast chicken techniques. The prince ate with great pleasure, and the dish has been passed down for 300 years," Wang says.