Nanjing massacre film set becomes China school holiday hotspot

People pose while visiting the set where "Dead to Rights", a Chinese historical drama about the 1937 Nanjing massacre during the Japanese occupation of Nanjing in the Second Sino-Japanese War, was filmed at the Shanghai Film Park in Shanghai on August 27, 2025. China says 300,000 people died in a six-week spree of killing, rape and destruction by the Japanese military that began in December 1937 after invading troops seized the city of Nanjing. - AFP

SHANGHAI: The sound of machine gun fire rattled around collapsed buildings as schoolchildren eagerly explored the ravaged streets of 1930s Nanjing, delighted to be visiting the set of a Chinese blockbuster about a historic massacre.

Slickly produced and star-studded, "Dead to Rights" is set in Nanjing, then China's capital, during six weeks of mass murder, rape and looting by the Japanese army in 1937 that killed tens if not hundreds of thousands.