Jia Meng's twin daughters thought they were visiting another museum during a recent outing. Instead, they walked into a room where a humanoid robot tried again and again to perfectly place a teapot in the center of a mat.

"It wasn't very good at pouring tea," said Jia, a 42-year-old freelancer from Wuhan, Hubei province. "But it's an emotionally stable perfectionist. It never got frustrated. My girls were glued to it for half an hour."

The robot in question, at the Hubei Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in Wuhan's Optics Valley, has hands that cost 50,000 yuan ($7,351) each.

It's still learning — human testers guide it, and the data is carefully selected for training. One day, the robot may teach itself, something Jia is looking forward to witnessing.

But the real jaw-dropper for Jia and her twins came later at the city's twin computing center — one of the few places in China that houses both a supercomputing center and an artificial intelligence computing center.

With 400 petaflops of computing power — one petaflop equals the combined might of 2 million laptops- the "smartest brains" of the digital age can find a specific star among 200,000 celestial bodies in just 100 seconds with 100 petaflops of power. Without that power, the same task would take over 100 days.

Jia's family was among the first wave of visitors to Optics Valley's new industrial tourism routes. Since March 12, the valley — known as one of China's tech heartlands — has launched nine themed tours, including "super factory", "AI" and "low-altitude economy".

The East Lake High-tech Development Zone, also known as the Optics Valley of China, has hosted more than 50 group tours in just a few weeks, according to the Wuhan bureau of culture, sports and tourism. "It's running smoothly, and the heat is only rising," an official with the bureau said.

The most popular stops are fully automated assembly lines, black-light factories running without a single human worker and laser cutters that engrave metal in a flash, the official said. "Many parents and children told us it's the first time they turned textbook knowledge into real-life scenes," the official said.

Turning live production lines into tourist attractions is not easy. Factories have added glass-separated walkways, interactive screens and emergency exits. Each site pairs an engineer with a professional guide.

"Production first, safety above all," the official said. Visitors never enter the actual workshop, never touch equipment and never disturb a single bolt. "Staggered booking, capped group sizes and unified escorting — that's how we balance industry and tourism."

Asked whether visitors might one day assemble simple products or operate mini machines, the official said, "Definitely."

Plans include DIY laser bookmark-making, smart-device simulators and even a chance to try robot-like assembly tasks. "We want to move from watching to participating, from checking in to truly experiencing," the official said.

Finance professional Xiu Lei, 26, from Wuhan took his young daughter to Optics Valley expecting a quiet weekend. He left feeling like a child in a tech "wonderland". At Wuhan HGLaser Engineering Co, he saw a missile casing with a laser-welded seam — a sharp contrast to manual welding. "The guide pointed to it, and I felt a surge of pride," he said.

Then his daughter scribbled her name on a piece of paper. Seconds later, a laser engraved it onto a bookmark, and a machine automatically packed it into a gift box. "She was over the moon," Xiu said.

Next came Xiaomi's smart factory. Riding a sightseeing cart through spotless workshops, Xiu watched an air conditioner unit roll off the line every 6.5 seconds. The "lights-out factory" ran fully automated — products packed themselves, took an elevator and moved to a warehouse.

Wuhan is not alone. In Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, tourists make their own snail-rice noodles. In Jiaozuo, Henan province, visitors make DIY milk tea at the Mixue factory. In Renhuai, Guizhou province, home to Moutai, industrial A-level scenic spots hosted more than 10 million visitors in 2024, generating 12.86 billion yuan in tourism revenue.