HENGDIAN, China — If you are going to make a movie in China today about ancient warriors defending a mythical kingdom or a partisan resisting the Japanese occupation in the 1930s, or involving any variation of that staple of China’s entertainment industry — the back-stabbing concubine drama — chances are you are going to make it in Hengdian.

The city is home to Hengdian World Studios, which claims to be the world’s largest outdoor movie and television lot.

To call it a “lot” is an understatement. It is not one lot, but 13 of them, scattered over 2,500 acres in and around what was once a sleepy farming village nestled in the hills of Zhejiang Province, in eastern China.

There are other studios in China — Shanghai Film Park, for example. Only in Hengdian, though, will you find a faithful recreation of the palace of Qin Shi Huang, who ruled in the third century B.C. near what is today known as Xi’an, or of the capital of the Northern Song dynasty, which reigned from the 10th to the 12th centuries.