SHANGHAI - SOME of the ruins left by last year's massive earthquake in southwest China, including a collapsed school, will open to tourists later this month, state media reported on Wednesday.

Tour groups will be able to go boating on a 'quake lake' and visit a museum featuring an 'earthquake simulation,' the China Daily reported, citing officials in Beichuan county, where 80 per cent of the buildings were levelled.

Local government spokesman Chen Wen said the one-day tour will include a visit to Beichuan High School, where students were buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings, the report said.

More than 200,000 people visited the area during China's week-long Lunar New Year holiday in January, Mr Chen told the newspaper.

Around one in 10 of Beichuan county's 300,000 residents died in the quake, the newspaper said.

The government will spend 900 million yuan (S$204 million) to turn the ruins in Beichuan and surrounding areas into tourism sites, the report said, citing Sichuan province's tourist administration.

Tourists will be able to go boating and relax drinking tea on the shore of the Tangjiashan quake lake, a new body of water created by flooding and landslides triggered by the earthquake, the report said.

The earthquake, China's worst natural disaster in a generation, left 87,000 people dead or missing.

Meanwhile, the Sichuanese city of Dayi announced it would open an earthquake museum on the one-year anniversary of the disaster, the report said.

The Dayi museum will include a giant porcelain plate featuring the images of those who died in the earthquake and will be home to a hog that survived more than a month under a collapsed building, curators were quoted as saying. -- AFP