Ancient artifacts on the world stage

As dusk settled over Yuci Ancient City in Jinzhong, Shanxi Province, on July 15, Chinese and international musical classics filled the air inside the Confucian Temple while a dance performance illuminated the night of this thousand-year-old city. The festivities were part of the official opening of the week-long “Unity for Prosperity, Heritage for Eternity” International Cultural Heritage Protection Week.

The event brought together diplomats stationed in China from 10 plus countries, including Jordan, Bangladesh, North Macedonia, the Maldives and Latvia, alongside leading experts in cultural heritage and international communications from China and abroad.

Shanxi is home to 531 key historical and cultural sites under national-level protection, the highest number among provincial-level regions in China. “Shanxi is a key cradle of China’s millennia-old cultural heritage and a museum of ancient Chinese architecture without walls,” Xin Feng, President of China International Communications Group (CICG) Center for the Americas, publisher of Beijing Review, said at the opening ceremony.

Exhibitions across borders

Shanxi’s ancient buildings, painted sculptures and murals embody thousands of years of historical memory and artistic achievement. Many of these treasures, however, are immovable cultural relics, meaning that technology must play a large role in sharing them globally.

“It is our responsibility to showcase these immovable cultural relics to a larger audience,” An Hai, Deputy Director of the Shanxi Institute for the Preservation of Ancient Architecture and Painted Sculptures, said in a recent interview with Shanxi Daily.

Shanxi continues to expand the sharing of heritage through physical exhibitions and exchange with China’s neighboring countries. On July 20, the exhibition From the Yellow River to the Caucasus: Special Exhibition of Shanxi Bronze Civilization in Georgia opened in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. Thirty-six sets of Shanxi bronze treasures left China for the first time, launching an in-depth dialogue between Eastern and Western bronze civilizations.

Prior to that, on June 5, more than 130 treasures from the National Museum of Cambodia debuted at the Shanxi Museum during the opening of the exhibition Angkor: Millennial Treasures of Ancient Khmer Civilization, with most artifacts appearing in China for the first time.

Through this growing two-way exchange, mutual learning among civilizations has increased. As Yu Yunquan, Vice President of CICG, said in his keynote speech at the event on July 15, China has proposed and is proactively implementing the Global Civilizations Initiative, which advocates valuing the inheritance and innovation of civilizations and promoting closer global networks for cultural exchange and cooperation.

“This cross-cultural dialogue, spanning mountains and seas, has not only helped the world better understand Yellow River culture and Shanxi, but has also given us valuable insights from global heritage conservation practices, injecting new vitality into our own efforts to safeguard our civilizational roots,” Xin said at the opening ceremony.

Digital empowerment

Digital technology is reshaping the preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage, transforming relics hidden in temples and grottoes into immersive experiences accessible to audiences across regions and generations.

In recent years, alongside travelling exhibitions, digital technologies have enabled Shanxi’s cultural heritage to reach audiences far beyond the province. Mobile and digital exhibitions are increasingly appearing in museums around the world, extending the reach of ancient artifacts through space as well as time.

During the International Cultural Heritage Protection Week, Fengming Academy in Yuci Ancient City launched a VR immersive exhibition. Using millimeter-level 3D laser scanning technology, the exhibition digitally recreated 1,978 ancient sculptures at a 1:1 scale. Combined with digital twin modeling, high-resolution AI texture restoration and global illumination rendering, the project allowed visitors wearing VR headsets to “interact” with the sculptures in real time.

“High-precision digital recording is equivalent to creating a ‘digital backup’ for cultural relics, effectively preventing information loss caused by time and natural disasters,” Russian scholar and Lanzhou University professor Pronkina Olga said during the event.

Pronkina said AI’s value goes far beyond documentation: It can also monitor structural deformation and deterioration in real time and predict future trends, shifting conservation from passive rescue to proactive prevention.

Shanxi’s digital heritage projects have already gained international reach. In 2014, the Tianlongshan Grottoes Museum and the University of Chicago in the U.S. jointly launched a digital restoration project. Over five years, they collected 3D data from more than 100 sculptures in nearly 30 museums across nine countries and completed the digital reconstruction of 11 major caves, pioneering the virtual reunification of displaced Chinese sculptures with their original environments. Beginning in 2019, the project toured internationally in countries including France, Egypt and Greece.

In 2025, the Yungang Research Institute formally partnered with the Global Heritage Fund on grotto conservation, rock stability monitoring and digital archival construction, bringing together global expertise to address worldwide challenges in preserving large grotto complexes.

Yang Chenghu, a professor with the School of Arts and Communication at Beijing Normal University, noted that thanks to AI, museum visitors can see relics as they existed hundreds or thousands of years ago, including their original colors, complete forms and even reconstructed historical usage scenarios.

“Shanxi’s pioneering efforts in digitalization, targeted protection mechanisms for national treasures, archaeological research and community participation provide valuable experiences for the international community,” Md. Nazmul Islam, Ambassador of Bangladesh to China, said at the opening ceremony.

Fazeel Najeeb, Ambassador of the Maldives to China, who also took part in the event, told Beijing Review, “I was deeply moved, inspired and impressed by what we saw on the streets and in the museum.”

He added, “We can make copies, not identical, but adaptive copies of what we see in China [in terms of cultural heritage preservation].”

Gen Z engagement

As a precursor to the event week, the Generation Z Construction Workshop was held from June 15 to 24 in Pingyao, another ancient city in Shanxi. More than 20 young volunteers from China, France and Spain gathered there for a 10-day immersive restoration practice at Xifang Temple, a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) structure in Xiqiang Village. They learned restoration techniques from local craftsmen, worked on relics themselves and cleaned ancient bricks and stones.

When asked why he participated, Nicolas Delanghe, a French volunteer, replied, “By working together and building stronger cooperation at the governmental and national levels, we can further strengthen our connections, reduce stereotypes and barriers between peoples, and, I believe, help prevent many conflicts and similar problems.”

On July 16, a roundtable discussion titled “Generation Z and New Expressions of Cultural Heritage” was held at the Yuci Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum. Young scholars, designers and cultural creators from China, the United States, Argentina, Russia, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and other countries gathered to discuss how younger generations are reshaping cultural communication.

At the roundtable, Colombian director and painter Rodrigo Escobar Vanegas said, “Chinese cultural heritage has already moved beyond museum display cases and now resides within digital ecosystems. It is no longer static material culture, but a kind of ‘open-source’ code and Generation Z are the primary programmers of this new culture.”

Lee Woo-jung, head of the cultural column of the ROK’s The Segye Times, added, “When Gen Z utilizes short-form videos, AI-driven immersive art and interactive designs, the deep, rich stories of Chinese culture will resonate far beyond domestic borders, capturing the global imagination.”

In recent years, Shanxi has also built an educational exchange system covering all age groups. University students participate in research programs, middle school students take part in architectural modelling competitions and primary school students experience traditional architectural painting techniques firsthand. Volunteers have been invited to be part of the local teams, with local masters teaching them how to keep architecture in good shape.

After learning about some of these programs, Sashko Nasev, Ambassador of North Macedonia to China, told Beijing Review, “I will advise some of our students, some of the young people to come to visit here and see how you are doing that.”