Mission Unlock | Ep 6: How does a mural step outside a cave?

Editor's Note:

"Mission Unlock" uses real stories and everyday scenes to explain the development logic behind China's 15th Five-Year Plan. Through stories of industry, people and lived experience, it offers global audiences a more relatable, accessible look at China's next stage of development.

In Episode 6 of "Mission Unlock," Mina arrives at the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes Digital Exhibition Center, Dunhuang city, northwest China’s Gansu Province, where a young visitor is unable to enter Cave 285 because all available slots have been booked.

Following a glowing ribbon that emerges from a mural of a flying apsara, she steps into a digital cave production center. There, she discovers that digitization involves far more than simply photographing ancient murals. The process preserves not only their colors and intricate details, but also the light, space and sense of time within the caves.

Through immersive displays and VR technology, visitors can look up at the caisson ceiling, get closer to the flying apsaras and even feel as though they have traveled through time to stand inside the cave, taking in the same view the craftsmen saw a thousand years ago.

Mina comes to understand that technology is not meant to replace the original heritage, but to give it wings, allowing immovable cultural treasures to travel beyond the cave, reach more people and inspire a genuine desire to protect them.

The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) calls for further integrating culture and technology, empowering cultural development with digital and intelligent technologies, shifting to an IT-based development model and fostering new forms of cultural business.

The best way to preserve heritage has never been about freezing it in the past. It is about letting it cross a thousand years to speak to people in every era. When an ancient brushstroke can still catch someone's eye today, that is proof enough that the past is never truly gone.