Beijing is a city written by time. With more than 3,000 years of urban history and more than 800 years as a national capital, Beijing is home to eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites located along the Beijing Central Axis and the three cultural belts of the Western Hills-Yongding River, the Grand Canal and the Great Wall. Like eight ancient seals, they are stamped across the opening pages of this city.

But the more cultural heritage there is, the more complex the challenges become. The inscriptions on stone tablets are weathering. The waters of the Grand Canal are changing. The fires in the blast furnaces have gone out, time and again. Places that once bustled are gradually falling silent; things that were once clear are slowly fading away. This is a question faced by every ancient civilization: How do we preserve what is slowly slipping into the past?

Beijing's answer lies in a seemingly paradoxical pairing: the oldest heritage working hand in hand with the most cutting-edge technology. From a tiny mark on a thousand-year-old stone tablet at Yunju Temple to a futuristic experience unfolding inside the blast furnaces of Shougang Park; from the satellite eye watching over the Grand Canal to a single step across a thousand years in a VR recreation of the Central Axis, digital technology is becoming a new kind of pen — one that is helping Beijing rewrite its relationship with time.

I. Preserving: Bringing Words on Stone Back to Life with Light

At the Stone Scripture Mountain of Yunju Temple in Fangshan District, Beijing, there are 14,278 stone tablets. Beginning with the first tablet carved by the monk Jingwan at the end of the Sui Dynasty, generations of monks and craftsmen from the Tang, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties spent more than a thousand years carving scriptures into stone. Stroke by stroke, blow by blow, they inscribed 1,122 Buddhist texts comprising 3,572 volumes into the rock. It is regarded as the largest-scale stone-carving project in the history of human civilization and is often called the “Dunhuang of Beijing.”

Yunju Temple's stone-carved Buddhist scriptures

[Photo via Yunju Temple Stone Scripture Museum]

But stone ages, too. For a thousand years, wind and rain have passed over the surfaces of the tablets like a gentle yet relentless hand, gradually wearing away the strokes. Some characters remain, but their edges have softened. Others have been reduced to fragments of an outline, recognizable only when you lean in close and narrow your eyes, trying to imagine the force with which the ancient craftsman once brought his chisel down. The rubbing craftsmen would beat the paper again and again, yet between ink and paper, the characters remained incomplete.

Until a different kind of light fell upon the stone.

Image acquisition of the stone carvings at Yunju Temple

[Photo via Beijing Daily]

Engineers from New Dimensional Imagination Digital Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. ("New Dimensional Imagination" for short) brought high-precision imaging equipment to Stone Scripture Mountain at Yunju Temple. They captured more than 500 images of each stone tablet — not ordinary photographs, but 150-megapixel, micrometer-level images taken under changing lighting angles. Then visual computing algorithms took over. The depth and color of the carved marks, as well as the forms of the chisel strokes, were individually enhanced and reconstructed. Characters that were almost disappearing back into the stone were, in a sense, brought back to the surface.

Comparison of the original inscriptions, traditional rubbings and enhanced images of subtle marks on the stone scriptures at Yunju Temple

[Photo via Xinhuanet]

The results are striking. On the same tablet, the inscriptions may appear blurred to the naked eye, while a traditional rubbing reveals only scattered fragments. After subtle marks are enhanced, the varying force and rhythm of the craftsman's chisel, as well as the flow and structure of the calligraphy, emerge with remarkable clarity. You can almost sense the pressure of his wrist as he carved the final stroke. A craftsman from a thousand years ago seems to be standing before you once again, chisel in hand.

Scriptures carved into stone in Leiyin Cave at Stone Scripture Mountain, Yunju Temple

[Photo via National Archives Administration of China]

In June 2025, the Buddhist scriptures preserved at Yunju Temple were included in the China National Archives Heritage List. Beijing's 14th Five-Year Plan period initiatives also call for advancing the application of the Yunju Temple scriptures for inscription on UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. Now, these stone inscriptions, digitally “examined” and documented, are taking on a modern form of identity — a digital identity — as they reach audiences around the world. They are also expected to become part of high-quality cultural heritage datasets and be incorporated into the Chinese Culture Database, providing foundational resources for large AI models and the digital transformation of the cultural industries.

Stone remembers everything. It has simply forgotten how to speak. Technology has held up a mirror, allowing the stone to see itself again — and allowing us to see the stone anew.

II. Preserving: Eyes on the River, Watching from the Sky

Protecting the Grand Canal is an even greater challenge than preserving words carved into stone.

The 82-kilometer Beijing section of the Grand Canal runs through Changping, Haidian, Xicheng, Dongcheng, Chaoyang and Tongzhou districts. Along its banks, World Heritage sites such as the Baifu Spring and the Yuhé section of the Tonghui River are scattered like pearls strung along a single ribbon of water. But water is constantly moving, and the riverbanks are constantly changing. No two days are exactly alike. You simply cannot keep up by walking the banks and relying on human eyes alone.

Scenery along the Tongzhou section of the Beijing Grand Canal

[Photo via Beijing Daily]

In 2019, the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences took a different approach: it put the eyes monitoring the Grand Canal in the sky. A three-tier monitoring network integrating satellites, aerial platforms and ground-based systems works alongside realistic 3D mapping. The canal itself, together with its water systems, shorelines, wetlands and heritage parks, has been incorporated into a comprehensive digital network with full-area coverage and real-time, multidimensional monitoring. This provides high-precision data for the digital documentation and archiving of the Grand Canal's tangible cultural heritage. For planners, it has added something new to the desk: a map that seems to breathe.

Remote sensing monitoring of the Beijing section of the Grand Canal

[Photo via International Centre on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage under the auspices of UNESCO]

The sky offers the big picture. Along the water's edge, technology captures the details.

Along the Beijing Grand Canal, the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research has deployed an integrated smart river patrol system combining water and shoreline monitoring. Powered by 5G and AI recognition models trained on 300,000 samples, the system can automatically issue alerts for problems that are difficult for the human eye to detect in time, including abnormal water levels, piping and seepage, and floating debris on the water. The technology has since gone beyond Beijing. Similar systems have been deployed at places including Selincuo Lake in Xizang, the Yalong River Basin and the Huangbizhuang Reservoir in Hebei, bringing technology developed for the Beijing Grand Canal to other waterways.

Smart River Patrol Management System for the Beijing Grand Canal

China Telecom Beijing has created yet another map: a 3D interactive digital map covering the entire Beijing Grand Canal. Covering an area of 6,200 square kilometers, the map integrates models of more than 40 historical waterways, water conservancy projects, cultural heritage sites and ecological landscapes, along with more than 300 information points, over 750 images and more than 150,000 Chinese characters of historical and cultural annotations. More than 600 years of changes to the canal system during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties have been condensed into a vivid digital map. 

More than 2,500 years old, the Grand Canal has never before been viewed in quite this way — its overall form and smallest details, its past and present, all at once. Technology has not changed the river itself. It has changed the way we understand a river. 

3D interactive digital map of the entire Beijing Grand Canal

III. Awakening: A Step Across a Thousand Years — Bringing Historical Memory into Everyday Life

Preservation is only the first step. What comes next?

If cultural heritage is kept under glass, locked away in storage, or confined to textbooks, it remains merely something from the past. True inheritance means bringing it back into people's lives.

At Qianmen's Xianyu Kou, the Qianmen Night Technology Experience Center is presenting Chasing the Dragon and the Moon (游龙追月), an immersive VR experience. The moment you put on the headset, the ground beneath your feet seems to disappear. You speed across the water on a bamboo raft, with wind and splashing water rushing against your face. The air feels scorching as you pass through a volcano, and when you reach the edge of a cliff, your body instinctively leans backward. This is far more than the kind of VR experience where you simply stand in one place and watch a video. It is a fully immersive large-space experience that engages all the senses. Spatial positioning is accurate to within one centimeter, visual latency is reduced to less than 0.2 seconds, and a six-degree-of-freedom motion platform supports your movements. Within a space spanning several hundred square meters, you are free to walk around.

Poster for the Qianmen Night Technology Experience Center

The story draws on the traditional legend of the carp leaping over the Dragon Gate, while incorporating the Mid-Autumn Festival tradition of lantern viewing. The scenes are infused with a distinctive Chinese aesthetic, featuring traditional architecture, lanterns and elements of Beijing's local culture.

Supported by a Beijing municipal science and technology program dedicated to developing full-sensory, large-space LBE technology, Shougang Cultural Investment and iQIYI × Visionary Technology jointly developed the project to explore a new path for cultural consumption in Qianmen's historic commercial area. The new experience on this old street is like a door. Once you push it open, you step into another era.

Poster for the Chasing the Dragon and the Moon VR Experience　

Heading north along the Beijing Central Axis, Blue Universe's A Wonderful Night Along Beijing Central Axis (华夏漫游之中轴奇妙夜) takes visitors on a leisurely journey starting from the Drum Tower and moving southward, offering a panoramic view of the Central Axis through time. Wormhole Chuangxiang's cinema-quality VR production Look at Me, the Central Axis of Heaven and Earth recreates the Central Axis in a real-world large-space setting at a 1:1 scale. In the virtual world, you can actually "walk" along the Central Axis, taking one step after another as you explore its architecture and discover its history.

VR experience from A Wonderful Night Along Beijing Central Axis

During the Creative 2030 International Forum at the 2025 China Science Fiction Convention, Veronika, General Manager of the Festivals and Exhibitions Department at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, visited the Beijing Central Axis virtual reality exhibition at the Drum Tower. She remarked, "I saw a vibrant scene. Beijing is a fantastic place to create miracles over the next decade." This was more than a polite compliment. With the support of the UNESCO International Center for Creativity and Sustainable Development, subsequent collaborations included an AI hackathon under the International Design Marathon and Innovation Week jointly launched by the Ars Electronica Center and Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, as well as technology-art projects presented in the main exhibition program of the 2026 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz in partnership with Beijing's 798 Art District. From this virtual recreation of Beijing's ancient Central Axis, Beijing's digital art has taken a step onto the international stage.

Further north, at the foot of the Badaling section of the Great Wall, The Great Wall, China's first immersive full-sensory theater themed around the Great Wall, brings together VR, optical motion capture, spatial computing and AIGC. Ancient military flags, armor and weapons; the Danxia landforms; the ancient Tea Horse Trade; and "the First Beacon Tower Under Heaven" — familiar words from textbooks — are digitally reconstructed and brought vividly to life. Sight, sound, touch and even smell, together with a sense of weightlessness, come together in a multidimensional experience. You are not simply looking at the Great Wall. You are "returning" to it.

The Great Wall Full-Sensory Theater

What technology offers is a new way to tell these stories — one that makes them more vivid, more tangible and more immediate.

Also part of the Great Wall Cultural Belt, Beijing Expo Park in Yanqing has transformed its former Life Experience Center into the 1,330-square-meter Beijing Future Science and Technology Museum. Set within this newly revitalized green park, the museum will also host educational programs and open classes on natural ecology, basic science, digital technology and space exploration. The Expo Park's iconic golden brand is being given a new shine through digital experiences.

Beijing Future Science and Technology Museum at Beijing Expo Park in Yanqing

The significance of all these immersive experiences has never been about showing off technology. Their greatest value lies elsewhere. When a young person puts on a VR headset and "stands" on the Central Axis, looking out over the city, or when a child "experiences" defending the Great Wall in a full-sensory theater, cultural memory is no longer a distant collection of words in a textbook. It becomes something the body can remember.

Once you remember the feeling of the wind rushing against your face, you remember the river, the city and the history behind them.

IV. Growth: Stars Rising from the Blast Furnaces

At the western end of Chang'an Avenue, along the Yongding River, the blast furnaces of Shougang Park stand in quiet stillness.

Rust-red, rugged and silent. There was a time when molten iron flowed and sparks of steel flew here. This was once one of the beating hearts of China's steel industry. After production came to a halt, many people wondered what to do with such a vast industrial heritage site. Turn it into a museum? Leave it as a backdrop for photo opportunities? Or simply tear it down and start again? 

Beijing chose another path: turn it into a city of science fiction.

2026 China Science Fiction Convention

[Photo via Beijing Fabu]

The China Science Fiction Convention has been held at Shougang Park for the sixth time. Blast Furnace No. 1 has been transformed into the SoReal Science Fiction Park, China's first fully immersive space-exploration-themed science fiction complex converted from an industrial heritage site. Holographic imaging, artificial intelligence and motion capture — some of the most "futuristic" technologies have been placed inside one of the most "historic" steel structures. The contrast between the blast furnace's rugged industrial character and the futuristic feel of the science fiction scenes creates a tension that no newly built venue could replicate.

The RE Museum, a digital museum at Blast Furnace No. 3, has taken a different approach. Interactive installations recreate scenes from the site's steelmaking past. The heat of flowing molten iron and the sound of sparks flying from molten steel have been preserved through digital technology and brought to life for young people who have never seen a steel mill in operation. A single blast furnace now holds both its own past and the city's future.

3D Naked-Eye Light Show at Shougang Park

[Photo via CCTV News App]

A century of steelmaking culture and modern science fiction now coexist within the same complex. Science fiction is no longer merely an idea in a book or an image on a screen. It has entered a real physical space. This fusion of industry, science fiction and technology offers one answer to the transformation of the cultural industries in Beijing: old spaces do not have to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch. They can become containers for new forms of culture — and their historical weight can make those new forms all the more powerful.

That is perhaps the most moving part of Shougang Park's story. The blast furnaces whose fires have gone out have not disappeared. They have simply found a new way to burn.

V. Growth: From a Single Light to a Sea of Light — The Evolution of Beijing's Cultural and Technological Ecosystem

The subtle-mark enhancement technology at Yunju Temple, remote sensing monitoring of the Grand Canal, VR experiences along the Beijing Central Axis, the full-sensory theater themed around the Great Wall, the science fiction park at Shougang Park. Each project has taken its own path and opened its own door. But once those doors open, you begin to see that they all lead into the same courtyard.

That courtyard is the cultural and technological ecosystem that Beijing is systematically building.

The Beijing Action Plan for Science and Technology-Enabled Innovation and Development in the Cultural Sector (2025–2027), the Beijing Action Plan for Promoting the Development of the Science Fiction Industry (2025–2027) and the Several Measures to Support the Development of Beijing's Pilot Zone for Innovation in Future Digital Spaces, jointly issued by the Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission, Zhongguancun Science Park Administrative Committee and other departments, have provided the policy framework for this ecosystem. Under the Beijing Medium- and Long-Term Plan for Advancing the Development of the National Cultural Center (2019–2035), Beijing continues to advance the digital, networked and intelligent development of the Beijing Central Axis and the three cultural belts — the Great Wall, Western Hills-Yongding River and Grand Canal cultural belts. The city's four major cultural identities — ancient capital culture, red culture, Beijing-style culture and innovative culture — are also taking root in an expanding range of flagship application scenarios.

The significance of policy has never been simply about providing funding or preferential measures. Its real value lies in bringing scattered points of light together to form a larger constellation. Yunju Temple is one light. The Grand Canal is another. The Central Axis, the Great Wall and Shougang Park each add another. In the past, each shone on its own, with few connections between them. Now, the policy framework is linking them together. Each light can illuminate the path to the next. They are no longer isolated "highlights," but part of an ecosystem in which different elements support and nourish one another.

The Beijing Pilot Zone for Innovation in Future Digital Spaces is perhaps the clearest embodiment of this ecosystem. It is not focused on a single project or company, but on an entire value chain: digital content creation, immersive interactive experiences and digital asset trading. From underlying technology R&D, to content production, to the deployment of applications and experiences, every link in the chain can find corresponding capabilities, resources and markets in Beijing.

Once an ecosystem takes shape, it begins to grow on its own.

VI. Going Global: A Language That Needs No Translation

These stories are still making their way out into the world.

The International Centre for Creativity and Sustainable Development under the auspices of UNESCO (ICCSD) is becoming a bridge connecting Beijing's cultural and technological achievements with the rest of the world. The collaboration with the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz is only the beginning. When cultural and creative practitioners from Austria "walk" along the Central Axis through a VR exhibition in Beijing, and when digital artworks infused with Chinese cultural heritage appear at international art festivals, cultural communication moves beyond the traditional model of "exhibition plus explanation." It becomes a shared language that young people around the world can experience together.

Beijing technology-art projects featured in the main exhibition program of the 2026 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz

Technology's greatest strength is its universality. VR headsets need no translation. Full-sensory experiences need no subtitles. The logic of digital interaction is something people everywhere can understand. Using technology to tell the cultural stories of China's capital is, at its heart, a new way of storytelling that crosses linguistic and cultural barriers. It does not rely on instruction, but on experience. It is not one-way communication, but two-way resonance.

International guests experience digitalized Beijing scenes during the 5th Creative 2030 International Forum

Put on a headset and walk along the virtual Beijing Central Axis. You do not need to know how the words "Central Axis" are written in your own language. You only need to feel the beauty of its order and the weight of its history. And you understand.

That is perhaps the most precious gift technology has given to culture.

VII. Looking Back: A New Pen for Time

Looking back at the path Beijing has taken over the years, the trajectory is remarkably clear.

First came "preservation" — using digital enhancement of subtle marks, remote sensing and 3D modeling to capture, one by one, the things that time was gradually wearing away.

Then came "awakening" — using VR, full-sensory theaters and immersive experiences to bring sleeping cultural heritage into the realm of physical experience.

Then came "growth" — policies connecting the ecosystem, the ecosystem nurturing industries, and industries in turn supporting culture, creating a virtuous cycle.

And finally, "going global" — carrying the genes of Chinese culture outward, using technology as a universal language to reach the world.

The ICCSD's publication, "Typical Cases on Protecting and Promoting the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in the Digital Environment," features exemplary cases from China and abroad demonstrating how technology can empower culture. It was released at the 5th Creative 2030 International Forum and subsequently featured on the UNESCO website.

This is a process of steady progression, like a tree: first putting down strong roots, then sending out branches and leaves, growing into a canopy, and finally scattering its seeds farther afield.

Technology has never been the opposite of culture, nor is it merely a tool. It is a new way of writing — writing with code, with light and images, with data, with immersion. What it creates may no longer be characters carved into stone or words printed on paper. But the memories and emotions they carry remain the same.

Every carved mark restored on the stone tablets of Yunju Temple, every piece of monitoring data flickering across the screens of the Grand Canal, every carefully reconstructed ancient building in the Beijing Central Axis VR experience, every science fiction experience unfolding inside the blast furnaces of Shougang Park. Together, they form Beijing's contemporary answer to the question of how culture can be passed on.

Ancient culture has encountered the light of technology. Time keeps moving. But this time, time is no longer the only one holding the pen. Technology, too, has taken up the pen of the new era.