Opinion | Carving a protective niche for Silk Road's caves
A new project aims to ease human pressure on Mogao grottoes but how much will people pay?
The ancient Silk Road and digital technology would appear to be worlds and millennia apart but a new project is bringing the two together in the name of preservation.
The crown jewels of the former trading route are the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu province, which contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art.
Statues and wall paintings, created over a period of more than 1,000 years, adorn the nearly 500 alcoves and caves at the World Heritage listed-site.
The site has been a tourist hotspot for decades but the caves are becoming a victim of their own success, with the breath of thousands of visitors wafting into grottoes each day.
The emissions, as well as the constant camera flashes, threaten to do serious damage to the paintings, which have darkened over the years. As a result, only a small number of caves are open to the public.
But White Collar has heard of a project involving IT services company PCCW Solutions that promises to give visitors greater access to more of the site's heritage.
The Dunhuang Academy China awarded the company a contract two years ago to design and install digital theatre systems at the Dunhuang Mogao Caves Visitor Centre.