A New Relationship with New Audiences
Today, we’ll delve further into how innovations adopted in recent years by museums in Shanxi Province are enhancing the visitor experience, blending history with interactive exploration.
Before the Northern Qi Dynasty Mural Museum in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, was built, a series of environmental control measures were taken for Xu Xianxiu’s tomb. For example, within a 50-meter diameter of the tomb site, original ecological vegetation was restored, a complete drainage system was constructed, bentonite waterproof blankets were laid around the burial mound, and ventilation equipment was installed by making use of holes dug previously by tomb raiders. These measures helped mitigate the impact of external environmental changes on the tomb’s microenvironment, stabilizing the tomb’s preservation environment.
“Wangjiaping”, where Xu Xianxiu’s tomb is located, was originally called “Wangjiafen,” a feng shui treasure-land since ancient times. During the era of underground burials, villagers still buried their deceased there. To protect the site and build the museum, Wang Jiang and his colleagues frequently visited villagers’ homes to negotiate, mobilizing them to relocate the graves. He often found himself being chased by villagers’ sheep or big yellow dogs.
In 2020, the Taiyuan Northern Qi Mural Museum finally broke ground. The construction process strictly followed the principle of minimal intervention, with specific plans for each step to ensure the safety of the cultural relics. A cutoff wall was built around the tomb, and 139 building piles, each 18 meters deep, were constructed. To reduce vibration, all piles were dug manually. After the museum was built, it maintained constant temperature and humidity, with 59 sensors installed for real-time monitoring.
Thus, the only specialized museum in the country built on the original site of a mural tomb was completed. Today, visitors can see the appearance of Xu Xianxiu’s tomb when it was excavated. The in-situ protection of Xu Xianxiu’s tomb has also become a typical case of archaeological site protection and utilization in China.
Today, viewing the original state of the tomb murals from behind a glass wall is entirely different from appreciating murals that have been relocated. It feels like directly conversing with a cultural site over 1,450 years old. The directness and completeness of the information brought by the artifacts offer an immersive experience, which can be considered one of the greatest features of the Northern Qi Mural Museum. Any regrets of only being able to view the tomb passage and chamber from a distance, without directly entering, are more than compensated for by using high-tech methods that allow visitors to virtually see things they would otherwise not be able to see at all.
Using virtual reality as a major display method for the museum was an idea Wang Jiang had at the beginning of the museum’s design. He said, “The museum is built on the original site of the tomb, but Xu Xianxiu’s tomb cannot allow everyone to go down into it. This is a core issue. If we can’t go in, what should we do? Virtual reality is, of course, the best way.”
In 2018, during his third year working at the Xu Xianxiu tomb site, Wang Jiang began exploring site protection while starting digital data collection. By 2019, the online digital museum of Xu Xianxiu’s tomb was already established. Wu Jianxin told The Context that there were not many museums using virtual reality technology in China at that time. The Northern Qi Mural Museum, which had not yet broken ground, was among the first to adopt digital technology to establish a virtual reality unit.
It can be said that from the earliest stages of protection to the later phases of museum construction of Xu Xianxiu’s tomb, the latest cutting-edge protection concepts and state-of-the-art technological methods have been used. Many people say Wang Jiang’s ideas are ahead of his time. Wang Jiang reflected, “All these methods stem from concerns about ‘instability.’ The tomb environment is unstable, the surrounding environment is unstable, the murals themselves are unstable. I want to use stable technology to solve this ‘instability.’ I am compelled to be ahead of my time.”
Now, at the burial mound of Xu Xianxiu’s tomb, wearing 4K VR glasses, the “anywhere door” opens instantly. Visitors walk down the tomb passage, with the magnificent and luxurious tomb murals clearly visible. The life-sized mural figures stand before them, with the tomb owner and his wife sitting in a tent, maids and attendants standing on both sides, musicians playing joyfully, and the ceremonial procession ready to set off.
By turning their bodies, visitors can fully appreciate all the scenes inside the tomb chamber, with a 360-degree view, and they can even look up to see the theft holes on both sides of the tomb’s domed ceiling. Wang Jiang specifically chose the placement of the 4K VR glasses, believing that only by “walking into the tomb” from the burial mound would people have the most realistic involvement.
Immersive experiences and interactive participation permeate every corner of the museum, almost becoming the hallmark of the Northern Qi Mural Museum. In the exhibition hall, the “Feasting Couple” mural on the north wall of Xu Xianxiu’s tomb is displayed on an interactive projection wall, allowing visitors to play a tune with the musicians in the painting by plucking the strings.
Elsewhere at the Xinzhou Jiuyuangang Tomb, the round-table animation brings the “Ascension Scene” mural to life, where looking up, visitors can see the wind god holding a bag, the thunder god with bulging eyes and exposed teeth striking a drum, and the rain master riding a dragon and pouring water.
In Wu Jianxin’s view, it is the integration of physical artifacts, display boards, animated videos, and digital technology that creates the wonderful experience of “walking through the painting,” enriching the sensory experience for visitors as they enter the museum. This brings the dormant artifacts to life, allowing us to understand the familiar yet strange Northern Dynasties era.
In Shanxi’s cultural relics field, various “revitalization” methods have long been common. As early as three years ago, Shanxi established the Cultural and Creative Alliance of Cultural Relics Units, creating cultural IPs and promoting the development of cultural and creative products in various cultural relics units.
Shanxi started the provincial cultural relics digitization protection project even earlier and enriched the means of displaying cultural relics based on this. Including the famed Yungang Grottoes, Xu Xianxiu’s Tomb, and Yongle Palace, Shanxi has 531 national key cultural relics protection units, ranking first in the country. Using the internet, cloud services, artificial intelligence, VR, and other digital technologies, Shanxi meticulously built a “never-ending museum” – the Shanxi Cultural Relics Digital Museum. Since June 2023, by opening the WeChat mini-program “Shanxi Cultural Relics Digital Museum,” one can view Shanxi’s rich cultural relics online.
The originally aloof museum culture has become increasingly approachable with people’s attention and participation, and even cultural relics have learned to be cute and loveable. However, this has also raised some concerns – when cultural relics come down from the pedestal and become entertaining, will it weaken their inherent seriousness? This will be a new issue for contemporary museums to address.
The most entertaining method by far stems from young people using the faces of various cultural relics as emojis to express common themes including “I don’t understand,” “I don’t want to work,” or “ugly rejection”. These young people walk into the museum, seeking to explore the legendary mysteries of thousand-year-old history, but are surprised to also “find themselves.” They use the eye-catching cultural relics to express such feelings as social anxiety, lying flat, awkwardness... At the end of their visit, the cultural relics are no longer cold objects in display cases, but vessels that can carry a bit of themselves.
Shanxi Museum’s deputy director Zhao Zhiming often sees young people taking the more humorous cultural relics in Shanxi Museum and repurposing them on the internet. He finds some of them quite imaginative. As long as it is not malicious distortion or vilification, he thinks it is fine. Besides, it is precisely because of their repurposing - their connecting of historical culture with modern life – that many previously obscure cultural relics have been seen by the masses. Zhao Zhiming said, “As long as it is respectful, we should tolerate young people’s own ways of linking and understanding cultural relics and history. There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s hearts.”
Wang Jiang often sees netizens using Northern Qi mural characters as emojis. He believes that no matter what “new gameplay” it is, it is essentially young people’s “cultural identity” in the context of the new era. In his view, a museum is not a warehouse for cultural relics. The rich imagination and artistic creativity of ancient people from thousands of years ago, when colliding with today’s people’s thoughts, will naturally spark “fireworks,” he says.
Young people, through a series of interesting “time-travel” experiences, have emotional resonance with the daily lives, joys, and sorrows of ancient people, which will lead to a strong desire to understand the long history and evolution of civilization in this land. According to Wang Jiang, “The so-called revitalization and utilization is to let more people get in touch with and understand cultural relics, be interested in them, and draw nourishment from them.”
The “revitalization” explored by Shanxi cultural relics professionals has provided a new approach for the protection and inheritance of ancient culture. Those paintings, calligraphic works, artifacts, and vessels from more than a thousand years ago have been brought out of the dust, not only to be collected and preserved in museums, but also appearing on the internet, or even as a charming emoji, all for the purpose of entering and enhancing our modern-day lives.
Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Li Jing, translator Du Guodong, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.