The Dunhuang Academy launched an English website on Wednesday that allows netizens and researchers worldwide to take virtual tours of the Cave Temples of Dunhuang in Northeast China's Gansu Province, a series of hundreds of grottoes containing a multitude of Buddhist statuary and frescoes.
Digital Dunhuang, or e-dunhuang.com, shows off 30 grottoes dating back to as early as the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), including the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Mogao Grottoes, through high-definition pictures and Virtual Reality technologies.
On the site, people can choose the grottoes they want to "visit" and then "walk" through the narrow channels inside the grottoes by clicking on arrow signs on the screen. Visitors can then stop and zoom in on the frescoes and sculptures and enjoy them at their leisure.
According to a statement from the academy, the site will switch automatically into Chinese or English after visitors log into Digital Dunhuang based on the language of the operating system that the user is using or visitors can choose whatever language they wish to use by clicking on the language box at the top-right of the webpage.
