Digital tech brings cultural relics lost overseas back to Dunhuang

(ECNS) -- An exhibition featuring duplications of Dunhuang's cultural relics has been unveiled at the 5th Silk Road (Dunhuang) International Cultural Expo, which runs from Sept. 24 to 30.

With digital technology, more than 200 replicas scattered overseas and 100 relics from different museums in Jiuquan were displayed in Dunhuang.

Wang Jieyuan, curator of Jiuquan Museum, said the museum began the project of bringing back cultural relics through digital methods in 2018.

So far, the museum has collected information on various cultural relics including silk paintings, paper paintings, and linen paintings from different ancient dynasties.

Wang said that digital resources provide a clear description of the size, color, and texture of cultural relics, and the exhibition underwent high-tech restoration.

This exhibition has been on domestic tours more than 20 times.

Digital technology was also used to restore the scene of the Library Cave.

Over the past 100 years, generations of Dunhuang scholars have made painstaking efforts to reproduce rubbings, collate and collect cultural relics scattered abroad, and bring them back in various ways.