Digital exhibition to shine spotlight on Xinjiang's Niya ruins site

A digital exhibition spotlighting Niya ruins site in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the first of its kind in the world, is set to open to public on Jan 25 in Shanghai, offering visitors a unique immersive experience on the site's excavation while learning about the region's ancient cultures, organizers said Tuesday.

Running until July 25, the exhibition is hosted by the publicity department of the city's Huangpu district and the Xinjiang Museum. It will also be the first exhibition at the newly established Alight Room Lafayette Culture Space, featuring over 100 pieces of cultural artifacts as well as digital interpretation of history integrated with advanced and interactive technologies.

Among the cultural relics, a precious copy of the national treasure-level artifact "Five Stars Rise in the East" brocade arm protector from the Xinjiang Museum, which was unearthed in 1995 at the Niya site in Minfeng county, Hotan prefecture, will be on display in Shanghai for the first time. Notably, it is labeled as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in China in the 20th century.

Working with the French virtual reality team from Backlight Studio, the digital exhibition titled Seven Days of the Cad'ota, aims to recreate the excavation site and lead visitors through the region's history and ancient daily life from a first-person perspective.

"The exhibition is a digital show integrating culture, archaeology, time-traveling digital XR technologies, AIGC-driven interaction and movie aesthetics, aiming to reveal the ancient Jingjue Kingdom that disappeared thousands of years ago," said Wang Dong, chairman of the Alight Room Lafayette Culture Space, during the news conference.

The Jingjue Kingdom is one of the 36 vanished states in the western region in ancient China. It was also a fortress on the ancient Silk Road, boasting a rich history of ethnic integration and traditional Chinese cultures.

"The exhibition explores deep into the historic, artistic and scientific values of cultural relics in Xinjiang. With the latest technologies, it injects new vitality into Xinjiang's cultural heritages, comprehensively presenting the history and charm of the Niya site and Xinjiang," said He Jia, Party secretary of the Xinjiang Museum.