Digital preservation brings Altay's history alive

A cultural relic will never be younger than it is today. Holding this notion close, grassroots heritage conservationist Zoya Baqit views her core mission as to preserve the cultural essence embodied in these relics at this very moment and share their charm with more people.

One solution she increasingly turns to is digital technology.

Since 2021, Zoya Baqit has worked at the Altay Regional Museum in Altay prefecture, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, where she focuses on the conservation and study of immovable cultural relics in the field and serves as a part-time docent.

As a deputy to the 14th National People's Congress, the 37-year-old advocates using digital technology to protect these relics.

According to the third national cultural relics survey, Altay is home to 692 immovable cultural relic sites scattered across remote areas. Among them, Zoya Baqit pays particular attention to stone relics, such as the nearly 1,000 rock art pieces dating from the Paleolithic period to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), found at 125 sites across the prefecture.

These petroglyphs and rock paintings depict scenes from the lives of early inhabitants, including hunting, herding and dancing.

Notably, a painting discovered in the Dundebrak Cave in Altay city, dating back around 12,000 years, features a group of hunters on short skis resembling modern furlined skis, with some holding a single pole, suggesting Altay as a potential birthplace of skiing.

"Viewing these rock artworks is like browsing ancient social media posts," Zoya Baqit said. "It makes you wonder: Why did they draw these animals or herding scenes on stone? Were they casual sketches, or did they carry specific meaning? Through bold hypotheses and careful reasoning, we hope to gain deeper insight into the rich spiritual world of our ancestors."

He Huilai, director of the Altay Regional Museum, said in an interview with China News Service that rock art is typically found along riverbanks in valleys with abundant water and grass, often on cliffs or cave ceilings near herding paths.

Wherever rock art appears, the area was — or remains — a quality hunting or grazing site where people engaged in prolonged living and production activities.

He added that Altay preserves a considerable number of pieces from the Bronze and Iron ages, documenting ancient nomadic life while reflecting their beliefs, aesthetics and spiritual pursuits.

Major physical preservation of these sites often requires reinforcing the mountain bodies or cliff walls — a logistically daunting, technically complex task difficult to implement comprehensively in the short term.

As a result, Zoya Baqit and colleagues have focused on a more practical and urgent mission: digitizing representative rock art pieces to preserve them intact within the virtual world.

Starting in April, while reaching out to qualified tech companies, they traveled across the Altay prefecture to investigate sites and their surroundings. They assessed factors including changeable weather, sunlight and rain erosion, the routes for transporting equipment and optimal locations for setting up the equipment to obtain accurate data.

Because geographical environment, preservation condition and types of deterioration differ from site to site, digitization requires a tailored approach for each location. By August, the team had produced a preliminary draft and had been refining it ever since.

Zoya Baqit stays updated on diverse digital and intelligent tools for preserving and presenting cultural relics, such as holographic imaging, virtual reality and digital rubbing. Created through high-precision three-dimensional scanning, digital rubbing captures stone relics in detail without physical contact, avoiding damage caused by traditional methods and offering new clues about ancient creators' personal habits.

Now that Altay has completed the field investigation phase of the fourth national cultural relics survey, Zoya Baqit and colleagues are organizing the collected data, which helps them better understand the relics' preservation status and supports their digital preservation initiatives. She said these efforts have made her reflections as an NPC deputy more focused and informed.

At the ongoing two sessions, she is promoting Altay's cultural legacies embedded in its ice-and-snow boom, exemplified by the ancient skiing rock painting and the tradition of skiing with fur-lined skis, a Xinjiang regional-level intangible cultural heritage item. Her hometown has emerged as a popular winter destination in recent years.

"These heritage items reflect the wisdom of Altay's early inhabitants — how they adapted to harsh, snowy winters using available tools and skills for travel and hunting," she said.

Through her conservation work, Zoya Baqit gets to see her hometown as more multidimensional. Immersed in nature, observing the terrain and the distribution of relics, she often imagines herself as an ancient individual, pondering why they chose certain places to settle.

"I think about how they managed to survive and sustain themselves in these landscapes," she said. "These sites carry the wisdom of our ancestors, their way of life and their reflections on society. The evolution of their living and production practices is a vivid manifestation of traditional Chinese culture."

Liang Chuhan contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at fangaiqing@chinadaily.com.cn