Touch the light and shadow, wander through ancient sites.-Hengshan Mountain

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Touch the light and shadow, wander through ancient sites.

Publish Time:

2026-06-08 22:07

Source:

What kind of sparks will fly when ancient cave temples meet modern technology?

The Hanging Temple, located in the Jinlong Gorge of Hengshan Mountain, is renowned worldwide for its extraordinary and perilous site selection and architecture. “Built in the late Northern Wei period, the temple stands about 60 meters above the ground at its highest point, with steps so narrow that some sections are less than one meter wide—truly awe-inspiring and daunting,” said Deng Jing, Director of the Party and Government Office at the Hengshan Scenic Area Management Center. To better safeguard the cultural relics and ensure visitor safety, admission tickets are sold on a daily limited basis.

The soaring popularity of the game “Black Myth: Wukong” has triggered a sharp surge in visitor numbers to the Hanging Temple. During each peak tourist season, daily attendance averages over 30,000, which also means that more than 90% of visitors are unable to actually climb up to the temple.

At the end of September 2025, the MR (mixed reality) project “Lingjing Xuan Kong” made its official debut. “The project employs non-contact, high-precision, real-world 3D digital twin technology to create a 1:1 digital replica of the entire Hanging Temple,” explained Liu Rui, the project leader. To faithfully recreate the temple’s authentic structure, the team collaborated with experts in historic architecture and cultural heritage preservation, utilizing drone-based oblique photogrammetry and terrestrial LiDAR scanning, alongside original construction archives. This approach not only restored the building’s exterior but also meticulously reproduced internal structural details, such as the mortise-and-tenon joinery system.

With feet resting on auspicious clouds, visitors ascend gently, while the intricate details of the temple are rendered in exquisite clarity… Through algorithmic simulation, even standing on level ground, tourists can experience the sensation of soaring above the temple. Paired with synchronized audio narration, they gain an intuitive understanding of the Hanging Temple’s ingenious structural principles—its “half‑embedded flying beams as foundations, cleverly leveraging the rock for hidden support”—as well as the geographical secrets behind its mountain‑side location. What was once obscure knowledge of ancient architectural construction has thus been transformed into vivid, tangible real‑world insights.

“Digital technology not only addresses the traditional limitation of visitor capacity but also enables tourists to appreciate the architectural ingenuity behind historic structures and to better connect with the historical depth of cultural relics,” said Liu Rui. She added that, empowered by new technologies, more ancient sites are being presented to visitors in a more vivid and engaging manner—making them easier to see, remember, and cherish.

Source: People’s Daily

Keywords:

Under the cover of night, the Hanging Temple brings the ancient architectural legend to life through light and shadow.

Touch the light and shadow, wander through ancient sites.