Global Times: Cultural inheritance must touch the heart first

BEIJING, June 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Dunhuang, with its millennia-old heritage, is finding new life through the energy and creativity of young people. Over the past year, I've been involved in creating and performing in the National Theatre of China's (NTC) music drama The Summoning of Dunhuang. Through this process, I've come to feel deeply how a cultural summoning that began over 1,000 years ago can still stir emotions and spark connections today.

My own journey with Dunhuang began in 2021, when I composed a song called "Feitian" (Flying Apsaras). I wanted to reinterpret the free, graceful spirit of Dunhuang's murals in a contemporary pop style. To my delight, listeners - especially young people - responded enthusiastically. Many commented that it was the first time they'd really paid attention to Dunhuang or tried to understand its art. That experience made me realize how urgently we need new, fitting "entry points" into China's traditional culture.

I firmly believe that cultural inheritance must touch the heart first - and to do that, it has to feel personal. To bring young people closer to traditional culture, we should not present it in a rigid manner that makes it feel distant and unapproachable. Young audiences need to feel, "This is about me," "I understand this," and "I'm excited to engage." Only then will ancient traditions come alive again.

That conviction drove me to join The Summoning of Dunhuang. In the play I portray two characters: Chang Shuhong (later the founder of the Dunhuang Academy) in 1935 and Zhang Ran in 2035. Chang left his life in Paris, France, to journey alone into the deserts of Northwest China, dedicating his life to keeping Dunhuang's heritage burning bright. Zhang is a future digital preservation engineer who uses modern technology to bring the murals to life. One character "burns bright," the other "lights up" - and both, a century apart, are protectors of Dunhuang in their own ways.

To prepare for the creation of the drama and bring these characters to life, our creative team undertook an intensive field study in Dunhuang. This journey was like bathing in the winds of history. We only felt the "wind" gently flipping through ancient chapters. Those past events, though weathered by time, still shined brightly, transformed into the camel bells of caravans, the sound of flutes at border passes and the bugles on battlefields, directly reaching our ears.

As NTC Director Tian Qinxin often reminds us, "Dunhuang's soul is in the details." To make our dancers move with the authentic grace of the flying apsaras, we studied each detail of the murals, watching how the apsaras' hands floated through the air. Our lighting designer ran countless tests to mimic the way sunlight once played across the cave walls. When a Buddha or a guardian deity appears on stage as a 15 meter tall digital projection, or a flying apsaras descends on seven wires, tradition and technology merge seamlessly. Every detail is crafted to evoke a timeless, heartfelt resonance. 

During the performances, I've watched the audience's eyes light up over and over. A theatergoer told me they saw "a Dunhuang for my generation." Students from a school for the deaf in Nanjing used sign language afterward to say "thank you." On social media, many audience members shared that the show inspired them to look up Dunhuang, and to read about Chang's life. Moments like these affirm my belief that "modernizing" traditional culture doesn't mean diluting it or turning it into mere entertainment. Instead, it means bringing sincerity, passion, and creative artistry so that ancient traditions step off dusty shelves and into people's senses - into their ears, eyes, and feelings.

The reason why traditional culture can become a spiritual resource today is that its precipitation through time has been deep enough, while its future life depends on continuously injecting new forms of expression to help it grow afresh.

On visiting the site in August 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that the sound protection of Mogao Caves and inheritance of Dunhuang culture is a responsibility that is held by the Chinese nation for the advancement of the world's civilization. Dunhuang still calls to our youth. For our generation of artists and cultural workers, it is a relay race across time.

As I travel with The Summoning of Dunhuang crew on the show's national tour, I feel even more keenly that China's civilization is at once profound and expansive. Dunhuang's story is far from finished. I hope that on even broader stages ahead, I can continue to share, in my own way, the moving and enduring tales of this extraordinary heritage that are distinctly ours.

The author is an actor with the National Theatre of China. The story was originally published in Chinese in the People's Daily on June 14.