Located in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing, the Dazu Rock Carvings have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999. The Dazu Rock Carvings are spread across 75 recognized cultural heritage sites and feature more than 50,000 stunning statues.
As one of the eight great grottoes in the world, the Dazu Rock Carvings present the pinnacle of world grotto art from the 9th to the mid-13th century from different perspectives. Dazu is known as the “last monument of world grotto art” and together with the Mogao Grottoes, Yungang Grottoes, and Longmen Grottoes, it forms a complete history of Chinese grotto art.
Recent initiatives have revitalized Dazu’s cultural influence. In the 8K dome theater, the compassionate gaze of the Thousand-armed Avalokitesvara fills the entire screen, leading the audience into a fairyland-like embrace.
The dance drama “Dazu in the World” (For the Eternal Home – The Inheritance of Dazu Rock Carvers) vividly presents the epic story of the stone carvers with an immersive stage performance.
Today, even video games feature Dazu statues, weaving their silhouettes and stories into virtual adventures. This thousand-year-old sacred place is steadily moving towards the modern era.
The 8K full-dome film “Dazu Rock Carvings” awakens 50,000 statues with cascading streams of real-life images and CG animations, transforming physical space into a digital world.
The audience nestles in the dome, looking up at the stars, listening to the chanting of Buddhist scriptures through the digital starry sky, and feeling the agility of light and shadow. The halo of light that has been baptized by the years reappears around the sculpture’s robes – reborn in pixels, but rooted in ancient times.
In “Black Myth: Wukong”, Sun Wukong wields his staff to split the chaos, and the Thousand-Handed Guanyin of Dazu Rock Carvings smiles peacefully in the cracks of space – holding a flower between her fingers.
In this digital Buddhist world, players will travel through the meticulously rendered Dazu and encounter Buddhist images in a mythological exploration – an interactive bridge to Eastern philosophy.
Meanwhile, CCTV’s “China Intangible Cultural Heritage” program has created a special program on Chongqing specifically for Dazu, describing its living heritage as “like stars sprinkled over the mountains and rivers of Chongqing” and rekindling collective memory through the screen.
On stage, dancers echo the chiseling rhythms of the craftsmen of the past. As the performers burst out of the stone walls, the flowing silk costumes swirl and fly, transforming history into dynamic art. This is not a static reproduction – but a cultural translation, conveying the spirit of the carver through flesh, movement and emotion.
Dazu Rock Carvings are being reborn through digital technology and cultural innovation. Digital projection gives the stone carvings vitality in virtual space, realizing a dialogue across time and space; stage art gives the stone carvings contemporary vitality.
Technology extends the dimension of stone carvings, and culture rejuvenates the essence of stone carvings. In this symbiotic relationship, this thousand-year-old treasure resonates with the times and glows with eternal brilliance.
