Gaining Instead of Losing: The Image of Dunhuang as a Religious Heritage in a WeChat Mini-Programme

Abstract

In 2020, a WeChat mini-programme called the Dunhuang E-Tour (云游敦煌) was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic to showcase one of China’s most important religious heritage sites, the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes (also known as the Dunhuang Caves), and it attracted a considerable number of online tourists. Unlike the colonial image of Dunhuang in Chinese public discourse, the mini-programme does not focus on Dunhuang’s history; rather, it provides a dynamic and interactive representation of Dunhuang’s religious murals, painted sculptures and cave architecture. To reflect the impact of the mini-programme’s digital mechanisms on users’ experience, this study adopts an analytical framework that combines the walkthrough method and religious tourist perspectives to explore the image of the digital Dunhuang and how it was shaped. The analysis finds that the functions of the Dunhuang E-Tour create a culturally rich image of Dunhuang, which subverts its decades-long Dunhuang image as a site of loss in Chinese public discourse. This difference in images mirrors the potential impact of China’s recent cultural policy of ‘cultural confidence’ in relation to its cultural and creative industries.

1. Introduction

On 24 January 2020, the Dunhuang Academy, China’s most influential research institute for the protection, administration, and study of the Mogao Grottoes, announced the suspension of tours to the site due to the COVID-19 pandemic (Jin and Min 2021). The closure of the attraction posed an immediate problem to the institution in meeting the needs of tourists. To address this challenge, the institution forged a partnership with Tencent Group, a leading internet company in China. Li Hang, the general manager of Tencent Group’s marketing and public relations department, recalls that “we had an urgent discussion with the Dunhuang Academy and came up with the idea of launching a digital mini-programme during the pandemic control period.” (Li and Chen 2022). The development of the Dunhuang E-Tour took three weeks of collaboration between both parties. Within 10 days of its launch, the mini-programme had attracted five million visitors (Ma 2020). By the end of 2022, the digital activities of the Dunhuang E-Tour had engaged over 200 million participants (Li and Chen 2022).

Although the Dunhuang E-Tour has recently gained popularity as a successful digital product, Dunhuang has long been recognised as a significant religious site in Chinese history. The city’s role as a crucial hub on the Silk Road, connecting Asia and Europe, has been well-documented, and the Mogao Grottoes, located in Dunhuang, have been listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1987, garnering both domestic and international recognition (Chen and Wang 2020; Hu 2018). From 300 AD to 1300 AD, Dunhuang was a centre for cave excavation, religious mural painting, and religious sculpture creation, making it a significant site in religious circles, particularly in Buddhism (Hu 2018). Consisting of nearly 735 caves, more than 2000 painted sculptures and around 45,000 square metres of murals (Wang et al. 2018, pp. 333–34), the Mogao Grottoes, located in north-western China’s Gansu province in a harsh desert climate, illustrate the path of Buddhism’s entry into China from South and Central Asia, embodying a history of medieval cultural fusion and intercontinental relations, and the Grottoes are known as the world’s largest repository of Buddhist literature and art (Chen and Wang 2020).

Dunhuang’s rich religious resources have made it a thriving tourist-oriented city today. However, the Mogao Caves are not ideal for large numbers of visitors due to the carbon dioxide and moisture they contribute to the limited space, which accelerates the oxidation and flaking of the murals (Demas et al. 2015). As a result, since the 1990s, the Dunhuang Academy has been exploring the digital preservation of the Mogao Caves through advanced photographic techniques and three-dimensional reconstruction (Agnew et al. 2012; Wang et al. 2018). Based on these digital data, the institute has developed digital museum projects that aim to meet visitors’ desire to appreciate the Mogao Caves while limiting the number of visitors to the physical site.

The digitisation efforts were partly responsible for the rapid launch of the Dunhuang E-Tour mini program, while a more direct social driver was a cultural policy. China’s cultural confidence policy in recent years has provided a stimulus to the cultural and creative industries (will be further explained in part 3). This policy has resulted in various government and corporate funds and partnership opportunities being offered to large museums and cultural institutions in China, such as the Forbidden City, to pursue digital transformation (Jin and Min 2021; Ma et al. 2022). It is therefore not surprising that the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, one of China’s largest religious sites, has also sought to develop in a similar way.

This article aims to examine the recent digital transformation of the Mogao Caves by utilising the walkthrough method (Light et al. 2018) and the perspective of religious tourism motivation to explore the digital images of Dunhuang. The following section initially elucidates the previous image of Dunhuang that was linked to colonialism in Chinese public discourse. Subsequently, the article turns to the new image of digital Dunhuang to demonstrate the significant differences between the two images. Through a comparative analysis of these two images of Dunhuang, the article will discuss the decolonisation of cultural expressions in China’s cultural and creative industries within the context of cultural confidence policy.

2. The Images of Dunhuang in Chinese Public Discourse

“As long as all my efforts had to be devoted to the search among the treasures of the hidden chapel, there was no time to spare for the closer inspection of the hundreds of temple grottoes, big and small, which honeycomb the precipitous conglomerate cliffs on the left riverbank”.

(Stein 2014, p. 220)

This description is taken from Marc Aurel Stein’s (1862–1943) Ruins of Desert Cathay (1912), which documents his second expedition to Chinese Turkestan from 1906 to 1908. In the second volume of this book, he addresses the Buddhist cave temples, manuscripts, sculptures and murals found in Dunhuang. The “hidden chapel” that draws Stein’s full attention is the famous “Library Cave” (Cave 17), which houses a large number of collections of ancient religious texts ranging “from Buddhist, Confucianism, Daoism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism to Judaism and Christian Church of the East” (Chen and Wang 2020, p. 188). Stein’s discovery aroused the attention of Orientalists worldwide. A visit to Dunhuang from the renowned French sinologist Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) followed Stein’s discovery (Agnew et al. 2012). In subsequent years, the Japanese Buddhist scholar Kōrui Otani (1876–1948) and the Russian Orientalist Sergei Oldenburg (1863–1934) paid successive visits to Dunhuang (Chen and Wang 2020).

In the first and second decades of the twentieth century, these Orientalists transferred a large number of religious artefacts outside of China, initiating the study of Dunhuang in the West. For example, Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot moved a significant part of the Library Cave to London and Paris, respectively, where there were about 40,000 scrolls and documents, including the first printed book, the Diamond Sutra, dated 868 CE (Agnew et al. 2012). Other archaeologists and explorers, who later came from Russia, Japan and the United States, also took away religious manuscripts, resulting in Dunhuang artefacts scattered around the world (Agnew et al. 2012; Jacobs 2022). In the 1930s, the Chinese became aware of the loss of their religious heritage to foreign countries. Tianjin Press openly described Stein, one of the world’s most famous archaeologists, as an “insatiable thief and demanded his immediate expulsion from the country” (Jacobs 2022, p. 65). The Chinese believed that the most unforgivable crime of these archaeologists was to steal the treasure of Dunhuang and permanently transfer it to foreign lands.

The period of darkness experienced by Dunhuang, during which it was stripped of its religious treasures, is inextricably linked to China’s colonial past. At the turn of the twentieth century, China was undergoing its “century of humiliation” (1840s–1940s), marked by a series of defeats, including the Second Opium War (1856–1860), the Sino-French War (1884–1885), and the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), which resulted in the loss of China’s national sovereignty (Nicieja 2018, p. 63). Colonial invaders were able to exploit China’s social and cultural wealth without interference from the local government. Given its rich religious history and heritage, it is unsurprising that Dunhuang fell victim to colonialism in this social climate. Today, those interested in Dunhuang can view its artefacts in prestigious museums outside of China, such as the British Museum (Ning 2017; Agnew et al. 2012), thereby benefiting from the cultural losses of China’s semi-colonial society.

The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 marked the end of China’s colonial history, yet the loss of Dunhuang’s religious treasures continues to be a source of sorrow for the Chinese people. Public discourse, which involves the exchange of ideas and opinions among members of a society or community (Shen 2015), often portrays Dunhuang as a site of loss, as evidenced by documentaries and social commentary that emphasise its plundered past and create a negative image of the site. In 2010, China Central Television produced a highly influential documentary called Dunhuang, which highlights the visits of foreign archaeologists to the site and the artefacts they took with them. In the concluding segment of the final episode, the documentary cites the public commentary of the esteemed Chinese historian Chen Yinque regarding the loss of Dunhuang’s religious heritage, wherein he laments that Dunhuang is an integral part of the sorrowful history of his nation (Zhou 2010). He openly addressed the disparity between Dunhuang’s location in China and its study abroad (Xu 2022), often citing the geopolitical history of the Silk Road, the discovery of the Library Cave, and the dispersal of Dunhuang artefacts around the world to provide regrettable accounts of Dunhuang’s past (Xu 2022). In the first half of Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang (2013), the renowned Dunhuang expert Rong Xinjiang describes colonial archaeological explorations in Dunhuang during the early twentieth century in a similar way. He stresses that China lost the Dunhuang manuscripts due to colonialists’ plundering: “The dispersal of the Dunhuang manuscripts at the end of the Qing dynasty and early Republican period was not accidental but part of the competition between Western powers at the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the treasures of Chinese Central Asia” (Rong and Galambos 2013, p. 177). Like Rong, many leading scholars of Dunhuang studies, such as Ning Qiang, Wu Hong and Kuang Lanfeng, inevitably speak of what China lost and, in turn, what Western sinology gained (Ning 2020; Wu 2022; Kuang 2016). Their emphasis on Dunhuang’s history further reinforces Dunhuang’s image as a site of loss.

The discourse surrounding Dunhuang in China reflects the concept of “collective memory” as posited by French scholar Maurice Halbwachs and further elaborated by German scholars Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann (Voigt 2014). This concept refers to the collective memory of a society or group, which is moulded by shared experiences, traditions and cultural practices. It is a means of comprehending how individuals within a society remember and interpret events, and how those memories are conveyed and preserved over time. The image of Dunhuang in Chinese public discourse reflects the colonial trauma of the twentieth century in China, one that comes not from individual memory but from collective historical memory and cultural consciousness.

Collective memory, however, is not simply a passive reflection of the past, but an active process of constructing and reconstructing the past in a changing social and political context. The Asmans extend this concept by emphasising the role of cultural institutions, such as museums, archives and memorials, in shaping and transmitting social memory (Assmann 2008). In the section that follows, I present Dunhuang’s digital transformation under China’s policy of cultural confidence, a transformation that reflects the revision of Chinese society’s collective memory of its colonial wounds.

3. Dunhuang as Presented by the WeChat Mini-Programme

Despite its long-standing image associated with its colonial past, Dunhuang has undergone a revolutionary transformation in the past decade. Due to rapid advances in digital technology, Dunhuang has been reinvented in cyberspace. As I mentioned in the introduction, the Dunhuang Academy has been exploring the digital conservation of the Mogao Caves since the 1990s, but it was only in 2016, the same year as the ‘cultural confidence’ policy, that the institution launched its digital Dunhuang website, enabling the global sharing of panoramas and descriptive information about the caves and murals (Hu 2018, pp. 57–58). Another notable achievement is the Dunhuang E-Tour in 2020, which has received a substantial number of visits and offers a diverse digital experience that is not available in the physical world. This mini-programme contains over 2700 murals and painted sculptures, allowing visitors to search for Dunhuang’s religious works based on various criteria (Ma et al. 2022). The ‘cultural confidence’ policy is arguably the most significant social context driving Dunhuang’s digital transformation, but its precise nature and implications require further examination.

In his speech on the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China in 2016, China’s president, Xi Jinping, outlined the policy of cultural confidence, a systematic concept that refers to a country’s confidence in its cultural values and vitality (Wang 2018). This cultural policy heavily stresses Chinese traditional culture, including all the material and spiritual wealth people created in the course of China’s historical development (O’Connor and Xin 2006). This concept aims to solve the problem that China’s global image “lacks real weight” (Wang 2018, p. 279). The Communist Party of China hopes that China’s rich cultural traditions and long history will become the source of its cultural influence internationally and cultural self-confidence for the Chinese people (Sun 2020; Wang et al. 2018). Since 2016, the policy of cultural confidence has been frequently on the agenda of important political meetings in China, such as the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Xi 2022). Studies have shown that the state power’s emphasis on cultural development in China in recent years has been a direct driver of the country’s cultural and creative industries (Tsai et al. 2022), and the development of such industries has seen a top-down pattern of development (Zhang et al. 2021).

Under the umbrella of the country’s cultural policy, private internet technology companies are encouraged to serve cultural institutions of a public nature. This explains why Tencent, a major technology company, is a proud partner of the Dunhuang Academy. The Dunhuang E-Tour is based on Tencent’s mobile app, WeChat (known as Weixin in Chinese), a versatile platform that integrates various services, including social networking, mobile payment and e-commerce (Lien and Cao 2014; Montag et al. 2018; Tang et al. 2022). Recent research shows that WeChat is the fifth most-used smartphone app globally (Gan and Li 2018), with over one billion monthly active users (Zheng et al. 2019). More than half of users spend over 90 min per day on the app, and 61% open it more than 10 times (Zheng et al. 2019). Over 14 million companies are active on the app, with an average daily volume of over 38 billion messages. To facilitate access to digital Dunhuang, the mini-programme (小程序) is used as a customer tool. Launched by WeChat in 2017 (Zheng et al. 2019), the mini-programme is similar to an app but is built within the WeChat ecosystem and does not require a download from the app store (Ma et al. 2022). Mini-programmes enable users to find information quickly and meet various daily life and work needs. Although the development technology of the mini-programme is similar to that of a mobile client app, the system architecture of the mini-programme is simpler, using a more straightforward page code for developers (Hao et al. 2018, p. 4).

Although scholars have conducted technical explorations on WeChat mini-programmes, research on Dunhuang E-Tour is still in its nascent stages, and the existing studies are primarily in Chinese. A keyword search for “Dunhuang E-Tour” on China’s largest academic website, CNKI, yielded only thirteen results, with three journal articles being directly relevant. All three studies found that the mini-programme is strongly empowered by mobile digital technology (Yao 2021; Zhao and Wang 2021; Zhao 2022). Not only does the digital programme allow for the presentation of Dunhuang’s religious culture, regardless of temporal and spatial constraints (Yao 2021; Zhao and Wang 2021), but it also serves as a bridge between the public and ancient religious art (Zhao 2022), thereby increasing religious and cultural understanding. Existing academic discussions have only briefly addressed aspects of the mini-programme’s technological contribution, but the impact of the mini-programme’s digital functions on the representation of Dunhuang has not been thoroughly examined. To address this gap, the next section of this article will outline the method used in the exploration of the digital image of Dunhuang.

4. Materials and Methods

Mini-programmes are “apps within apps”, that is, they are embedded in apps and are highly similar to apps in terms of organisation (Tang et al. 2022, p. 1170), this study uses the walkthrough approach, a technical analysis and cultural research method specifically for apps, to investigate Dunhuang E-Tour. The core of this method “involves the step-by-step observation and documentation of an app’s screens, features and flows of activity” (Light et al. 2018, p. 882) to reveal how the app’s technological mechanisms and embedded cultural references guide users and shape their experiences. This method has three common stages for data generation: registration and entry; everyday use; and suspension, closure and leaving (Light et al. 2018; Zulli and Zulli 2022). As Dunhuang E-Tour has a minimalist login and logout mechanism (it shares user information with WeChat, and there is no additional user registration and data deletion), the data collection for this study focuses on the daily use of the programme. In other words, my technical walkthrough investigates the functions and options of the mini-programme. As the method expects the researcher to “place oneself in the user’s position and imagine the range of affordances the user perceives” (Light et al. 2018, p. 886), my analysis is based on an in-depth user-like experience and documents the functionality of the mini-programme.

While this approach allows for data to be obtained from technical aspects, it does not enable an organised analysis of the users’ religious experience. As the content of Dunhuang E-Tour is closely engaged with religious tourism, I further modify the framework of my walkthrough method to integrate it with the perspective of religious tourist studies. In my analysis of the mini-programme’s various functions, I use three fundamental drivers of religious tourism in China in recent years, namely, “religious belief, cultural enjoyment and mental relaxation” (Wang et al. 2016, p. 57). Specifically, through the framework of travel motivation—mini-programme function—and user reception, this study analyses how Dunhuang E-Tour would cause users to receive the Dunhuang image under different travel motivations.

This hybrid study has two steps. The first step consisted of observation and classification of the mini-programme’s functions (from November 2022 to January 2023). I registered and used Dunhuang E-Tour on my smartphone to familiarise myself with the interface, which included a menu of five sections: Home Page, Exploration, Sightseeing, Conservation and New Cultural Creation (Figure 1a); each section has distinct functions (Figure 1b). In this process, I associated the features these five sections provide with the user’s primary motivation for religious travel to understand the user’s experience of the mini-programme. The second step was an investigation of the user’s experience of the mini-programme; that is, I analysed what users were supposed to receive from the mini-programme’s functions technically. The key to this exploration is to summarise what the user obtains at a programme design level rather than reflecting their emotions or feedback on the user’s side. The below three sub-sections further explain my investigation.

4.1. User Experience: Religious Beliefs

According to historical records, Buddhist followers in Dunhuang were known as donors because they were the sponsors and maintainers of the Dunhuang Caves (Meinert and Sørensen 2020, pp. 92–93). In other words, the practice of religious belief in Dunhuang is actually an activity based on donation. Through my walkthrough method, I found that two functions (C1 and H2) of the mini-programme are associated with the special practice of religious belief in Dunhuang. In the menu, users can find the cultural conservation projects in the Conservation section. The project raises funds to preserve Dunhuang murals and sculptures (Figure 2). By making charitable donations to the project, users become Dunhuang donors in the modern sense. Through the mini-programme’s donation function, users are given the identity of digital donors to support their religious beliefs.

Another feature linked to religious beliefs is the Mission Centre in the Mine section on the homepage, which requires users to complete tasks (Figure 3). After doing so, they obtain digital mineral pigments and are officially certified as Dunhuang painters, likening them to the core creators of Dunhuang murals. These tasks include repeatedly logging in, watching videos and participating in surveys. By completing the tasks, users can receive mineral pigments. The more mineral pigments users collect, the more money they donate to protect the Dunhuang Caves. Figure 3 shows that the researcher is a second-level painter with 37 g of mineral pigments. These mineral pigments are automatically calculated as a donation of RMB 3.9 to protect the Dunhuang Grottoes. Thus, a painter’s increasing rank is a process of raising funds. This shows how Dunhuang E-Tour incentivises and monetises user participation. As the painter’s behaviour of collecting mineral pigments is related to the donation, the Dunhuang painter is actually the donor. Therefore, the function of the Mission Centre also meets the travel purpose of religious beliefs.

As an old and significant social phenomenon, religious beliefs are identified with two attributes: spirituality and organisation (Hoffmann 2012). Spirituality refers to the ways in which religion can deeply form people’s life values and attitudes; organisation describes how religion can play an important role in the group identity of a given society (Ysseldyk et al. 2010). Both attributes are reflected in Dunhuang E-Tour. Through donations to digital conservation projects, users can support their spiritual beliefs. Meanwhile, the donation behaviour grants users the identity of digital donors, thus creating a special donation group. Through the donation functions of C1 and H2, users not only practise their religion, but they also gain a modern religious identity.

4.2. User Experience: Mental Relaxation

Mental relaxation is one of the main purposes of religious tourism, which consists of four aspects: (1) mental self-soothing, (2) the pursuit of mental peace, (3) the pursuit of inner happiness and (d) experiencing a religious atmosphere (Wang et al. 2016, p. 64). Although some visitors are not devoted religious believers, they may also be influenced by devotional behaviour and the monks’ pleasurable expressions, as the behaviour of others can greatly influence visitors’ on-site experiences (Yagi and Pearce 2007), thus contributing to their spiritual fulfilment. Using this definition of mental relaxation, I conducted a thorough investigation of the functions of Dunhuang E-Tour. My goal was to identify the functions that involve the content of monks’ lives, and these functions can bring users a significant sense of pleasure or calmness.

My walkthrough method shows that most functions of the mini-programme do not satisfy users’ desire for mental relaxation, but one function—the function of Dunhuang Animations (N7) in the New Cultural Creation section—can satisfy this desire. N7 contains five short animations of no more than five minutes: The Divine Deer and the Informer, Princes Sailing for the Pearl, Who is the Centre of the Band, The Kind Doctor Saves the Fish, and The Crime and Punishment of the Five Hundred Robbers. All five tell Buddhist stories. Although they differ, each shows a monk performing Buddhist rituals and is accompanied by slow religious music. Significantly, each animation supports user participation in the voiceover. Users can choose which character they want to play in the show and record the character’s lines. Once the dubbing is complete, the feature allows users to forward or save their work.

Figure 4 and Figure 5 illustrate the researcher’s experience with the animation Princes Sailing for the Pearl. The researcher accessed this feature by selecting Dunhuang Animations in the New Cultural Creation section (Figure 4a). Before entering the cinema, researchers read a description of the animation feature (Figure 4b) and select one of the five animations to be dubbed (Figure 4c). Figure 5a shows that monks play all the characters. Users can choose one or more characters to dub (Figure 5b). Through the dubbing, the researcher enjoyed and participated in the Buddhist world. In the end, the researcher received a poster and her dubbing profile (Figure 5c). With digital technology, Dunhuang Animation inspires users to participate (with their voices) in the performance of religious stories, thus allowing them to experience the religious atmosphere and gain a sense of pleasure. This feature not only satisfies the users’ need for mental relaxation but also provides recreational value.

4.3. User Experience: Cultural Enjoyment

Cultural enjoyment is one of the main purposes of religious tourism, and it involves five main dimensions: (1) enjoying festivals, (2) enjoying the local culture, (3) enjoying the style of the temple, (4) experiencing local customs and (5) enjoying religious art (Wang et al. 2016, p. 64). My walkthrough analysis reveals that each section of the Dunhuang E-Tour has functions that support users’ aim of cultural enjoyment. In the Exploration section (E1–E5), users can watch Dunhuang-themed documentaries, discover the various art forms of Dunhuang murals (Sutra, Animal, Bodhisattva, Flying Sky and Landscape), painted sculptures (Buddha, Bodhisattva, Luohan and Sons, and Heavenly Kings and Rishis), cave temples (Zen Cave, Cave of the Central Pillar, Cave of the Dome, Nirvana Cave, the Great Buddha Cave and the Shadow Cave), as well as panoramic views of the caves. In the Sightseeing section, users can learn about regular tours and book offline cultural experience activities at the Mogao Caves (S1–S3). In the Conservation section, users could learn about the destruction of the murals (C2). Another noteworthy feature that offers users a cultural experience is in the top right corner of the home page. As mentioned in part three, this is the “Words and Painting of the Day” function (H1). Clicking on it provides an image of a random Dunhuang mural, an introduction to the mural and a blessing for sharing it on social networks.

The mini-programme’s commercial services also support the visitors’ need for cultural enjoyment, as Dunhuang Creative Gallery (N5) and Dunhuang Poetry Scarf (N6) in the New Cultural Creation section sell special cultural products. Unlike common religious products (cross necklaces or Buddha bead bracelets) that indicate visitors’ religious beliefs, these items are suitable for daily use. They include stationery and accessories and are designed with special Dunhuang religious imagery, such as the Apsaras and the nine-coloured deer. To place an order, users simply click on the “buy” button, and the item is couriered from Gansu to the address they supply. The function of the Dunhuang Poetry Scarf is similar to that of the Dunhuang Creative Gallery. Users can choose special Dunhuang religious imagery in the mini-programme to design their own silk scarves. Once the design is complete, users pay and wait for the item to be delivered to their homes. This section also allows users to explore Dunhuang’s art exhibitions (N2), participate in quiz games (N4), read Dunhuang’s four seasons-themed poems (N1), learn about the Dunhuang Auspicious Beasts (N8) and participate in the Lantern-Lighting Festival (N3) in Mogao Grottoes digitally.

An analysis of the experience of these features related to cultural enjoyment revealed that most of the functions (E2, E3, E4, H1, N1, N3, N4, N8) supply a similar pattern of reception for users; that is, they result in sharing cards for social purposes. Unlike the obvious commercial value offered in the Dunhuang Creative Gallery (N5) and the Dunhuang Poetry scarf (N6), sharing these cards is free. Figure 6 below presents a typical example. It shows the iconic Buddha statue displayed as an art form (E2), which is described as having the most mysterious “oriental smile”. To the right of this depiction are two buttons (Figure 6a). By clicking on the star, this Buddha image can be bookmarked, while clicking on the icon on the far right reveals the two options presented in Figure 6b. The option on the left is “Share to WeChat Friends”, while the one on the right is “Generate a Share-Card”. Clicking on the icon on the right gives the user a card with an image of the Buddha and a descriptive text that can be saved to the smartphone’s album (Figure 6c). This card can be downloaded and shared on smartphones. The design of the sharing card gives social value to the user’s cultural enjoyment.

In addition to receiving share cards, users’ experiences for cultural enjoyment also result in knowledge-sharing (E1, E5, S1, S2, S3, C2, N2). For example, the feature of the introduction to the damage of the Dunhuang murals (C2) does not offer a share card; rather, it gives users information about the destruction of the murals. Reading this introduction informs users about the religious art in the Dunhuang Caves. Therefore, this function has an intellectual value.

5. Results and Discussion

By investigating user reception guided by different religious motivations, this study finds that most of the mini-programme features are associated with customised reward feedback (Figure 7). Of these different rewards, eight features provide users with sharing cards to support social activities. The mini-programme also offers seven functions for presenting Dunhuang religious murals, painted sculptures and cave architecture, thus supporting users’ knowledge acquisition. In addition, there are two functions related to business services that meet the users’ shopping needs, two functions that enable users to obtain special Dunhuang identities, and one function that provides users with entertainment. Therefore, the study finds that most of the users’ acquisitions have social value and knowledge value, and a small number show business and entertainment value. Regardless of the values users gain, they are no longer based on the colonial history of Dunhuang, but on the representation of its murals, painted sculptures and grotto architecture. This discovery demonstrates that the mini-programme has created a culturally rich image of the digital Dunhuang, one that is opposed to the Dunhuang image as a site of loss in Chinese public discourse.

Moreover, this study finds that the emphasis of the Dunhuang E-Tour on Dunhuang culture reflects the relevance of cultural and creative industries with the policy of cultural confidence. My walkthrough analysis covered all the features of the Dunhuang E-Tour. The results show that the mini-programme has seventeen functions that meet users’ motivation for cultural enjoyment, two functions that fulfil users’ purpose of religious belief, and one function that satisfies their aim of mental relaxation. The study finds that the mini-programme, as a digital product that aims to showcase religious heritage, does not actually support users’ religious practices as its primary function; rather, it focuses on the representation of religious culture. This finding is consistent with Liang and Wang’s study of Dunhuang cultural products, as they found that, in today’s China, Dunhuang culture is an important aspect of cultural heritage that is used to establish Chinese cultural identity (Liang and Wang 2022). With the development of digital technology, Dunhuang’s religious heritage has become an important part of cultural expression in China. Although the direct reason for the launch of the Dunhuang E-Tour, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, was to solve the problem that Chinese tourists cannot travel to Dunhuang because of the COVID-19 pandemic (Li and Chen 2022), the analysis shows that the mini-programme responds positively to the social context in which China has built cultural confidence in recent years, as most of its functions are culturally oriented.

Although China’s cultural and creative industries have undergone a shift from politically driven industries to more market-oriented industries (Wang 2018; O’Connor and Xin 2006) and culture is no longer the focus of an open ideological struggle as it was during the Cultural Revolution (Tong and Hung 2012), my analysis of digital Dunhuang demonstrates that the ideology continues to play a crucial role in cultural development in the last decade. The analytical results reveal that cultural ideology has a potential impact on cultural and creative industries. While the original intention of the Dunhuang E-Tour was not to alter the colonial historical image of Dunhuang, the mini-programme’s functions reduce users’ attention to Dunhuang colonial history and expand their attention to Dunhuang’s culture and art. This functional layout, which emphasises artistic and cultural content, aligns with the aim of the national policy of cultural confidence advocated by the Communist Party of China. The contrast between the digital image of Dunhuang and the image of Dunhuang in Chinese public discourse reflects China’s cultural dynamics in recent years. Specifically, the pessimistic mentality influenced by colonialism is counterbalanced by enthusiasm for digital cultural development. Although the Dunhuang E-Tour is a small example of China’s cultural and creative industries, the shift in Chinese mentality reflected by the difference in Dunhuang’s images partly demonstrates that the goal of cultural confidence has been achieved.

6. Conclusions

The present study makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the digital Dunhuang by supplying valuable insights into its image. Employing an analytical framework that combines the walkthrough method and religious tourist perspectives, this study shows how the diverse functions of the Dunhuang E-Tour meet users’ common religious tourist motivations of religious belief, cultural enjoyment and mental relaxation. The analysis reveals that all users are expected to derive rewards and value from the mini-programme, indicating a strong sense of gain that contrasts with the public discourse’s narrative of Dunhuang’s loss. This opposition is also reflected in the differences between the digital image of Dunhuang and the image in the public discourse. Unlike the latter, which emphasises Dunhuang’s colonial past, the Dunhuang E-Tour does not emphasise the loss of Dunhuang’s artefacts; instead, it primarily offers a variety of cultural enjoyment functions. Thus, the mini-programme constructs a culturally rich image of the digital Dunhuang, in contrast to the image of Dunhuang as a site of loss in Chinese public discourse. While this research contributes to the current gap regarding the digital Dunhuang, it has limitations. My analytical framework makes my research scope difficult to conduct a more individualised investigation of the user’s experience. Future research should delve deeper into the differences among the users’ experiences of the digital Dunhuang to enhance our understanding of it.