Shaanxi Digital Human Timeline

Shaanxi's engagement with digital human and immersive virtual character technology becomes traceable from May 2017, when Baidu, in partnership with Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum (秦始皇帝陵博物院), launched the Baidu AI Terracotta Warriors Restoration Project on International Museum Day at the museum site in Xi'an. Using augmented reality through the Baidu mobile application, visitors could scan trigger objects at Pit 2, the Kneeling Archer figurine, and the Bronze Chariots to view digitally color-restored three-dimensional renderings of the warrior figures as they appeared in their original painted state, while a simultaneously released twenty-billion-pixel ultra-high-definition digital museum went online as the first world heritage site exhibited at billion-pixel resolution, attracting sixty million online visitors within its first two days. That same September, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, working with Yetzer Studio and The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, opened an augmented reality exhibition in the United States that drew on three-dimensional scans of original Terracotta Warrior statues from the Shaanxi mausoleum, allowing American visitors to view reconstructed forms of eight original statues through a mobile AR application — an event held abroad but grounded in the digitization of Shaanxi's cultural heritage.

The next significant deployment arrived in July 2019, when Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum and Xi'an Keshikejue Network Technology Co. (西安可视可觉网络科技有限公司) formally opened the Terracotta Warriors VR Cinema (兵马俑VR影院) at the museum site, coinciding with the museum's fortieth anniversary. The immersive VR film was directed by Zhao Xiaodin, a cinematographer with experience on productions by Zhang Yimou, and the partnership underlying the project had begun in 2017; the cinema later received the WIPO Global Award for VR Cinema Solution for Cultural Heritage in 2023.

The province's transition toward purpose-built digital entertainment environments deepened in June 2021, when Da Ming Palace National Heritage Park (大明宫国家遗址公园) in Xi'an launched trial operations of its Palace Performances Cultural Digital Experience Center (宫里有戏·大明宫文化数字体验中心). The facility incorporated a 540-degree immersive holographic pilot theater, a 720-degree holographic main theater screening a film depicting Tang Dynasty court life, and a HOLO KIDS children's holographic theater running interactive virtual character shows, establishing one of Shaanxi's earliest purpose-built holographic entertainment venues.

Activity accelerated sharply through 2022. In April 2022, Shaanxi Cultural Investment Group (陕文投集团), Yongxingfang Cultural Industry Group, and Yuyue Culture (娱跃文化) opened "Chang'an Twelve Hours" (长安十二时辰) — China's first immersive Tang-style market street based on a television drama IP — at Xi'an Qujiang Mandi Plaza. The installation included AI smart dressing mirrors using face recognition to match visitors with Tang Dynasty costume styles in approximately two seconds, alongside VR experiences and digital interactive systems, and was subsequently recognized as one of China's first national Smart Tourism Immersive Experience New Space pilot projects by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Two months later, in June 2022, Xi'an Performing Arts Group (西安演艺集团), with the virtual character developed by Xi'an Future Shape Interactive Entertainment Co. (西安未来形状互动娱乐有限公司), unveiled Qin Xiaoya (秦筱雅) as China's first Qinqiang opera virtual digital human at the 9th China Qinqiang Opera Arts Festival in Xi'an. Designed as a young female "dan" role, Qin Xiaoya appeared in the festival's promotional music video "Chang'an Night" (长安夜) performing a fusion of Qinqiang and rock music alongside Shaanxi musician Wang Jianfang, and the technical ambition of the character was evident in the sculpting of her head ornaments alone, which required over seven hundred thousand polygon faces — compared to a typical thirty thousand for an entire character model.

In October 2022, Northwest University (西北大学) and Xi'an Xiangcheng Network Technology Co. (西安象呈网络科技有限公司) officially launched Shaanxi's first metaverse campus in a ceremony at the university's Chang'an Campus, held five days before the institution's one-hundred-and-twentieth anniversary. The platform, developed over approximately four months from a partnership initiated in April 2022, included three-dimensional virtual replicas of all three Northwest University campuses, virtual conference halls, a digital collectibles platform, and VR-based teaching and experiment spaces. The following month, in November 2022, the Xianyang High-tech Zone Management Committee (咸阳高新区管委会) released its Action Plan for Building a Metaverse Industry Pioneer Area, introducing the "China Screen Valley" (中国屏谷) branding concept and specifying digital humans, three-dimensional holographic visualization, and five application scenarios — covering government services, cultural tourism, urban management, innovation, and manufacturing — as development priorities, with a target of digital economy core industries reaching fifteen percent of GDP by 2025.

The year 2023 opened with two notable character launches in Xi'an. In January 2023, the Eighth Route Army Xi'an Office Memorial Hall (八路军西安办事处纪念馆), in collaboration with Shaanxi Xinkun Interactive Culture & Technology Co. (陕西新昆互动文化科技有限公司), deployed China's first Eighth Route Army virtual digital person at the memorial, drawing on 5G, VR, and cloud computing to provide guided tour narration, host dialogue sessions, and support livestream services through a self-developed virtual exhibition cloud system; the character was later expanded to an in-person interactive installation at the visitor center and applied to the virtual exhibition "The Great Woman: Helen Foster Snow in China." Also in January 2023, the Xi'an City Wall Management Committee (西安城墙管委会) released the original CG animation "Grand Tang Group — Fantastical Lantern Festival Night" (盛唐天团——奇幻上元夜) on Chinese New Year's Day, featuring the virtual digital character Tang Xiaofei (唐小妃), derived from the live performance "Dream of Chang'an" (梦长安——大唐迎宾盛礼) at the Xi'an City Wall, representing one of the earliest cases of a named digital character developed directly from a Shaanxi cultural tourism performance production.

In May 2023, the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau (陕西省文物局) officially unveiled four Heritage Virtual Recommenders (文物智慧推荐官) at the "Museum and Good Life" Cultural Night event held at Xi'an Museum. The four virtual digital figures — Zhou Zhili (周知礼), a courtly official representing the Zhou dynasty; Qin Weiwu (秦威武), a young general modeled after Terracotta Warrior figurines; Han Yingjun (汉英俊), a scholarly noble; and Tang Meili (唐美丽), a fashionable Tang dynasty woman drawn from female tomb figurines and murals — were designed for deployment across holographic displays, interactive screens, and museum education contexts. These characters returned to public view in November 2023 at the 7th Silk Road International Exposition in Xi'an, displayed within holographic capsule chambers to provide interactive heritage recommendations to visitors from across the Silk Road region.

July 2023 brought two concurrent developments of distinct character. In Xi'an's Chang'an District, the city government, in partnership with Xi'an University of Science and Technology and Xi'an Mingde Institute of Technology, formally launched Northwest China's first AI digital human livestreaming base, a nearly two-thousand-square-meter facility housing one hundred and ten AI digital human livestreamers dedicated to agricultural product e-commerce and rural revitalization, combining AIOT, metaverse, and digitalization technologies for urban-rural industry integration. That same month, Yeahmobi / EClickTech (易点天下, stock code 301171.SZ), an Xi'an-headquartered company that had listed on ChiNext in August 2022, globally launched KreadoAI, its AIGC digital marketing creation platform, offering modules covering AI digital humans, AI models, AI tools, and AI creative assets across more than one hundred virtual digital human styles, one hundred and forty languages, and four hundred voice tones; the platform's digital human video workflow reduced production time from approximately twelve hours to between six and eight minutes. Also in July 2023, Qin Xiaoya was featured in Xi'an's exhibition area at Hong Kong's celebration of the twenty-sixth anniversary of its return, where a spherical cinema screening introduced the Shaanxi cultural character to Hong Kong audiences — a promotional event held outside the province but centered on Shaanxi's virtual heritage figures.

In August 2023, the Xianyang High-tech Development Zone, working with Shaanxi Daqin Yuanshidai Digital Information Technology Co. (陕西大秦元时代数字信息技术有限公司), opened its Metaverse Digital Reception Hall (元宇宙数字会客厅), realizing a core element of the zone's November 2022 planning framework. The hall featured virtual digital service guide Gao Xiaoxin (高小新) displayed on naked-eye 3D LED screens to provide guided tours and zone development briefings within a facility comprising an immersive exhibition hall, a command and operations center, a smart computing center, and an interactive experience hall.

In February 2024, the three-dimensional virtual character Chen Xiaoxiang (沉小香), serving as digital human guardian of Huashan scenic area and developed by World You Tech / 4UTech (世优科技) of Beijing, was deployed in a large-scale Spring Festival campaign titled "Huashan New Year Recommender." The character appeared on Xi'an outdoor large screens, across more than three thousand city bus displays, and on metro electronic screens throughout the city, becoming a prominent fixture in the province's public transit advertising during the holiday period. That same month, CCTV broadcast its Spring Festival Gala Xi'an division segment "Mountain River Poem Chang'an" (山河诗长安) from Datang Everbright City (大唐不夜城) in partnership with ByteDance's Volcano Engine (字节跳动火山引擎): an animated rendition of the poet Li Bai, derived from the animated film "Chang'an 30,000 Miles," appeared atop the Big Wild Goose Pagoda through mobile phone augmented reality, interacting with live actor Zhang Ruoyun in what was described as the Spring Gala's first use of mobile phone AR in a physical outdoor setting.

In April 2024, the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism co-hosted the 2024 Digital Cultural Tourism Development Conference in Xi'an alongside Tencent Cloud (腾讯云), Huashan Tourism Group, and the Huashang Digital Cultural Tourism Research Institute. Tencent Cloud signed cooperation agreements with both Huashan Tourism Group and the research institute at the event, which also showcased Chen Xiaoxiang and formally established digital human applications as a provincial cultural tourism priority. In May 2024, the Qin-culture digital light and performing arts space "Qin Era Moonlight · Dream Return to Xianyang" (秦时明月·梦回咸阳) opened at the Xianyang Ancient Ferry Covered Bridge, launched by Xianyang Cultural Development & Investment Co. (咸阳市文化发展投资有限公司), China Youth Travel United Digital Marketing Co. (中青旅联科), and Xiao Zongxiong Wenlv (小棕熊文旅). The installation deployed seven themed immersive spaces using three-dimensional dynamic effects, 4K displays, AIGC technology, and real-time interactive tracking, along with China's first bridge-based mobile theater immersive performance incorporating a forty-meter naked-eye 3D visual sequence.

In July 2024, the world's first officially licensed immersive VR experience of Emperor Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum — "Terracotta Warriors: Secrets of the First Emperor's Mausoleum" — opened in a purpose-built facility adjacent to the actual mausoleum site in Xi'an. Jointly developed by Xi'an Hongwen / Shaanxi Cultural Investment Group, Wevr, and VIVE Arts (HTC), and licensed by Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, the forty-minute experience featured a one-to-one scale recreation of the underground palace validated through dozens of expert consultations over two years, with visitors using HTC VIVE Focus Vision headsets guided by an AI archaeologist companion character across a journey spanning fifty years of archaeological discovery. In October 2024, a related digital Terracotta Warriors exhibition opened at the Chinese Ethnic Culture Exhibition Center in Beijing, featuring VR immersive experiences of the warriors' discovery and restoration — bringing Shaanxi's heritage to audiences outside the province through digital technology. The following month, in November 2024, the same VR experience debuted internationally at Lansdowne Centre in Richmond, Metro Vancouver, co-presented by Shaanxi Cultural Investment Group and Wevr together with VIVE Arts and Broadway Magic Wonders, becoming the first Terracotta Warriors VR experience to be presented outside China.

In January 2025, Datang Everbright City, jointly with iFlytek (科大讯飞) and Tongcheng Travel (同程旅行), officially launched AI virtual human Tang Xiaobao (唐小宝) as the venue's cultural tourism ambassador during the Spring Festival period. Built on iFlytek's Spark cognitive large model and integrated into a digital culture-commerce-tourism WeChat mini-program, Tang Xiaobao offered interactive Tang Dynasty-themed tour guidance, responded to historical and dining queries, and enabled thirteen AR interactive digital content experiences along the street — including segments themed around "Dragon & Phoenix Dance," "Goose Tower Poetry," and "God of Wealth Blessings" — within a business model combining AI virtual human interaction, AR digital touring, and scenic area privilege cards. Later in January 2025, on Chinese New Year's Day, Shaanxi TV (陕西卫视) broadcast the 2025 Silk Road Spring Gala (丝路春晚), in which China's most prominent virtual singer Luo Tianyi (洛天依) performed the opening song-and-dance number "Mountain Dancing Silver Snake" (山舞银蛇) alongside live artists using a combination of holographic and virtual reality technologies for a virtual-real fusion performance; the same broadcast incorporated Terracotta Warrior digital animations and multiple acts employing AIGC, XR, and motion-capture technology.

In February 2025, the Shaanxi Provincial Culture and Tourism Department (陕西省文化和旅游厅), in conjunction with Shaanxi Cultural Investment Cloud Innovation Technology (陕文投云创科技), launched a range of AI innovation products for the province's cultural tourism sector, including digital human guide navigation, intelligent customer service, and AI travel photography with costume-change functions; the Xi'an City Wall scenic area deployed an AI intelligent customer service system with interactive features during the Spring Festival lantern festival, and Shaanxi's intelligent tourism product recommendation project was selected for the National Data Bureau's second batch of key demonstration scenarios. Also in February 2025, Xi'an Chanba Cross-border E-commerce Industrial Park (西安浐灞跨境电商产业园) reported on outcomes from its deployment of AI digital human livestreaming for cross-border commerce operations, with participating enterprises recording labor cost reductions of eighty percent and a four-hundred-percent increase in nighttime traffic utilization, and with digital human applications concentrated across language translation, product image generation, livestream hosting, marketing strategy, and product analysis for international trade.

In September 2025, the Shaanxi Province Science & Technology Association (陕西省科协) and the Shaanxi Provincial Science Popularization Education Center officially launched the AI science popularization digital human Qin Xiaopu (秦小普) at the 2025 National Science Popularization Month main venue event held at Northwest University in Xi'an. Operating through the "Cloud Science Shaanxi" (云上科普陕西) WeChat mini-program, Qin Xiaopu functioned as a generative AI digital human capable of interactive dialogue on agricultural technology, aerospace science, and historical humanities content, incorporating daily science check-in features and a science co-creation community; at the launch ceremony, the Shaanxi Science Association signed collaborative agreements with the Chinese Botany Society, Northwest University, AVIC Automation, and Shaanxi Zhihu. That same month, Xi'an hosted the World Internet Conference Cultural Heritage Digitalization Forum — the first World Internet Conference event fully dedicated to cultural heritage digitalization — drawing approximately eight hundred guests from more than fifty countries and nine international organizations, and publishing a case collection featuring forty selected examples from over two hundred submissions across more than twenty countries. Xi'an Beilin Museum (西安碑林博物馆) demonstrated its "AI Stone Revival" project at the forum, enabling visitors to scan stone monuments and trigger holographic imagery, as part of a wider exhibition covering ancient books, cultural relics, ancient architecture, and intangible cultural heritage from participants in China, the United States, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Kenya, and elsewhere.

In October 2025, the Shaanxi Provincial Culture and Tourism Department channeled thirty-nine million yuan in provincial tourism development funds into forty-two digital culture-tourism projects, representing a year-on-year increase of twenty-three percent in project count and ten-point-seven percent in funding. Among the deployments supported was the "Silk Road Spiritual Realm" (丝路灵境) XR immersive space at Datang West Market, developed by Shaanxi Lingjing Tuopu Digital Technology Co. (陕西灵境拓朴数字科技有限公司), which featured digital human interaction experiences themed around "Qin Dynasty Awakening," "Secret of Qin Mausoleum," and "Tang Palace Banquet" and received nearly one thousand visitors daily during the National Day holiday period.

[Mar 2026]