An exhibition focusing on the Khara-Khoto ruins opened at the Alight Room Lafayette Culture Space in Shanghai on July 18, offering visitors a rare look at the rich, mixed cultures of the ancient Heishui City (known in Mongolian as Khara-Khoto) dating back hundreds of years.
The ancient desert city was once an important military and trading post on the Silk Road. Now buried in the deserts of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, the city flourished during the Xixia (1038-1227) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasties. Archaeologists rediscovered its ruins in the early 20th century.
The show features more than 100 rare treasures, including manuscripts, Buddhist thangka paintings recovered from Khara-Khoto, and stone carvings from the Western Xia royal tombs.
To bring history to life, the exhibition uses advanced technology. It includes a full-scale replica of the Yulin Cave No 29, re-created with digital precision. Yulin Cave in Guazhou county, Gansu province, is a significant site of Buddhist art and architecture.
Using high-definition 4K scans of the actual ruins, the exhibition has created a detailed digital sand table of Khara-Khoto. Through projected images, visitors can look down on the ancient city from above and imagine it as it once was — bustling with merchants and soldiers in its streets.
The exhibition also uses a 180-degree immersive dome, cinema-level lighting effects, and surround sound. This transforms the hall into an actual Gobi Desert and Silk Road landscape, making a thousand years of history feel real.
There is also a special cultural and creative experience space. Through immersive displays and carefully designed exhibits, this area vividly brings to life the bustling trade and lively street scenes of the ancient border town. It creates a highly immersive nomadic lifestyle scene, allowing visitors to feel as if they have stepped into a real-world setting from centuries ago.
The show's organizers also offer a wealth of educational programs and interpretive resources to help visitors truly understand and experience Khara-Khoto. In addition to guided tours of the exhibition hall, they will systematically launch public lectures, hands-on workshops, and other offline activities.
The exhibition runs until Oct 8.
