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

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