During the 2025 National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, the land of China was filled with vitality and energy. Urban and rural economies flourished with renewed vigor, while the luminous influence of technology gracefully integrated into cultural tourism scenes, creating a new cultural landscape that is "perceptible, tangible, and participatory."

The melodious sounds of ancient bronze bells resonated with hand gestures, tri-colored flying horses "leaped" from display cases into visitors' palms, and golden dragons soared through virtual landscapes. The "Western Museum Treasures" premium cultural artifact digital art interactive experience project, utilizing digital field technology, made its debut at the Xi'an Museum during the holiday period.

In the VR experience zone of the Qin and Han Dynasty Hall at the Shaanxi History Museum, visitors donning headsets felt as though they had traveled through time to "step into a painting." Enhanced by 12K ultra-high-definition light and shadow effects, the Tang Dynasty tomb murals including "Polo Game," "Hunting Expedition," and "Foreign Envoys" brought the bustling markets and magnificent courts of Tang Dynasty Chang'an vividly to life.

"It felt like traveling through time, experiencing the splendor of the Tang Dynasty firsthand," said Ms. Xin, a post-2000 visitor.

Such immersive experiences are blossoming nationwide. The "Smart Tourism Innovation Development Action Plan" jointly issued by five departments, including the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, explicitly encourages and supports cultural museums, archaeological site parks, and tourist attractions to utilize Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Extended Reality (XR), and Mixed Reality (MR) technologies and equipment to build new smart tourism immersive experience spaces, fostering new consumption scenarios for culture and tourism.

During this holiday period, visitors to the Zhejiang Provincial Museum's Zhijiang Campus experienced a temporal journey "spanning 10,000 years of Zhejiang history." Wearing AR glasses, 10,000-year-old carbonized rice grains came back to life, and the water conservancy system of the ancient Liangzhu city operated clearly before their eyes. This was the museum's newly launched Rokid AR glasses intelligent guide service, which integrates cutting-edge technologies such as spatial recognition and SLAM positioning, achieving precise overlay of virtual scenes with physical exhibition halls.

This technological solution is provided by a tech company and has been implemented in over 200 domestic cultural museums and scenic areas, including the Capital Museum and Shanghai Museum.

With the help of technology, not only can "sleeping" artifacts be "awakened" and historical scenes brought to "life," but natural landscapes and cultural landmarks can also be deeply empowered, transforming "static viewing" into "immersive interaction."

Chongqing Wushan's "Three Gorges Light" uses cliff faces as screens, with lasers and holographic projections narrating the legend of the goddess, turning the night river scene into "readable art." At Guangdong Chaozhou's Guangji Bridge nighttime intangible cultural heritage show, lights outline the ancient bridge's silhouette while Chaozhou music and kung fu tea aromas interweave, transforming the thousand-year-old bridge into a living, experiential space. At Shanghai Xuhui Waterfront West Bank Dream Center, light and music transform the century-old cement factory's "concrete warehouse" into a "cyber architecture."

Guangdong Zhuhai Chimelong Ocean Kingdom launched a signature light show, presenting visitors with a visual feast - over 600 drones formed various patterns depicting penguins, whale sharks, and other rare marine animals, combined with brilliant lighting projections and red-themed program creation, plus Zhuhai's technological specialty unmanned boats creating 360-degree surrounding firework effects.

While technology makes landscapes more "captivating," it also makes tourism management increasingly "intelligent." Popular scenic spots nationwide continue to explore and apply smart management methods to enhance visitor satisfaction.

Lijiang Old Town's "Smart Town" is promoting the coordinated development of smart tourism and cultural protection through advanced network infrastructure, command centers, and intelligent applications. During the bustling holiday period in the ancient town, the "smart brain" monitors pedestrian flow in various streets and alleys in real-time, predicts congestion points in advance, and uses intelligent broadcasting to suggest route adjustments for visitors in specific areas to avoid crowds. Guide robots busy themselves serving as "tour guides" for visitors, while 5G drones patrol from above, adding a sense of security to the lively atmosphere.

Currently, technology is empowering cultural tourism from multiple dimensions, giving "poetry and distant places" richer expressions while providing cultural heritage with more vibrant carriers. "Technology is no longer an 'elective course' on the path of cultural-tourism integration, but a 'required course' driving high-quality industrial development," said Li Mingchong, Executive Director of the Guangzhou Cultural Industry Research Center at the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences. The core of this cultural tourism "smart" transformation has always been making technology serve culture and serve people, so that it can have both a dazzling "appearance" and profound "substance," continuously bringing better cultural tourism experiences to the public.