Beijing: Let AI revive heritage, but not tell our stories

The Culture Forum took place in Beijing on 23 September 2026. One panel, titled "Cultural heritage and artistic creation," featured the Chinese writer A Lai, Tian Qinxin, director of the National Theatre of China, and Mark Handler, a lecturer at the Beijing Film Academy and dramatist. Artificial intelligence was not a separate item on the agenda. It ran through the entire discussion, as the question of machine creativity now shapes how the past is told.

"We do not need AI to tell our stories"

Handler built his remarks around the image of an ancestral family home. Such places hold a family's history, but today their members often live in different cities or countries. He imagined a program called "a garden of family memory" that would store archives, photographs, stories, and recollections, accessible to everyone regardless of location. He went further, proposing that models "bring to life" Confucius, Laozi, and Sun Zi, even setting them in debate so young audiences could grasp Chinese philosophy immersively. Yet he drew a clear line. As a writer, he argues that humans tell stories better than machines because they draw on real experience, while AI only repeats what it has gathered from people. In his view, models should organize and aggregate massive datasets and build complex structures. Video production, for instance, requires calculating every possible variant in advance, a task no human can manage. AI should supply the list of options; the screenwriter chooses what to tell. That is a division of labor, not a replacement.

Dunhuang on a 60-metre screen

Tian Qinxin proposed a different path, showing how digital tools enter the stage. The National Theatre of China, together with the Dunhuang Academy, prepared the musical "Call to Dunhuang." It recreated 45,000 square metres of paintings from the Thousand Buddha Grottoes in Dunhuang and more than 2,000 polychrome figures, an aesthetic output stretching from the 4th to the 14th century. In Beijing's "Ice Ribbon" skating arena, the team installed a 60-metre full-greyscale screen and additional high-resolution displays. They combined AI techniques with 2D animation, 3D effects, and live photography. On the same day, at a related investor event, companies at the intersection of technology and culture presented their solutions. Shanghai Jianwei Libao, founded in 2009 and focused on heritage protection, presented a shift from traditional restoration to preventive conservation supported by digital tools and AI. Its vice-president Liu Wenzhuo stressed that the company has worked exclusively on heritage for eighteen years. The Beijing debate points in two directions: models should take over technical work and scale, but not narrative. Where identity is at stake, the final word stays with people.