As a humanities student, I joined Tsinghua University's iDunhuang Practice Team to explore a question that had long interested me: How can technology help preserve cultural heritage and support the study of ancient texts?
That question became tangible inside the department of manuscripts of the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris, where chief curator Laurent Hericher carefully unrolled silk and paper folios from Dunhuang before our team.
Standing inches away from manuscripts dating from the 4th to the 10th centuries, I saw brush calligraphy, hand-drawn Buddhist illustrations and marginal annotations left by monks, traders and pilgrims along the ancient Silk Road.
"The hopes, joys and sorrows of people from that distant era resonate deeply with ours as well," said Zheng Shangwen, 20, a senior majoring in electronic engineering. "In this fleeting moment when we gaze upon them, a dialogue across a thousand years unfolds."
The visit was part of a journey from July 13 to 23 by the iDunhuang Practice Team of Tsinghua University's department of electronic engineering.
The 27-member team, which included students from different majors, traveled to the United Kingdom and France to explore how Dunhuang cultural relics are preserved overseas and the role of digital humanities in the age of artificial intelligence.
At the British Library, we met Anastasia Pineschi, project manager of the International Dunhuang Programme (IDP), and Georgia Dack, its website content editor, who develops IDP's learning resources.
They explained how IDP, launched in 1994, combines cataloging with high-resolution images, interactive databases and multilingual resources to improve access to Dunhuang and Silk Road materials held in collections around the world. IDP also produces free learning resources for people of all ages, using object-focused digital learning to deepen understanding of the history and cultures of the Eastern Silk Road.
These digital resources also allow related materials to be studied together even when the original objects are held in different countries.
Since I already use AI extensively in my academic work, I was especially interested in how it might extend the capabilities of established tools such as optical character recognition. This led us to discuss its potential to improve digitization and make digital archives easier to use, while also considering the challenges that come with introducing new technologies into heritage research.
When our journey later took us to the BnF, another aspect of preservation came into focus: the care of the physical objects themselves.
At the library, Hericher guided us through the folios, explaining how the documents had been conserved, cataloged and protected over the years. He also noted that because the manuscripts are fragile, the library must balance strict conservation requirements with controlled access for researchers.
It showed us that making cultural materials accessible involves more than putting them on display: every examination of an original must be weighed against the risk of further damage.
Our discussion then turned to how digitization can help ease that tension. High-resolution imaging can record faint strokes, tears and pigment marks and enable close study while reducing repeated handling of the fragile originals. This demonstrated how digital access and physical conservation can reinforce each other.
For many of my teammates, the two visits created an unexpected connection between their technical studies and the humanities. While they usually spend their days working with circuit diagrams, algorithms and digital simulation platforms, across both libraries, technologies such as digital imaging, data storage and AI-assisted reconstruction took on a clear cultural purpose.
The trip did not provide a simple answer to whether AI will transform digital humanities. Instead, it showed me that technology is one part of a larger process involving conservation, cataloging, research and international cooperation.
For me, AI, image processing and digital archives were no longer simply academic concepts, but tools shaping how cultural materials are preserved, studied and shared.
Written by Li Jinyuan, a sophomore at Tsinghua University's Rixin College, majoring in foreign languages and literatures.
