Tourists visit a temple on Mount Wutai in Shanxi province. ZHU XINGXIN/CHINA DAILY

　　At the foot of Mount Wutai, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site that has served as a center of Chinese Buddhism for nearly two millennia, the ancient and the virtual are converging.

　　Inside a newly opened immersive experience hall, visitors don extended reality (XR) headsets to accomplish in 20 minutes what would normally take days of grueling physical travel. Through high-precision 3D modeling, users fly through seasonal seas of clouds, inspect the intricate timber joints of ancient temples, and virtually scale the sacred mountain's five distinct peaks.

　　The facility, which opened in April, is the brainchild of 40-year-old Xing Wei, a native of Yingfang village at the base of the mountain. Last year, Xing and fellow villagers Liu Yong and Guo Lijun pooled their capital to launch a tech startup aimed at digitizing local tourism. Partnering with a Shanghai-based virtual reality firm, their team spent seven months trekking through the rugged terrain to collect spatial data and film the mountain's major architectural relics.

　　"Instead of just looking at a static facade, visitors can now interact with the landscape," Xing said. The timing has proved lucrative: Mount Wutai drew a record 7.27 million tourists in 2025, a 5.22 percent increase year-on-year. So far, more than 10,000 visitors have paid to experience the XR simulation.

　　For many travelers, the digital experience functions as an interactive primer before they face the physical mountain. Wang Yanlin, a 54-year-old visitor from Tianjin, used the XR hall to study the layout of the temples before beginning his uphill climb.