An era has an era of culture, the past cultural forms, are sculpture, painting, poetry, now film and television, games... Standing with the envoys, maiko, musicians, painters, poets, and people who spread the culture of Huxuan dance a thousand years ago, generations of researchers and relayers stood together.
Wen | XuYan
Edited | Mulberry Willow
Teachers
For days, Kuishi was worried about a round carpet. Size, pattern, style, color, she can't make up her mind, with 8 years of experience in original painting design, she found herself unable to write. At the beginning of this year, she began to work on the drawing of this blanket, which is not large, and the design is displayed on her mobile phone, but it is the size of a thumb. However, whether it was a thumb or a small thumb, she was very embarrassed.
Above the carpet is a dancer dressed in hakama, standing barefoot on the carpet, turning sharply like the wind. Whether the dancer's feet landed on the ground with her left or right feet, and her heels or the center of her feet were down, Kuishi retreated when she dropped her pen.
In all these years, this is the work she has spent the longest time, and it is also the work that makes her most cautious, nervous and unconvinced. The round carpet is called the dance feast, and the spinning dancers are the Western Huxuan Maiko, all of which are from the past and are part of history. She knew she couldn't make a mistake in something sophisticated.
The person who pressured her was Zhu Xiaofeng, a scholar at the Dunhuang Research Institute, whose professional direction was Dunhuang Music and Dance, and Hu Xuan Dance was one of his research areas. Kuishi originally drew the round carpet very large, Zhu Xiaofeng said, should be smaller, so as to show the maiko's dance skills, rotating between square inches, and his feet will not leave the blanket.
Solved the problem of blanket size, Kuishi also had a lot of questions. For example, the dance steps, she found the Hu Xuan dance expert of the Beijing Dance Academy, asked how the Hu Xuan dance steps should rise and fall, how to rotate, the heel has been on the ground, will it be unstable? In 2021, she almost threw herself into the HuXuan dancers, running around the online world, looking for the most authoritative Huxuan dance experts across the country. In the past, there was more written records about the Hu Whirling Dance, and people imagined its enthusiasm, imagined its rhythm and high-speed rotation, which was dazzling, but how to turn these historical and written things into concrete pictures, Kuishi felt, this is a work that needs to be careful everywhere.
On September 29, the work that took Kuishi and the team for more than half a year was released, and the new skin of Dunhuang of the glory hero Sable Cicada met Hu Xuan. The cicada was bare-chested, dressed in stone-green and lapis lazuli, with a sly ornament, its streamers wrapped around its instruments, and spun in circles on the carpet. This hero skin, in terms of color, pattern, clothing, accessories, musical instruments and background, has been creatively derived and designed after referring to the elements of Dunhuang murals, which is beautiful and god-like.
Meet the Hu Xuan skin poster
This isn't the first time Kuishi, the original designer of Glory of Kings 2D, has designed hero skins related to Dunhuang culture, but she feels that this time there are some differences. In the past year, she has had frequent conversations with the Dunhuang scholar Zhu Xiaofeng, discussing the size and pattern of small round carpets, the instruments and postures of maiko, sometimes the topic extends from Huxuan dance to Tang Dynasty culture, and sometimes back to those details that can be almost infinitely deepened, whether the small drum next to the mink cicada is a chicken Lou or a Tara drum, how the color of the chest is, and what parts of a pavilion that are difficult to notice but related to the scene at that time... As long as she couldn't understand something, she would ask Zhu Xiaofeng.
Zhu Xiaofeng replied very carefully. In front of Kuishi, he is a truly authoritative Dunhuang expert, but he will still repeatedly confirm every detail, and where he is not sure, he will slowly turn over the book, consult the information, and reply little by little. Zhu Xiaofeng said that he was happy to tell this little girl something, and I was willing to teach such an open-minded student. And the more I tell her, the more dungeon she might make.
A kind of teacher-student friendship grew, they were not strictly master-apprentice, but they all sensed that there was a relay and transmission happening. A young game skin designer and a Dunhuang scholar who has been living in the Mogao Caves for many years have been connected by the Huxuan dance of a thousand years ago.
Chengdu and Dunhuang are nearly 2,000 kilometers apart, at 6 p.m., the tourists of the Mogao Caves south of the institute disperse, leaving only the silent uninhabited caves, and at this time the nightlife of the southwest city has just begun, which are two different spaces, but in the WeChat dialog box, Kuishi and Zhu Xiaofeng have a third space, which belongs to Dunhuang, belongs to the Mogao Grottoes, and belongs to the Huxuan Dance. Through this design, they hope to lead more people from west to east into a story from a thousand years ago.
See you again
The Hu Whirling Dance is one of the most mysterious stories of Dunhuang.
According to the mainstream view of scholars, Hu Xuan dance originated in the Western Regions of Kangguo, and arrived in Chang'an via the Silk Road as the delegation entered the Tang Dynasty. At first, only the royal family could appreciate it, and later in the Shangyuan Lantern Festival, it was performed in the folk public performances, and gradually became popular. At that time, the dance in the Central Plains was known for its soothing and beautiful, and the rhythm of the bright and powerful Huxuan dance must have made people feel new and interesting, it was lively and represented a healthy vitality. Bai Juyi once wrote a poem about Hu Xuan Dance, Hu Xuan Nu, out of Kangju, futile east to Wanli. It is said that yang guifei and An Lushan were once favored by Tang Xuanzong for their good at dancing huxuan dance. Later, the painters brought it into Dunhuang through the Hexi Corridor, and they integrated it into their imaginations, painting the grand music and dance scenes of the Shangyuan Festival and the splendid and strange gestures of the Huxuan Dance on the Dunhuang murals.
Hu Xuan dance has experienced cultural exchanges from west to east, top down and again from east to west, which is an element that cannot be ignored in the music and dance of the Tang Dynasty. But for a long time, the HuXuan Dance was not well known until the frescoes on the ground floor of Cave 220 were discovered. Cave 220 of Dunhuang Mogao Caves was built in the early Tang Dynasty, and was rebuilt to varying degrees in the Middle Tang, Late Tang, Five Dynasties, Song (or Western Xia) and Qing Dynasties, and in 1944, after Dunhuang researchers peeled off the fallen murals, a magnificent mural on the ground floor of the Early Tang Dynasty was revealed. Among them, the two groups of maiko in the North Wall's "Medicine Master's Transformation" were identified by scholars as Hu Xuan Dance, and since then, hu Xuan Dance has reappeared.
Dunhuang Mogao Caves Cave 220 Cave North Wall Lower Part of the "Medicine Master Sutra Transformation Painting" Hu Xuan Dance part
Not only the HuXuan Dance, but also cave 220 represents a high level of mural painting in the history of Dunhuang art. Here, the music images of the Mogao Grottoes and even the Dunhuang murals show prosperity. People who have been to the Mogao Grottoes say that seeing cave 220 is like seeing Chang'an City under the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty.
Entering the cave along the Yongdao Road, the Buddha statue in the Shrine, the Manjushri Bodhisattva riding a green lion on the mural, the Bodhisattva sitting on the railing, the gods wearing the crown of the Zodiac, the asuras with three sides and six arms, and the grand and jubilant music and dance scenes together build the grandeur of the 220 caves. At the same time, every place of writing has a delicate emotional connection -
From the Huxuan dance into the Kangguo, and then trace the origin of the Kangguo, it will be found that it is one of the Sogdian city-states located in Central Asia. The Sogdians took advantage of the key places in Asia and Europe to move between east and west. Some Sogdians slowly integrated into the Han nationality and remained in the Central Plains, often taking their homeland as their surname, Kang, An, Cao, Shi, Mi, He and so on. Cave 220 of Mogao Caves is also known as Zhai Jia Cave because it was excavated, fed and maintained by the Zhai family of dunhuang Wang. One theory is that the Zhai clan came from the Sogdian kingdom, and the leader of the clan, Zhai Tong, once went to Chang'an as an official, and returned to Dunhuang to preside over the construction of 220 caves, leaving the grand scenery of Chang'an in the caves.
Standing in Cave 220, the present and history, East and West, are all connected, which is also the spirit of Dunhuang, tolerance, integration, connection is no longer an illusory concept, but the embodiment of specific scenes and emotions.
However, due to the lack of literature, to this day, scholars have not been able to fully understand the history of the HuXuan Dance. That kind of wild and flexible Western culture attracts some people to devote themselves to exploring the origin and circulation of Hu Xuan Dance.
This is how Gansu and politician Zhu Xiaofeng was attracted. He studied music, entered the history major, and finally embarked on the road of Dunhuang. Even if the whole of China turns over and over again, it is difficult to find someone who takes such a path. Because of the particularity of his profession, he stayed here to study Dunhuang music and dance. He found that the dunhuang literature is so dense and vast that as long as he can study Dunhuang in depth, he can re-approach the sound of the Tang Dynasty and see the splendid music and dance culture of ancient China.
There was no leadership talk, and there was no tragic complex of sticking to the desert, he said, everything was very ordinary and natural, as if eating three meals a day, and stayed here. Of course, there is another reason, he also joked that even his wife is looking for a research institute, where else can I go?
Real life is lonely, the research institute is called the mountain by everyone, and going to Dunhuang city to buy things is called going down the mountain. Mogao Grottoes is just south of the institute, a few steps to reach, after a walk they will also go to the cave area, encounter outsiders are also tourists.
A friend asked Zhu Xiaofeng why he should stay in a place with such a harsh natural environment, and why he would not return to the provincial capital Of lanzhou, where he could have a richer income and a better living environment. Zhu Xiaofeng couldn't say why, but he knew that it wasn't dunhuang himself that chose dunhuang, but dunhuang that chose him.
To him, the sound of Dunhuang ancient music was the most fascinating, it was the sound of the Tang Dynasty that had been blown by the wind and sand of a thousand years. His work often requires the restoration of history through professional and rigorous means, and he will also think, is that the voice heard by the ancients? Standing in the Mogao Grottoes, he truly realized his own smallness, and it was this smallness that drove him to find some problems.
Staying, the daily work is to decrypt, to inherit and carry forward the Dunhuang culture. For example, find out what's going on with the Whirling Dance? He said that there are still many unsolved mysteries in the world's research on HuXuan dance, and more specific dance styles, accompaniments, and musical instruments have not yet been completely solved. The HuXuan dance is the most anticipated and fascinating of all the Dunhuang dances, it is too important and too mysterious.
Zhu Xiaofeng in Cave 220
He did research and wrote papers, but gradually a confusion arose: these expressions were always confined to a small group of people. It is difficult for people outside of Dunhuang Studies to see his writings and understand what the real Dunhuang music and dance is like. How to make the boring Dunhuang studies known, accepted and loved by everyone is a problem he wants to solve. This is also the reason why Zhu Xiaofeng agreed to become the academic general counsel of the cooperation project between King Glory and Dunhuang. He said that he was a little selfish, and he could integrate some of the results of his exploration into and pass them on on a new platform in a unique way.
Scholars like Zhu Xiaofeng hope to let more people know Dunhuang and understand the real Dunhuang: under the label of flying sky, Dunhuang has extremely rich and unique content. Dunhuang is one of the few places where the four major civilization systems intersect, and it represents pluralism, openness and tolerance. This is also the reason why The Glory of the King chose Dunhuang and chose the 220 caves, the producer of the Glory of the King Li Min said that in the future, the King wants to become a truly mature cultural IP, how to deal with multicultural content, Dunhuang is the best reference on the planet.
Once Dunhuang gathered a variety of people, literati, painters, poets, craftsmen, people of different civilizations, different beliefs, different values can find their home here. This is also like the Continent of Kings, where heroes of different cultural backgrounds fight. So, what happens where civilizations gather? How should we carry forward the beauty of traditional culture and make traditional culture better enter the world of young people? Perhaps, the Huxuan Ball is a new entrance.
The grass and trees are Dunhuang
In fact, the Hu Xuan Dance project is the third cooperation between King Glory and Dunhuang Research Institute.
Back in early 2018, the King team began experimenting with making a flying skin for hero Yang Yuhuan, and Kuishi was one of the designers. It was a somewhat taken for granted beginning. The art team found some Dunhuang murals and flying shapes from the Internet, and according to the academic materials of the Dunhuang Research Institute to learn themselves, they have not yet seen the Mogao Grottoes, 5 models of flying skins are painted, for the first time, the team of dozens of people came to the research institute with works, of course, it was immediately rejected.
Looking back now, Kuishi feels that the design he made at that time was not Dunhuang Feitian, but a very ordinary dancer. All that can be presented is its skin, bone and soul, and they don't know where it went. She was very depressed, so she stayed in Dunhuang for a week, starting with the most basic pigment color matching.
When originally drawing the flying sky, the art team used a lot of blue and purple, which were choices based on the preferences of the game's users. Dunhuang researchers told the Wang team that these colors were not available in ancient times. Kuishi learned how to grind pigments, why these colors oxidize, and what characteristics they exhibit when they are oxidized. In those days, she either studied in the studio and Dunhuang researchers, or walked in the Mogao Grottoes, and every time she went to a cave, her aesthetic would be baptized by history again. After visiting the last cave, Steve, head of the King of The Art team, said, "Let's go back and redraw it."
In 2020, The Glory of kings and Dunhuang opened a 2.0 cooperation, combining the hero Yao with the image of the dunhuang shenlu nine-colored deer to create the skin of the encountered shenlu. It's an attempt from a skin to a character.
In 2021, after the skin and characters, Glory of Kings tries to tell the story behind it all, a true Dunhuang story. Over the past four years, the team has deepened their understanding of Dunhuang, which has also led to their thinking about what the game can carry and how to make a more permanent connection with culture. Front-line designers like Kuishi have also made it clear that they don't want to do homogeneous content anymore.
As head of the art team, Steve takes a broader view of the issue. He believes that games are new media with more interactive forms than books, music, film and television, which can truly interact with users, and because of this, users will have more and deeper understanding of the content it carries. Whether it is Dunhuang or other cultural and creative content, we hope to use games as a new media or art form and expression to better reflect traditional Chinese culture and content.
This change can be seen in the state of cooperation between the two sides. Initially, the Dunhuang Research Institute was more of a supervisor. The king team can feel that the research institute is very serious, but the participation is small, like the middle school teacher grading homework, handing in a copy is not OK, the red circle is drawn, the fight is red and redoed, and there is little communication between teachers and students. Gradually, the institute is no longer just a teacher who changes assignments, scholars will participate in discussions and put forward ideas in the early stages, and later will discuss with game planners how to make the heroes' skills more fluent and present more exquisite dance postures.
This is the process of establishing trust, and it is also the process of collision and run-in between traditional academic research institutions and Internet companies.
For Dunhuang scholars, the first thing that is not suitable is the culture of meetings. In mid-2018, the format of online meetings is still far away for most people, especially units such as the Dunhuang Research Institute. The first time I held a meeting with Tencent, Zhu Xiaofeng was stunned, how to make a phone call is a meeting? The meeting I understand is face-to-face communication, you look at me, I look at you, we all breathe the air in the same area, this is the meeting.
There is also the language system of the Internet manufacturer. Zhu Xiaofeng said that in the past, he did not know what the words meant when the pipeline classmates followed up on Raqi, but he had learned them all since dealing with the young people of the game company. He also found that in a company, everyone would give themselves an English name, and it turned out that everyone was called Ma Huateng, not Ma Zong, but Pony.
Zhu Xiaofeng felt that everything was fresh, and that completely different external atmosphere came to his face, and the people who did grotto research every day were also full of vitality.
He also tried to find ways to communicate with designers. Unlike the people of the Dunhuang Research Institute, the designers are immersed in the grottoes every day, have no professional background in music, and are not very sensitive to many details. Once, he talked to the designer about the scene of the music trick playing the lute, and no matter how the designer could not draw on my heart. He was on a business trip, anxiously did not know what to do, saw the belt bag on his body, a clever move, the belt bag broadband in his hand, one hand into a holding posture, with the mobile phone to take pictures, pass to each other. It worked!
At the beginning of the third cooperation, Zhu Xiaofeng told the Wang team to strive for this year's project - grass and trees are Dunhuang. Zhu Xiaofeng, who works in the cave area all year round, finds that tourists often show a thirst for professional knowledge, and they need a richer and more thorough interpretation of Dunhuang. But it is not easy for every grass and tree to have the shadow of Dunhuang. After all, the first cooperation is still stuck in the relatively simple aesthetic grafting, and the third time can all be planted and planted?
Zhu Xiaofeng tried to do it with such standards, and the art team polished the details of the skin little by little. He talked with the art team about the flowers and birds in the murals, even the tail of the bird called the tail feather, and whether the costume was horizontal, oblique or shoulder-length. He liked one of the bells in the Dunhuang murals, and this time he asked the art team if they could put the bells on the costumes of the cicadas. There is also the round carpet that has entangled Kuishi for a long time, and the color Zhu Xiaofeng on it suggests using a Persian bead pattern. For a long time, when mentioning Dunhuang, the public will still think of Buddhism and think of flying, and Zhu Xiaofeng feels that it is time to break this impression and present some different Dunhuang as much as possible.
Encounter the reference to the shape of hakama in Hu Xuan's skin
But there are also parts that are not easy to achieve. Zhu Xiaofeng, like most people, has his own understanding of Hu Xuan dance. In the game, how the mink cicada rotates on the small round carpet, he has expectations. It wasn't until May 2021 that he saw on the computer of the designer of Tianmei Studios how a skin changed from 2D to 3D and how it moved, and he found that a lot of his imagination was only presented in the game for a second, and the technology could not be refined to such an extent.
In the past, he would always tell the king team that the rotation should be smoother, the beams on the murals should be reflected, and even the trees, the sky and the buildings should have different angles and stops, but now he does not say it. In addition to emphasizing the accuracy of the Dunhuang elements, he felt that he also began to understand the glory of the king. There will always be some solidified ideas, feeling that people do technology, there is no need to understand their things, the case should follow my routine. But he gradually realized that this is a co-creation project, how to balance both sides? The glory of the king is the carrier, Dunhuang culture is the core content, only by blending with each other and exploring each other, they will make works that can be more seen by people.
Stand together
It's hard for people to see.
For the Dunhuang Research Institute, entering the new generation, getting close to the public, and allowing Dunhuang culture to be passed on is what they have always wanted to do. In the past, Dunhuang culture still belonged to the narrative of the elite circle, which was far away from the aesthetic and entertainment preferences of ordinary people and the public. How to make a product that allows public users to quickly accept it while maintaining its historical accuracy is a problem that the king and Dunhuang have been discussing together for several years.
Specific to the encounter with Hu Xuan's skin, the most interesting discussion is about the fat and thin of the mink cicada.
Meet the prototype of Hu Xuan, the Hu Xuan dancer on the north wall of Cave 220 of mogao Caves, her posture is plump and elegant, which is also in line with the aesthetic trend of the Tang Dynasty at that time. However, this skin is worn by the hero Sable Cicada on the Continent of Kings, in this alternate world, the Sable Cicada is a tall and beautiful maiko, whether to consider the user experience of the game, or based on history to make the Sable Cicada a little fuller, they have gone through several rounds of discussion.
At first, Zhu Xiaofeng thought it was better to be fat, but later after the evaluation of the art team, it was still not too fat, after all, this is still a game character, and the service object is first of all the player. Zhu Xiaofeng also gradually realized that this work is not his research, but a game, and only in line with the setting of the carrier can the users on the carrier see Dunhuang.
In addition to the fat and thin of the characters, the color of the costumes they have also pondered for a long time. Today, the Dunhuang murals we see in the Mogao Grottoes are the colors that have deteriorated after thousands of years, some have been oxidized, some have been worn, in fact, the original color of the murals should be more vivid and more magnificent than now. But for the public, the color of Dunhuang after deterioration is what they look like in their hearts, and it is easier to be accepted. In the end, Zhu Xiaofeng and the art team decided to choose to paint the skin with the colors of Dunhuang that modern people see.
Dunhuang murals have gone through the colors of thousands of years later
Find a balance between professionalism and the public, archaeology and entertainment, use a most appropriate and appropriate way of telling, and at the same time, how the king and the research institute grasp their own measure as a derivative of Dunhuang culture is reflected in every detail of meeting Hu Xuan.
The king team gave Hu Xuan a piece of Dunhuang-themed music. Zhu Xiaofeng, a music major, provided an extremely rigorous research result - Dunhuang's ancient music score. After the production, the audio team felt that there was no problem with the ancient score, but it was too high and low, too far away from the audience. In order to solve this problem, Zhu Xiaofeng selected five musical scores from the ancient music scores, found the core backbone tones in the melody, and then re-produced the music according to these backbone rhythms.
Zhu Xiaofeng believes that the aesthetics of modern people have changed with time, and even if we return to the Tang Dynasty again, we may not be able to accept the music of a thousand years ago. Traditional, professional to retain, but also need to use modern technology to get close to the public.
Steve also mentioned this new relationship, having worked in the game industry for many years, and looking back a decade ago, he felt that few companies were willing to spend a year or two making a game skin. In recent years, everyone has begun to pay attention to the cultural bearer behind the game, willing to spend more time to understand the culture and think about the relationship between the game and culture. This is a good seed. He said that in 2018, Steve went to Dunhuang for the first time, and what he felt most deeply was that the land of Dunhuang has been doing the same thing for a thousand years - the iteration and inheritance of culture and art, which is very similar to his current work, leading the team to complete one skin iteration after another, artistic inheritance.
From another point of view, this is also the problem that the king needs to face head-on - how to make a real Chinese game? Producer Li Min talked about Japanese games such as Mario and the legend of Zelda, and none of them used the image of the Japanese, but players could feel the core of the Japanese nation. He believes that this has inspired domestic game companies, in addition to the traditional cultural symbol surface things, but also need to tell the chinese core of the game story.
Encountering Dunhuang projects such as Hu Xuan is such an attempt, packaging the most beautiful inner essence of Dunhuang culture into entertainment products that users appreciate, and pushing what can only be seen in documentaries in the past to the public. Not a presence on top, but a very real connection between people and cultures. These are the switches that can touch the user's mental core.
ULA gave an example of a game show she went abroad a few years ago, and the French company Ubisoft shared a three-dimensional game about the history of Europe. The core team spent three years and invited the top botanists, zoologists, and climatologists to become regular members of the game's development team. There's a mountain in that game, and users climb to different elevations, and the game shows different vegetation, temperatures, and weather, all of which match a real mountain in Europe.
She was shocked, when the technology was strong enough, when the makers had enough reverence for culture, and the game was able to transmit the core values of a country, a civilization. Just like meeting the flying sky, meeting the sacred deer, and meeting the appearance of Hu Xuan, it is a step-by-step attempt of the glory of the king, telling the thinking and cognition of Chinese in the game, about good and evil, about life and death, about culture.
In the process, they also feel a kind of support, and they are not alone.
In 2021, the wang team and Zhu Xiaofeng talked about the dunhuang music heritage, Zhu Xiaofeng sighed, he has done dunhuang music research for many years, there are monographs and papers, but they all stay at the level of literature, in his words, those are hypnotic books. He was eager to find a way to tell the story of Dunhuang to ordinary people, but the wang team used technology to turn those ancient musical scores into listenable music, he said, which in itself is the contribution of Dunhuang cultural heritage, and perhaps in a few decades, a hundred years, the king is a memory point in dunhuang cultural heritage.
Because of Zhu Xiaofeng's words, the team members at that time suddenly realized that they had also become part of the long river of history. An era has an era of culture, the past cultural forms, are sculpture, painting, poetry, now film and television, games... Standing with the envoys, maiko, musicians, painters, poets, and people who spread the culture of Huxuan dance a thousand years ago, generations of researchers and relayers stood together.
A grain of sand, a moment
In June 2021, three months before meeting Hu Xuan's skin, the King team once again went to Dunhuang for a field trip. On the first night of arriving in Dunhuang, they went to see the large-scale sitcom "See Dunhuang Again". In one scene, the Dunhuang murals have gone through dynasties that have disappeared one by one over time, buried deep under the mud and sand. Some people ask, how long is a thousand years? The person in the play answered, but for a moment. As soon as spring goes, as soon as winter comes, a thousand years have passed. After this, the theme song "A Moment" sung by Huang Qishan sounded, a moment, in a split second. A dream, a dream for a thousand years. In the blink of an eye, just in the blink of an eye. The dream has awakened, but a thousand years have passed.
This is also one of the scenes that impressed the king team the most. In the Mogao Caves and Yulin Grottoes, they saw the statues and colors that were still intact, but more of them were the appearance of the Dunhuang murals after they changed color and were damaged, and in a thousand years, everything dissipated. The concept of a moment was also integrated into the skin of Hu Xuan, under the bright lights, the golden sand around the cicada drifted, and her nepotism gradually faded with the dance, symbolizing the erosion of time and time, Dunhuang could not escape the fate of disappearing after all.
The sharply turning cicada is surrounded by golden sands that symbolize the disappearance
Nothing can be done again. Every time the cave is opened and air flows in, the mural takes damage again. This is an urgent problem to be solved by the Dunhuang Research Institute, how to protect Dunhuang to the greatest extent? Inheriting the culture of Dunhuang?
This is also one of the reasons why they chose the glory of the king, passing on Dunhuang through the current popular form. In recent years, digital protection is one of the most urgent issues in Dunhuang, the institute has restored several of the most important caves through technology, and some details of the murals can be seen on the website of digital Dunhuang, even if people who have not been to the Mogao Grottoes can also feel the beauty of Dunhuang. On September 17, after 70 years, Dunhuang once again exhibited a group exhibition in the Forbidden City, exhibiting many Dunhuang murals and copying the three caves to the downstairs of the Noon Gate. They hope that more people will know Dunhuang, understand Dunhuang, and come to Dunhuang.
In 2018, Tencent and the Dunhuang Research Institute launched the Digital Donor Project to digitally protect and disseminate Dunhuang murals. In addition to Dunhuang culture, King Glory also produced the Yue opera "Liang Zhu", the Kunqu opera "Dream of Visiting the Garden", the skin design of Chongqing White Crane Liang, and cooperated with "National Treasure" to produce new cultural and creative projects, which is behind the king glory's belief in the inheritance of culture.
Cheng Wu, vice president of Tencent Group, once said that the two most critical points in the new cultural and creative projects of King glory and Dunhuang are one is the humility and reverence of traditional cultural symbols, and the other is the bold innovation based on this reverence to meet the emotional needs of the current people, especially young people.
Emotional needs, this is the deeper reason why the king's glory chose Dunhuang. In June, after visiting the Mogao Grottoes, producer Li Min said at an exchange meeting with the media that a game can eventually impress users and become part of the user's life emotions, and the most important thing is whether it can take care of reality, and Dunhuang is the best reference.
We appreciate Dunhuang as a form, because it is a real sense of civilization mutual borrowing, mutual influence, like a spiraling result, showing a better state. Games can give users a kind of emotional sustenance, but also hope to let them see a pluralistic world.
The diversity of Dunhuang and the diversity of kings blend here, and Li Min always believes that as long as a user discovers the culture behind a beautiful skin, he may be interested in it, will look for reasons, and even start to study it and become an expert. All beginnings begin with the most elementary emotional touch, resulting in progression over and over again.
The king team also needs to complete its own exploration, the exploration of the form and way of telling the work, the exploration of THE construction of IP, and the exploration of what kind of game can inherit Chinese culture and care for public emotions.
Spent more than half a year in-depth communication with the Dunhuang Research Institute to produce a hero skin. In the eyes of many people, this is not in line with the working mode and production speed of an Internet game company. When everyone ran forward, they chose to slow down.
In June, the team was impressed by a researcher at the Dunhuang Research Institute. It was a young girl with short hair, tinkering with frescoes in the cave. Repairing one mutilation after another in the dimly lit cave every day, she spoke slowly, but in a high tone. What shocked the King's team the most was that she said that she didn't know how long it would take to complete the restoration of the mural, nor how long it would take to repair the cave, and she didn't know when it would break again after repairing, but when it would go wrong again, we would just have to fix it again.
It was a job with no deadlines, but she was still happy. Several members of The Glory of Kings said that for the first time in front of the girl they deeply felt the significance of making and meeting Hu Xuan. Decades of time on an individual, or six years against a game, can seem very long. But if placed in a thousand-year dimension, it is a moment, a grain of sand. But there are still so many people who desperately want to be that grain of sand.
At this moment, as a game skin design team, they perceive their own smallness, and at the same time experience the happiness of fellow travelers. Even if they are only part of the road of Dunhuang's thousand-year cultural dissemination, a grain of insignificant sand, and a interpreter of contemporary culture, for them, it is also a wonderful and moving moment in this life.