Case Details

Background: Telling a Coherent Story of a Thousand-Year-Old Porcelain Industry Through Its Scattered Sites

On July 25, 2026, the “Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites” were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. This porcelain-themed World Heritage site comprises five component areas—the Town Area Porcelain Production Center, the Hutian Ancient Kiln Site, the Gaoling Porcelain Clay Mining Site, the Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site, and the Jiaotan Firewood Production Area—encompassing 15 constituent elements and 45 individual heritage points.

The successful inscription has attracted more attention to Jingdezhen and raised the bar for heritage interpretation: when visitors arrive on-site, how can they grasp the relationships among relics, raw materials, craftsmanship, guilds, and transport networks, rather than just remembering a single kiln or a porcelain piece?

These remains span urban districts, kiln sites, mining areas, and fuel production zones, covering a long timeline and vast geographical area. Buried remains, production relations, technological processes, and land-water transport networks together form a handicraft-based porcelain industrial system that endured for a millennium—yet these interconnections are difficult to grasp from the current site conditions or interpretive signs alone.

The core challenge for the project was to reorganize the dispersed heritage points into a walkable, coherent narrative that helps visitors navigate the sites and clarifies where raw materials came from, how porcelain was produced, how fuel was supplied, and how finished goods entered trade networks.

To this end, “Digital Jingdezhen” was developed as a unified portal for the mini-program, connecting maps, spatial positioning, AR content, and public participation while minimizing on-site intervention.

Solution: Bridging Sites, Content, and Visits with Spatial Computing

Digital content was organized around the five component areas mentioned above, so that production, raw materials, energy, transport, and trade are no longer seen in isolation.

In the town center, AR content links the Imperial Kiln Factory, kiln houses, workshops, shops, trade guilds, and land-water transport routes. At Hutian, Gaoling, and Changling, digital reconstructions clarify the relationships among kiln remains, raw material extraction, washing, processing, and transport. At Jiaotan, the drifting, damming, lifting, and loading of firewood round out the energy side of the porcelain-making story.

With the “Digital Jingdezhen” mini-program on their phones, visitors can access reconstructions at 67 AR points, each one tied to the physical site in front of them. Technical details—like how a kiln house operated, how clay and stone were prepared, and how artisans and merchants worked side by side—come to life as a story walks with them through the site.

Throughout the experience, the sites themselves take center stage. AR never replaces the physical remains; instead, it brings back to life the spaces, people, and processes that are no longer visible today, helping visitors connect what they see around them to the larger story of porcelain-making.

More Than a Visit: From Planning to Sharing

“Digital Jingdezhen” is not merely an AR display tool; it organizes navigation, interpretation, interaction, recording, and sharing around a visitor’s complete journey, so that everything flows together as one cohesive experience.

A hand-drawn map marks heritage points and AR experience locations, with route planning to help visitors pace their visit. An on-site audio guide provides commentary along the way. Role-playing options let visitors step into the shoes of artisans, merchants, and other historical figures. The “Digital Heritage Guardian” feature encourages visitors to get involved by snapping photos and logging observations.

After the visit, an AR travel diary and cultural posters give visitors something to take away—a visual record of their journey that can be saved and shared, keeping the story alive long after they leave the site.

From pre-visit planning to on-site exploration to post-visit sharing, the mini-program keeps the entire experience seamless, with no tool-switching, no missing information, just a smooth journey from start to finish.

The Technical Backbone: Keeping AR Locked to the Site

Spanning multiple sites and mixing indoor with outdoor spaces, the heritage area requires AR content that stays precisely in place. Not only does it have to render kilns, artisans, and transport scenes convincingly, it also has to keep them properly aligned with the physical remains as visitors move around the site.

The EasyAR Mega spatial computing platform first builds a spatial map of the heritage sites, then uses the phone’s camera and sensors to recognize the visitor’s position and orientation, while VPS (Visual Positioning Service) continuously fine-tunes the virtual content. As a result, digital scenes shift naturally with the real-world perspective, rather than floating on the screen or detaching from their site locations.

The technology is equally reliable whether visitors are exploring narrow kiln houses and streets, or moving across mines, docks, and the open terrain between heritage zones. With a unified spatial map, new AR content can be added over time without extra effort, and visitors can access it all through a simple mini-program on their phones.

For visitors, the technology just fades into the background. All the heavy lifting—positioning, triggering content, routing—happens out of sight, leaving them free to take in the site and the thousand-year story of porcelain-making.

Value: Making Digital Heritage Work for the Long Term

The value of “Digital Jingdezhen” goes beyond a novel AR experience—it organizes heritage information, on-site space, and public services into a continuously updatable digital content system.

For the heritage site, all the key functions—site mapping, visitor navigation, AR interactions, and public engagement—can live on a single platform, making it easy to expand with new content, support routine monitoring, and enable educational outreach down the line. For visitors, the scattered sites come together as a more coherent and rewarding journey.

For Jingdezhen itself, this digital experience does more than highlight individual sites; it tells the story of the entire porcelain industry. Yet the impact doesn’t stop there; it travels further as visitors share their experiences online.

The project thus builds a bridge between site preservation, cultural interpretation, visitor services, and public communication, ensuring that digital investment serves not just a single visit but also becomes a long-term operational asset.

Key Insight: Technology Is Here to Help, Not to Steal the Show

For any cultural heritage digitization project, success comes down to three things: respecting the site and its history, helping people see connections they might otherwise miss, and building something that can last with minimal upkeep.

To achieve this, Sight+ harnesses EasyAR Mega spatial computing to weave positioning, content, and visitor flow into one seamless system—letting the technology work quietly behind the scenes while the site, the craft, and the people take the spotlight.

“Digital Jingdezhen” shows how digital tools can bring large-scale heritage to life. By staying true to the actual sites, drawing on solid research, and using stable spatial computing to connect with visitors, the project turns scattered remnants into a tangible, understandable, and engaging thousand-year story.

FAQ