Shedding light on ancient history

Before the sun slips behind the mountains, no one quite knows how the Hanging Temple will appear after dark.

For nearly 1,500 years, the monastery has clung to a sheer cliff face in northern China's Shanxi province, suspended between rock and sky. It appears almost frozen in time, but at night it waits for light to awaken it again.

"I'd seen so many photos and videos of it on social media," says Joe Burns, a British travel vlogger visiting the temple for the first time. "But in reality, it's much smaller than I imagined."

Perched more than 60 meters above the valley floor on the cliffs of Hengshan Mountain near Datong, the Hanging Temple is one of China's oldest and best-preserved cliffside wooden structures. From a distance, its red timber columns and yellow, glazed roof tiles resemble a finely crafted wooden box tucked into the mountain.

The temple occupies just 472 square meters. Some corridors are so narrow that only one person can pass at a time. On one side stand statues representing China's three major philosophical and religious traditions — Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. On the other is open air. Visitors inch carefully along the walkways, gripping the railings as they search for an answer to a question almost everyone asks upon arrival: How can a temple seemingly float in midair?

"People's first reaction is always the same," says Yang Jianlin, director of the nighttime multimedia production Why Hanging Temple Endures. "Why was it built here? What was the purpose?"

His work, staged against the cliffs surrounding the temple, attempts to answer a mystery that has endured for more than a millennium.

The projection spans more than 37,000 sq m of cliff face and recently received Guinness World Records recognition as the world's largest cliff projection show. Since tickets went on sale in late May, every performance has sold out, drawing more than 2,000 visitors each evening.

Yang grew up in Shanxi, not far from the temple. After more than a decade working in live tourism performances, he says one unlikely source of inspiration for the show was Black Myth: Wukong, the blockbuster Chinese video game that introduced many international audiences to Shanxi's ancient architecture.

"It made me realize these buildings shouldn't only be places people visit," he says. "They can become immersive experiences where people step directly into history."

But transforming one of China's most treasured ancient monuments into a stage for a large-scale light show has also raised questions.