A Peking Opera performer clad in embroidered armor raises her spear as gongs reverberate throughout a studio in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province. There is no traditional stage or theater audience, only a green screen and a ring of specialized cameras capturing each movement.
Later, through a virtual reality headset, the same scene unfolds again. But this time, the viewer appears to be standing inside the performance rather than watching from afar.
The project was created by FXG, a VR production company based in Hangzhou.
"We're capturing reality and allowing it to be entered again," says Nikk Mitchell, FXG's founder and CEO. "The goal is to take what's meaningful and valuable about the world and make it accessible in an immersive form."
For Mitchell, who was born in Kenya and raised in Canada, much value lies in traditional Chinese culture. His curiosity about martial arts films, tea rituals and ancient history motivated him to visit China for the first time when he was 18.
"I found infinite stories in China's traditional culture, which is a treasure trove to me," says Mitchell, who has lived in China for nearly two decades.
While paper-cutting and Dunhuang murals offer rich creative possibilities, it was Peking Opera that left him with the deepest impression.
"I never had an interest in Peking Opera before I came to China, but I was fascinated by it when I experienced the sounds, movements and costumes firsthand," he says.
However, he recognized that for those unfamiliar with it, the intricate art form may feel inaccessible. He sought to overcome this challenge with VR technology.
In 2012, a VR short film, though technically rudimentary by today's standards, revealed to him a new way of storytelling: not observation, but presence.
"Photos and videos may fail to capture its essence. I knew the technology would change the way we experience art," says Mitchell.
In 2017, he cofounded FXG in Hangzhou, drawn by the city's deep cultural heritage and technological dynamism. His company focuses on the research and development of immersive technologies and content production. "It is really meaningful to capture stage plays with VR so that anyone in the world can experience them," he says.
Mitchell believes that his work resonates with a broader trend in China and aligns with a national policy direction.
"Younger audiences are rediscovering traditional arts with great cultural confidence, and institutions are exploring digital formats," he says.
The Communist Party of China Central Committee's recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) stress the need to integrate culture and technology further, to empower cultural development with digital and intelligent technologies, and to shift to an IT-based development model, while fostering new forms of cultural business.
"I feel almost destined to be in this place," Mitchell says, while citing the recommendations.
He even adopted the Chinese name Li Wenlong, in which wen signifies culture and knowledge, while he chose long, meaning dragon, because he was born in the Year of the Dragon.
"I dream that one day, a kid in rural China or a student in Paris can put on a headset and stand in front of a master performer without any time or space limits," Mitchell says."It's such an exciting vision of the future, where anything beautiful and meaningful that humanity has created can be preserved."
