HANGZHOU - About 2,000 kilometers from the Yungang Grottoes, a 1,500-year-old UNESCO World Heritage site in Shanxi province, a small army of 3-D printers has been working around the clock to save a cultural heritage from oblivion.

Over the past five months, the 20 machines, housed at a workshop in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, have been cranking out full-size replicas of three of the grottoes' Buddha statues. Faithful copies will soon be displayed in the eastern coastal city of Qingdao.

The grottoes contain more than 51,000 statues. But the original works, which were carved into soft stone, will gradually disappear as erosion runs its inexorable course.