Cultural life

Forbidden City comes alive online

By Zhou Zhou and Mou Xu from Xinhua (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-27 10:13

"It's wonderful. I could see much clearer this way than pressing my face onto the glass surrounding the exhibits," said Chen, a near-sighted college sophomore from Jiangsu Province who declined to give his full name. "This is what a museum should be."

The Forbidden City was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1987 by UNESCO with the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.

Despite more than eight million visitors annually, knowledge of its architecture and antique collections have been largely unknown to the public. Many visitors come to the palace only to boast that they have been in the emperor's bedroom.

"That's why we are committed to digital technology. It could make learning more attractive," said Hu.

Three-dimensional tours

About 200,000 users have registered in the museum's "Virtual Forbidden City" online travel community or "Beyond Time and Space", a project which kicked off last October jointly with IBM.

A click of the mouse, and the Chinese cultural beginner can take a three-dimensional tour of the 725,000-sq-m museum.

However, despite many initial registrations, the number of users online is leveling off.

Yang Shuo, a 25-year-old user of the website, said: "It really attracted me at first. But the content is limited. A digital tour takes only 15 minutes. You have few things to do if you log in twice."

Other users complain that the site is slow in general, and in changing scenes during the 3-D tour.

Guo Weide, manager of corporate citizenship and cooperate affairs for IBM Greater China Group, said: "We hope to make further developments together with the museum."

IBM produced a similar online museum, "Eternal Egypt," based on Egypt's pyramids.

"I'm sure the new website could make up for its shortcomings," said Hu. "And after all, the digital technology is a supplementary tool that attracts and helps people to understand."

It is "a great pity" that so many valuable artifacts are unknown to the world, and the new website should help change that, Hu said.