Digital technologies are fundamentally reshaping how museums across China connect with their audiences. Whether physical doors are open or closed, visitors can now explore high-definition artifacts and participate in virtual archaeological excavations and restoration work.
This October, the Palace Museum announced a major expansion of its Digital Collection Library, adding high-resolution images of 50,000 artifacts to its online database. The platform now features more than 150,000 items, enabling users to study and appreciate China's cultural treasures at any time.
In north China's Shanxi Province, the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, the tallest and oldest wooden multi-story structure in the world, faces challenges from centuries of accumulated damage. The ancient landmark continues to tilt slightly each year. To address this, Lenovo Group partnered with Tsinghua University's School of Architecture in 2023 to launch the "Smart Yingxian Wooden Pagoda" project and unveiled China's first cultural heritage preservation solution based on spatial computing and artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) in April 2024.
The initiative has produced a digital twin of the pagoda, meticulously reconstructing its complete structure layer by layer. This virtual replica incorporates the pagoda's historical evolution, recreating pivotal moments that allow the tower to transcend time and come alive in the digital world.
In northwest China's Gansu Province, a digital platform called the "Digital Library Cave" was jointly launched by the Dunhuang Academy and Tencent under guidance from the National Cultural Heritage Administration in 2023, featuring a virtual duplication of the Library Cave of the Mogao Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Dunhuang city.
The platform employs high-definition digital scanning, physics-based rendering, dynamic global illumination, and cloud gaming to vividly reconstruct the Library Cave and its collection of more than 60,000 precious manuscripts. In September 2023, the project won a "Stars of Outstanding" title at the 2023 Global Awards for World Heritage Education Innovative Cases by UNESCO.
In April 2024, the "Digital Library Cave" became available in both English and French, enabling European users to explore it virtually and gain deeper insights into China's cultural heritage.
Emerging technologies are also opening new possibilities for artifact preservation, archaeological discovery, and visitor engagement.
On Oct. 29, the world's first oracle bone script AI agent was jointly launched by Anyang Normal University, Tencent and the AI research institute of Xiamen University in Anyang city, central China's Henan Province. Users simply upload an oracle bone image, and the AI agent identifies characters, provides interpretations, traces references, and generates digital rubbings.
The three-year collaboration around "AI plus oracle bone script" has yielded breakthrough technologies, standardized outcomes, and online tools, said Dai Qionghai, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, president of the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, and dean of the School of Information Science and Technology at Tsinghua University.
These advances not only enhance research efficiency for scholars studying oracle bone scripts, but also provide replicable pathways for document preservation, digitalization, and public participation.
At the Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, the Three Gorges Culture Digital Cinema was launched last year as an open digital platform dedicated to showcasing Three Gorges culture and promoting Yangtze River civilization. Through virtual reality (VR) and other technologies, the platform enables visitors to immerse themselves in the culture of the Three Gorges.
Digital methods provide advantages that physical visits cannot match. They offer finer details, deeper immersion, and access at any time, because in the digital realm, museums never close.
