PRESERVING ARCHITECTURE

    Qi Xin, technician of the team, admitted this is a difficult task.

    "Unlike ordinary museums, the wood construction of the building is the exhibit itself. The preservation is as important as the exhibition," Qi said.

    From April until now, visitors have been able to use electric touch screens to look at details of ancient works of calligraphy and paintings in the imperial collections in the Hall of Martial Valor in the southwestern part of the palace.

    On the screens, beside each exhibit, visitors can easily find information about the exhibit in detail and zoom in on high-definition pictures, large enough to discern even tiny strokes.

    "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.