Across China: Technologies aid efforts to raise public awareness of cultural relic restoration

A cultural relic preservation base in southwest China has sparked great curiosity among people about its highly sophisticated restoration efforts with the use of virtual reality (VR) technologies.

Visitors flocked to the Three Gorges Cultural Relics Science and Technology Preservation Base, located in Chongqing Municipality after the preservation base introduced the technologies to its exhibition hall.

They can savor an immersive experience with VR, augmented reality (AR) and other emerging technologies available at the exhibition hall.

For example, visitors wearing VR glasses can experience the magical process of the restoration of "Guqin," a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument in the virtual world from the first perspective of cultural relic repair technicians.

They can first diagnose the broken Guqin and identify its causes of damage. With the help of text and voice prompts in the virtual scene, visitors can switch between different tools to complete the steps of cleaning, strengthening, polishing, painting and setting strings. Finally, the broken Guqin was repaired.

The base also opened its restoration rooms to the public.

Through a glass window, people can get a closer look at how experts in white coats are using a variety of tools to restore the cultural relics, making damaged calligraphy works, paintings and bronze utensils shine again.

"Such an approach to the restoration works will gain more public attention. We also plan to carry out targeted research activities on cultural heritage conservation for young people," said Li Min, a staff member of the base.

For Liu Liya, a 40-year-old visitor from Chongqing's Nan'an District, this was the first time to see cultural relic restoration works so closely.

"I was astounded by the superb restoration techniques," Liu said, adding that she had never seen such restoration efforts before.

The municipality carried out a conservation initiative for cultural relics in the Three Gorges Reservoir area from 1997 to 2010, discovering 130,000 sets of cultural relics.

"The base will meet the needs of the subsequent conservation and restoration of cultural relics unearthed in the area and improve the infrastructure conditions for restoration in Chongqing," Li said.

In the future, the preservation base will plan more exhibitions to disseminate relevant information pertaining to cultural relics protection and highlight its importance and necessity, he added.