Taiyuan city, the capital of North China's Shanxi province with numerous cultural relics, has been exploring the value of those relics and boosting their protection through technology and other means. 

Reproduced Buddha statues are on display in a museum in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, on Dec 4, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]

Harnessing tech to protect cultural relics

The Tianlong Mountain Grottoes Museum in Taiyuan city has been cooperating with the University of Chicago and Taiyuan University of Technology on a digital project on the grottoes since 2013. It has been collecting three-dimensional data of more than 100 statues scattered across nine countries and completing the digital restoration for 11 major caves by means of 3D scanning and 3D printing technology.

With the help of modern technology, a exhibition about the restored Tianlong Mountain Grottoes was unveiled in France in July 2019, the first of its kind in the world.

The museum plans to use more technologies, including 3D technology and virtual reality interactive technology, in the preservation and restoration of the grottoes, said Yu Haoyan,curator of the museum.

This is one example of how Taiyuan has taken advantage of technology to protect its local cultural relics. In future, the city will also establish a cultural relics information management platform integrating protection, supervision and service functions -- based on 5G, big data and artificial intelligence technologies -- as well as build digital museums. These will showcase the works and exhibits of local museums and the cultural relics protection departments, according to local officials.