Shan Jixiang, President of the Chinese Cultural Heritage Society and Director of the Academic Committee of the Palace Museum, delivered a keynote speech at the 2023 T-Edge Global Innovation Conference.
The Forbidden City, built in the 18th year of Yongle (1420), has been in existence for more than 600 years. The next magnificent 600 years of the Forbidden City must be inseparable from the undertaking of cutting-edge technologies such as digitalization.
At the 2023 T-Edge Global Innovation Conference held by Titanium ** Group on December 1-3, Shan Jixiang, President of the Chinese Cultural Heritage Society and Director of the Academic Committee of the Palace Museum, delivered a keynote speech, sharing his thoughts on how to make cultural heritage resources "come alive" in the digital era. 11 years ago, Shan Jixiang went to the Forbidden City to perform his duties. But after an in-depth understanding of the Forbidden City, as the gatekeeper of the Forbidden City, he found that the door of the Forbidden City was not good-looking.
Despite the size of the building, most of the area is not open;Although the collection is rich, 99% of it is locked in the storeroom, and less than 1% is on displayAlthough there are many audiences, they are all intently following the tour guide Xiaoqi forward, and the tour guide will not explain according to everyone's needs.
Every day when the tourists leave, Shan Jixiang feels very regretful. The Forbidden City has such a rich cultural heritage and resources, but it is likely that people will never come back after a visit.
So Shan Jixiang and his team started the environmental remediation work of the Forbidden City. At the same time, they also put the rich collection resources of the Palace Museum online, and operate and disseminate the culture of the Palace Museum on social platforms. Shan Jixiang's goal is to hand over the magnificent Forbidden City to the next 600 years.
At a time when cutting-edge technology continues to infiltrate cultural undertakings, the Forbidden City has also tried to open up some newer original content.
According to Shan Jixiang, the Duanmen Digital Museum of the Forbidden City is one of the best digital museums in the world, not only with advanced technology and advanced equipment, but also because all projects are original and condensed from digging into their own cultural resources.
There, we can talk to 1,200 ancient buildings, see the patterns of 1,500 large carpets that we have hidden in the depths, adjust a calligraphy to copy, and interact with the small animals in our paintings.
For example, with the use of VR technology, today we can "walk" into the temple of heart cultivation. If you want to wear an ancient costume, you can stand in front of a digital screen and wear a costume of the ancients;To learn to Xi weaving, you can use an electric shuttle to weave beautiful patterns throughout.
The most shocking thing is the virtual reality theater, where 7 VR films are looped**, and the audience can see some details that cannot be seen from the perspective of a normal visit to the Forbidden City, including some aerial shots of the Forbidden City.
I will tell you my own story, I came to work at the Palace Museum in 2012, and I know that it is the richest collection of Chinese cultural relics in the world, and it is also the most visited museum in the world, and there are many of the world's best.
After really walking in, as a gatekeeper, I knew that this door is really not good-looking, you said that the building is grand, most of the area is not open, you say that the collection is rich, 99% locked in the warehouse, less than 1% of the exhibition, you say that there are many audiences, and every day you see the audience is intently following the small flag of the tour guide. The tour guide will not explain according to everyone's needs, first according to a certain routine, a set of standard actions after pointing to the east of the two museums, the clock hall, the treasure hall, 50 minutes to gather in the imperial garden, the tour guide said that there is only 25 minutes, let's go out to eat, go to the Great Wall in the afternoon.
Every day people leave, I think it's a pity that people will not come back because of what such a rich cultural heritage and resources have contributed to people. We were determined to carry out a three-year environmental remediation, which should be said to be extremely arduous, and after three years of remediation, we achieved our goal.
We want to hand over the magnificent Forbidden City to the next 600 years. The Forbidden City was built in 1420 by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. In 2020, when it is going to be 600 years old, we hope that people will walk into the Palace Museum again, and there will only be ancient buildings, and there will not be any modern buildings that affect people to visit. We didn't break our promise, we did.
In 2014, the open area of the Palace Museum exceeded 50% to 52% for the first time, 65% in 2015, and 76% in 2016, with an annual growth rate of 10 percentage points, and by the end of 2018, the open area exceeded 80%.
Everyone has been to this place, Taihe Palace, in the past, people walked to the Taihe Hall and could only go forward after seeing it, the tall palace wide square, there is not a single tree, and some viewers have asked why there is no tree in the Forbidden City, I can only be embarrassed to say in the past, you go further north, and there is a place called the Imperial Garden that has a tree in the northernmost place. In fact, there is a door on both sides of the Taihe Palace, the west side is called the right wing door, and the east side is called the left wing door, but it has not been opened.
Today, we are renovating the environment on both sides and opening up the areas on both sides, so that people can step out of the right wing door and face the 18 300-year-old locust trees and the newly opened western area to the north. We opened the left wing door to face the Arrow Pavilion Square of horseback archery, along the Arrow Pavilion Square to the eastern area, at this time people suddenly realized, the original Taihe Hall on both sides of the one step away such a good ecological environment, the second time to the Forbidden City, the third time to the Forbidden City, people will not necessarily go forward, the west to see the exhibition, the east to see the exhibition area people scattered.
We know that no matter how many areas we open and more exhibitions are held, the number of visitors to the Forbidden City is a very small part of the global population, we want to expand publicity, we use Internet technology, we begin to increase the construction of the Forbidden City, we make the foreign language more powerful, friends from all over the world understand the culture of the Forbidden City through the Forbidden City, we make the youth more lively, and the children are online and hope that they will often visit here and listen to interesting stories.
We started holding online exhibitions, so people could see the exhibitions in the Forbidden City without leaving their homes. In 2016, we achieved a major breakthrough in the collection of 1,862,900 sets of cultural relics in the Forbidden City, each of which published information on the Internet, and we built three camera studios, and continuously used high-definition camera means to enter the collection and ancient buildings, so that people can see the panoramic view of the Forbidden City at home.
Today, we will increase the amount of Weibo dissemination, and we will add new content every day, telling you about architecture during the day, telling you stories at night, and there are many activities to participate in. Over the years, we have found that people especially like to watch and collect the beautiful ** of the Forbidden City, and every day a team takes beautiful ** in all corners and puts it on the Internet. After the first snow of the Forbidden City was released, the number of views reached 14.25 million at once, which had a great impact.
The second year there is no snow, we are in a hurry, the sky is endless, the red moon came, from 8 to 11 o'clock in the evening, I took a group of red moons** and put it on, and the next morning I saw 20 million readings. It snowed on the third day, and the number of reads exceeded 50 million, and since then, every year when it snows heavily and when it rains heavily, it is the most popular time on the Forbidden City's website.
We began to produce a series of apps, and now there are more than a dozen apps produced, each of which has won awards, **Give us a fair evaluation called, the Forbidden City production, must be a high-quality product, inspiring us to do better. "Han Xizai's Night Banquet" We have made this ancient painting three-dimensional, 220 knowledge points, you click in to read this painting in depth, historical and artistic can see the scene of the year, hear the ** of the year, and see the dance of the year.
Our most proud app is the Forbidden City every day, every morning people who like the Forbidden City culture can receive a set of ** and Mao Palace Museum collection information for free through their mobile phones, people who have a heart to collect 365 days a year, three years, more than 1,000 days, you can have a Palace Museum of your own palm, we do a good job every day, it has been more than nine years.
We have made the Forbidden City exhibition, and people can finally use their mobile phones to enter the Forbidden City exhibition hall to visit. In short, after three years and four months of hard work, we have built a digital Forbidden City community, which is one of the best digital platforms among museums in the world, because its functions are constantly extended, public education, cultural display, visit and guide, information dissemination, leisure and entertainment, social squares, academic exchanges, e-commerce, and keep pace with the times.
In the past few years, we have moved from resource data to data scenario, and from scene networking to today's network intelligence. Our Dong'anmen is a digital museum today, which is also one of the best digital museums in the world, not only advanced technology and advanced equipment, but also the key is that all projects are deeply excavated into their own cultural resources to condense the original, you can talk to 1,200 ancient buildings, you can see the patterns of 1,500 large carpets that we have hidden deeply, you can adjust a calligraphy to copy, and you can interact with the small animals in our paintings.
Many Song and Yuan Dynasty paintings and calligraphy in the Forbidden City's collection should not be exhibited for more than a month at a time, and it will take three years to go back to sleep after the exhibition. If you like utensils, you can click on the utensils you like in front of Duobao Pavilion, and you can zoom in, rotate from various angles, decompose them, and understand the process of making and using them.
You can also walk into the small space that cannot be opened, and the study of Emperor Qianlong is only 48 square meters, today you can walk into the palace of nourishing the heart in virtual reality, if you want to wear the clothes of the ancients, you can stand in front of the digital screen and wear a set of clothes of the ancients, you want to learn Xi weaving and embroidery, you can use an electric shuttle to weave the beautiful pattern completely. The most shocking thing is the virtual reality theater, where 7 VR films are looped**, telling you some details that you can't see from a normal visiting perspective, and some aerial aerial shots.
Beijing has a clear central axis, 78 kilometers from Yongding Gate to the Bell and Drum Tower, next year the central axis will be declared a world heritage. The largest building on the central axis is the former Forbidden City.
In order to help the Central Axis apply for World Heritage Status, the national radio and television department launched the online audio-visual program "Debut!".The director arranged for me to go to the subway station below Tiananmen Square at the beginning, and I was faced with a large magnetic plate painting, which was the landscape of the old city of Beijing, and the middle was a clear central axis.
This picture will be seen by the little girl and say, "Mom has a person who has disappeared." Her mother said, don't talk nonsense. In fact, I really disappeared, where did I fall, fell into the space-time booth, looked back and saw that there was a space-time train, the central axis was built to the present, any time node, on the car you can meet people related to the central axis of all dynasties, Emperor Yongle came up, Marco Polo came up, Mr. Lu Xun came up, and exchanged feelings about the central axis.
Central axis 78 kilometers on any node, you can get off the train and can do your job. Outside the car window, these scenery, scenery is constantly changing, after a while Mr. Lu Xun came up to tell us that there is a snack on the central axis called "three non-sticky", after doing well, do not stick the plate, do not stick the spoon, do not stick the teeth, Mr. Liang Shiqiu on the line, said that the roast duck on the central axis, not only the roast duck on the oven, but also the roast duck in the oven. Mr. Zhang Hatshui told us that there are two ways to eat barbecue on the central axis, one is to eat Wen and the other is to eat Wu.
We got off the bus and went to Yongding Gate to clean up the plaques, went to the Forbidden City to measure the ancient buildings, and then went to a breakfast shop in the Hutong to make breakfast for the people, went to the Beijing Hotel to learn to make a table of state banquets, and went to the Anhui Hall Theater to give our famous Peking Opera performance artist Hou Yu a dress-up, and it was difficult to complete the whole new image within 5 minutes.
To the sound in the alleys, the museum and the common people learn to Xi the cries of old Beijing, to the national flag class to learn to Xi raise and lower the national flag, through such film and television audio-visual programs, so that our central axis is alive and more closely linked with the real life of today's people.
In fact, the central axis of Beijing is a central axis full of fireworks, from Yongding Gate to the overpass, the 1500 meters on both sides of the past are sacrificial buildings, the Temple of Heaven in the east, the Xiannongtan in the west, leaving 3 million square meters of high-standard green space, it is the ecological environment, from the overpass to Zhengyangmen to the front door of the 1500 meters we all know, it is an active commodity economy of the gathering place.
In the past, the area from Zhengyangmen to the Forbidden City's Meridian Gate was a scene of China's political center, and the 1,500 meters from the Forbidden City's Meridian Gate to the North Gate of Jingshan were cultural, open museums and parks.
1500 meters from the north gate of Jingshan to the Drum Tower is Mr. Lao She said that the most people's area, the west is a large water park without walls, Shichahai, Xihai and Houhai, the east is the formation of the Hutong courtyard area since the Yuan Dynasty, the story of the central axis can be through our network audio-visual programs, through the interpretation of digital technology to make it better into people's real life.
We will help promote the central axis of Beijing and strive for success next year, thank you for this opportunity to participate in the conference today, thank you!
(This article was first published in the titanium **app).