Preserving China’s past in digital form

3PointD linked to this article from CRIEnglish.com about several projects under way to digitially recreate a number of China’s endangered or destroyed cultural resources. Among the projects are stuctures at Wudang Mountain, Yuxu Palace, and a number of sites in the Three Gorges area, where the filling of the huge reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam will submerge thousands of important archaeological and cultural sites. While recreating archaeological features and historic and prehistoric structures digitally is certainly not new, numerous sites in China are in danger or have already been destroyed by looting, development, neglect, and natural disasters, and little is ever known about them, so at least some of these important cultural sites will be preserved virtually.