By Ji Beibei

Visitors to the Palace Museum who wish to see the painting, 'Life along the Bian River at the Pure Brightness Festival', may be disappointed as the original work is often barred from public display and under protection as heritage.

Thanks to technology, visitors can now get a glimpse of it. Even though the original painting is out of bounds for visitors, the museum has created a computerized version that presents the picture with audio recordings of the context.

The museum believes the computerization may be extended to other art pieces.

The over 800-year-old painting depicts people engaged in activities ranging from playing string instruments to paying taxes, illustrating the lifestyle of the Northern Song Dynasty (AD 960–1127).

The protection of the masterpiece in the Palace Museum is not easy and its condition is worsening with time.

"Even opening the case in which the painting is kept can damage the painting. Accord-ing to the museum's regulation, the work needs to be stored for two years every time after it is exhibited for 15 days," said Hu Chui, director of the Digital Information Department of the museum. "The piece will vanish even with the best protection measures, and to us, this would be a price too high."

The museum has developed an audio-visual system jointly with Microsoft Research Asia and Peking University to enable visitors to see an electronic version of the national treasure. The application, open to the public since April and free of charge, shows high-resolution images of paintings with hundreds of voice dubbings and background sounds.

An employee with the museum, Li Qiong, said experts have made up 700 conversations based on historical material. One conversation is about two men discussing how to stop robbers from stealing wine for soldiers.

The touch screen helps visitors listen to the conversations or get enlarged views of certain parts of the paintings.

"Moving focus is a challenge to us in the development of the system," said Xu Yingqing from Microsoft Research Asia. "We offered an experimental demo for other works that might be saved similarly."