The progress of digital technology has taken cultural property preservation and restoration to a new stage, with even search engine giant Google engaged in the digital reconstruction of ancient Rome. To help develop TELDAP, the Cultural Thought Historical Research Office, IHP, Academia Sinica, invited Professor Wang Caiqiang of the National University of Singapore to give a talk titled “Capital recreated -the digital reconstruction of Tang Dynasty Chang'an and its Li-Fang system” in which he introduced various possibilities for cultural property research and preservation.

   Professor Wang has been engaged in the digital reconstruction of Tang Dynasty Chang’an since 1995. He used the

following materials as reference for the reconstruction of Tang Dynasty Chang’an:

(1)   Historical documents

(2)   Old maps, for example, the Northern Song “Map of Chang’an” by Lu Da-fang

(3)   Travel journals：Chang’an played an extremely important role in east-west trade at the time and a number of Islamic travelers visited the city and left a record.

(4)   Tang poetry and literature

(5)   Material unearthed by archeologists, for example the Dunhuang Murals and Prince Yide's Tomb Murals and the results of archeological digging in present day Xi’an.

(6)   Foreign architecture of the same period and historical materials: Buildings in neighboring countries whose layout and planning copied that of Chang’an buildings, for example, in Japan’s Fujiwara-kyō and Nagaoka-kyo, and related architectural material ( Engi shiki).

(7)   Surviving buildings: the Buddhist buildings of Wutaishan, for example.

Reconstruction drawings of Chang’an li-fang (blocks) and a gate displayed by Prof. Wang Caiqiang