Forbidden City Opens Its Doors—to Virtual Eunuchs

It's now possible to visit one of Beijing's premier tourist sights without having to worry about bad air quality or hard-to-get visas, Reuters reports. A new computer game allows users to experience the Qing emperor's Forbidden City complex as member of his court, embodying any character from soldier to eunuch—delicately renamed "imperial servant."

The game imposes some rules of physics and decorum—no running or flying allowed—but it lets users do plenty of things that they couldn't in reality. "You wouldn't have been able to just wander around like this," explains one curator of the real Palace Museum. Avatars can watch the emperor eat dinner and hang out with the courtesans. (More China stories.)