The disappeared Chaoyangmen Gate recently came back to life at the Chaoyangmen metro station in Beijing, thanks to AR technology.

People only need to use an APP to see huge three-dimensional sketches of Beijing's nine old city gates including Chaoyangmen Gate, Xizhimen Gate and Andingmen Gate on the wall and the ground, awakened on their mobile phone screens.

The phone screens show both the architecture itself and the lives of people in olden times, with figures passing through the gates and pulling grain wagons. It's a modern way to experience ancient lives.

Pictures people can scan in the metro station. [Photo/Zhongguancun Science Park]

The magical technology was developed by the Institute of Deep Learning of Baidu -- an organization researching cutting-edge technologies.

According to a staffer at the institute, complicated steps are needed to show the 3D figures on mobile phones, which include learning the original figures of the architecture and the historical human activities and setting up codes to enable both computers and cameras to access points of information on the pictures.

AR technology is a new technology integrating real information with a virtual world and displaying through computers visual and audio information that is ordinarily hard to experience, such as the vivid human figures who have come back to life in Chaoyangmen station.

The AR version of Chaoyangmen Gate. [Photo/Zhongguancun Science Park]