Digital-physical integration driven by digital technologies has become a critical engine for the transformation and upgrading of cultural tourism in living ancient cities. As a living carrier of Chaoshan culture, Chaozhou Ancient City has built smart cultural-tourism platforms and digital infrastructure. Nevertheless, it is confronted with practical dilemmas including fragmented digital cultural resources, insufficient virtual-real experience supply, data silos, homogeneous business forms, and shortages of interdisciplinary talents. Taking Chaozhou Ancient City as the research subject, this paper sorts out its practice of digital-physical integration and analyzes existing problems. Optimization paths are proposed from five dimensions: constructing digital-cultural resource repositories, innovating virtual-real scenarios, coordinating data governance, upgrading business formats, and fostering local talents. This research aims to leverage digital technologies to empower heritage conservation, cultural communication, and industrial development, and provide practical references for the high-quality development of cultural tourism enabled by digital-physical integration among similar living historical ancient cities in China.