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inside and outside the rows of caves at the eastern foot of mingsha mountain

sometimes prosperous, sometimes desolate, sometimes silent, the cycle repeats

in the minds of many people, the dunhuang mogao grottoes are still the most famous among the chinese grottoes, and they are still one of the top attractions among travel enthusiasts.

looking at the nine-story mogao grottoes in the snow. this layout/visual china

the meaning of honeysuckle pattern

in the 2,000-year history of the founding of dunhuang and the more than 1,600-year history of mogao grottoes, we can pick out many important moments and begin to tell the story of dunhuang.

for example, in the early years of the western han dynasty, the 19-year-old young general huo qubing crossed the qilian mountains to defeat the xiongnu and incorporated dunhuang into the territory of the han dynasty for the first time; such as the moment when wu zetian ascended the throne and the construction of the largest giant buddha statue in the mogao grottoes began; such as june 22, 1900, when wang the moment when a taoist priest accidentally discovered the sutra cave while cleaning the cave; such as the moment when the british man stein entered the sutra cave one night in may 1907 to pick out documents; such as the moment when chang shuhong saw "dunhuang" by the seine river in paris in 1935. the moment when he was shocked when he read the "illustration of the grottoes", and the thrilling moment when he rode a camel for the first time and looked at the nine-story building eight years later...

these legendary moments connect the extraordinary life experience of dunhuang mogao grottoes. now, we can enter dunhuang from another moment.

it was an evening after a summer rain in 1995. the danquan river in front of the mogao grottoes suddenly swelled. fan jinshi, then deputy director of the dunhuang academy, led the guards to build sandbags to fight the flood. she looked up suddenly and suddenly saw a golden light flashing over sanwei mountain, and the hills behind the golden light turned dark. after the golden light disappeared, two intersecting rainbows appeared in the blue sky.

the shock that this moment brought to fan jinshi was not just from the wonders of nature, but from the encounter with history. this golden light proves that the legend about mogao grottoes may not be false.

according to legend, in 366 ad, a monk named le zun came to the eastern foot of mingsha mountain in dunhuang and suddenly saw a bright golden light, as if there were thousands of buddhas flashing. inspired by the buddha's light, le zun stopped wandering and dug a cave for practice on the cliff. soon, another zen master, far liang, also dug a cave nearby.

this story recorded on the "li jun mogao grottoes buddhist niche stele" in cave 332 of the mogao grottoes tells the origin of the first two caves of the mogao grottoes that were circulated in the tang dynasty. the authenticity is no longer known, and archaeologists have not yet confirmed it. their location.

at that time, dunhuang was under the rule of the sixteen kingdoms of the former qin dynasty. these two earliest caves were only for monks to meditate and had neither murals nor colored sculptures. by the time the mogao grottoes were excavated on a large scale and decorated with murals and statues, it was already beiliang decades later. the functions of grottoes have gradually expanded from zen grottoes to family grottoes that function as clan ancestral halls and merit grottoes to commemorate achievements. the largest grottoes are basically built by local aristocratic families, including local officials of the central dynasty and members of the separatist regime. leader.

the adjacent cave 268, cave 272 and cave 275 are currently confirmed to be the earliest three caves in the mogao grottoes. many scholars believe that they were excavated during the northern liang dynasty, and are known as the "three grottoes of the northern liang dynasty". in the "three caves of beiliang", foreign elements have a significant presence. on the south wall of cave 275, there is a painting about prince siddhartha traveling to four gates. the characters have an obvious indian style: half-naked on the upper body and wearing a long skirt. but the city gate in the painting is completely chinese-style. this shows that in the early dunhuang grottoes, foreign elements such as india coexisted with chinese elements.

the image of the fusion of chinese and foreign elements is widely reflected in the dunhuang grottoes. among them, the naked body with bare breasts is the most obvious example of south asian style. with the high temperature in india, people are accustomed to going topless. among the decorative patterns of the beiliang grottoes, there is also a honeysuckle pattern that frequently appears, and its ancestry is further away than india. the honeysuckle pattern first originated in ancient egypt and the mesopotamia. it may be an abstraction of palm leaves. it was later introduced to ancient greece and then to china via central asia along with buddhist art.

the honeysuckle pattern is like a messenger, connecting the most important ancient civilizations in the world such as egypt, mesopotamia, india, and greece, all the way to the east, and eventually connecting the chinese civilization as well.

from northern liang through the northern wei, western wei, and northern zhou dynasties, the foreign artistic style of dunhuang gradually weakened, while the central plains style became stronger. but as zhao shengliang, secretary of the party committee of the dunhuang academy and art historian, said, “the development and integration of different cultures is not an either/or situation like the west wind overpowering the east wind. rather, it is a continuous exchange and absorption of each other in the long history of coexistence. thus, there is continuous integration. "due to the impact of foreign buddhist culture, chinese culture has added countless new elements.

cave 45 of the mogao grottoes displays a group of seven statues. two of the bodhisattva statues have their upper bodies tilted sideways and stand in an s-shaped graceful posture, exuding a sense of relaxation. the bodhisattva has kind eyebrows and kind eyes, a slightly plump body, and the fat on his neck and abdomen is intentionally carved. these two friendly-looking bodhisattvas are known as the most beautiful statues in dunhuang. compared with previous generations, tang dynasty statues used realistic and personalized techniques to inject the breath of the world into clay sculptures. during the sui and tang dynasties, the bodhisattva was gentle and the king of heaven was strong, which was exactly the portrayal of the women, generals, soldiers and other figures among the people at that time. dunhuang art has completed the evolution of chineseness and humanization. "buddhas, disciples, bodhisattvas, and kings of heaven all appear real and tangible. they are no longer gods far away from the world." zhao shengliang said.

the pinnacle of dunhuang murals is represented by the "infinite life sutra" in cave 220. in 1943, when researchers from the national dunhuang art institute entered the cave, they were filled with thousands of buddha statues from the song dynasty or xixia, but the painting style of the tang dynasty was revealed in the lower layer of the thousand buddhas. the researchers carefully peeled off the upper layer of murals, revealing the masterpieces of the early tang dynasty.

on the south wall of cave 220 of mogao grottoes, there is a mural of "the sutra of infinite life".

every mural in this cave is a masterpiece, especially the sutra of infinite life on the south wall, which is so majestic that it occupies the entire wall. the original intention of buddhist sutra paintings is to turn buddhist sutras into paintings so that illiterate people can read and understand them. in the painting, amitayus buddha and more than thirty bodhisattvas are in the seven treasures pool, with golden sand covering the ground, blue waves rippling, musicians playing music, and singers dancing. pavilions stand tall in the blue sky, heavenly music sings without drumming, and the goddess scatters flowers in the sky. the whole picture forms a vast, deep and far-reaching realm, depicting a paradise world where the imaginary gods live.

in the office building of the cultural relics digitization research institute of the dunhuang academy, digital high-fidelity reproduction murals of the "infinite life sutra" and "the medicine master sutra" in cave 220 are displayed on both sides of the hall. through digital collection, processing and restoration, dunhuang murals, painted sculptures and even entire caves have been replicated, allowing people from all over the world to see their true appearance. yu shengji, associate research librarian of the digital institute of the dunhuang academy, said that the dunhuang academy has completed digital photography collection of nearly 289 caves, more than half of the caves in the mogao grottoes have murals and painted sculptures. this has taken more than 30 years.

david sculpture and dunhuang buddha statue

also in gansu province, the most convenient way to get to dunhuang from lanzhou, the provincial capital, is by plane. on the long and narrow map of gansu, dunhuang is at the westernmost end. it is also the end of the hexi corridor and was the gateway from the central plains to the western regions in ancient times.

in 1942, chang shuhong, the first director of the national dunhuang art institute, flew from chongqing to lanzhou airport. at the end of that year, at the preparatory committee meeting of the dunhuang art research institute held in lanzhou, someone proposed that the institute be located in lanzhou. chang shuhong objected: "lanzhou is 1,200 kilometers away from dunhuang. how can we protect and conduct research at such a distance?"

when it comes to the gobi desert beyond the great wall, many people talk about it. chang shuhong finally gathered a team of 6 people. setting off on february 20, 1943, they traveled by car for a month before arriving in anxi via the hexi corridor. then they hired 10 camels to cover the last 120 kilometers. twenty years later, fan jinshi, a student majoring in archeology at peking university, went to dunhuang for an internship. trains were now available in gansu, and she took the train for three days and three nights before finally arriving in a truck pulling coal.

this desert city with inconvenient transportation was an important transportation thoroughfare in ancient times. ever since zhang qian opened the silk road, dunhuang has always been on the road that the silk road must pass through. from chang'an or luoyang, it passes through the hexi corridor, passes through dunhuang, passes through loulan, passes through the western regions, and finally leads to today's afghanistan, iran, egypt and the persian gulf. for 1,560 years from the western han dynasty to the ming dynasty, dunhuang guarded the throat of transportation between china and the west. it was extremely prosperous and was known in history as "a city where huarong and huarong were connected."

dunhuang thus became a trade center and commodity transfer station between the east and the west, and dunhuang culture also emerged. especially during the great turmoil in the wei, jin, southern and northern dynasties, many wealthy families and scholars moved to hexi to take refuge, which improved the cultural level of dunhuang and buddhism began to spread widely.

in terms of politics, economy, religion, customs, etc., dunhuang has formed a unique style through the blending of east and west. thousands of years later, the dust has been brushed away, and only the art solidified in the grottoes has survived vividly.

the architectural form of grottoes was pioneered in india. from the 2nd to 1st century ad, buddhist grottoes such as guntapalli, paya, and nashik appeared in india. the first stop for the introduction of grottoes into china was xinjiang. buddhism flourished in the ancient country of qiuci in the western region, and the earliest buddhist caves in china were excavated today. today in the kizil grottoes in baicheng county, xinjiang, the characters in the murals have a majestic and strong physique like europeans, with broad faces and foreheads, high nose bridges, big eyes and thin lips, showing a greek look.

the origin of buddha statues is related to greece. when buddhism was born in india, there was no tradition of building buddha statues. in the 4th century bc, alexander the great of the macedonian kingdom expanded his territory to south asia and central asia during his eastern expedition, and also spread greek culture from the mediterranean to the hinterland of the eurasian continent. one of the most dazzling creations of greek culture - human sculpture - was combined with buddhism to give birth to the figurative buddha statue. the most representative buddha statue of gandhara in central asia has a european hairstyle, a greek nose, a persian mustache, a roman robe, and an indian thin coat.

after buddhism spread eastward, not only the penetration of greek artistic style can be seen in chinese grottoes, but also some greek images were directly introduced. for example, atlas, the titan who carries the celestial sphere in greek mythology, is transformed into a powerful buddhist image in the grottoes of yungang and dunhuang, carrying a heavy chinese pagoda; it can also be seen in the architectural statues of yungang and dunhuang. to the ionic capitals of ancient greece... from this perspective, the sculptures of david and the dunhuang buddha statues are closely related by blood.

the statues and murals in the dunhuang grottoes show a line of integration and evolution of chinese and foreign cultures over more than a thousand years.

by the tang dynasty, the central plains painting style had a strong influence on dunhuang art. among the paintings handed down from ancient times, only a handful have survived from the tang dynasty and before. for example, none of the paintings by wu daozi, the "painting sage" of the tang dynasty, has been widely recognized as authentic. fortunately, the dunhuang murals solidified his painting style. a large number of figure paintings with flowing clothes and random brushwork are considered to have inherited the "wu dai dang style" style. a famous vimalakīrti statue in cave 103, the main part is only outlined with lines and rarely colored, showing vimalakīrti’s outgoing mental state with extremely confident line drawing techniques.

zhao shengliang explained that wu daozi's typical style uses line drawing to create momentum and appeal in the painting. many successful works of line drawing art can be seen in the mogao grottoes, which shows that quite a number of caves were completed by masters at that time, although no names were left.

dunhuang murals also retain the painting styles of tang dynasty painters such as yan liben, zhou fang, and zhang xuan. during the jin dynasty, sui dynasty and tang dynasty, buddhism was very popular. famous painters painted murals in temples in chang'an and luoyang, which became a temporary trend. unfortunately, the temples in the capital had long been reduced to smoke and dust, but the genes of their pen and ink were fortunately left in the sturdy caves on the northwest frontier. this is a unique archive of chinese art history.

starting from the cave opened by monk lezun, the mogao grottoes have been excavated in successive generations for more than a thousand years. so far, the mogao grottoes have preserved 735 caves, of which 492 caves contain more than 2,000 colorful sculptures and more than 45,000 square meters of murals, which is equivalent to the area of ​​nearly 15,000 "along the river during the qingming festival". these works of art record more than a thousand years of art history.

when visiting the dunhuang grottoes, people will have a strange feeling: it is rare to see such real traces left by ancient people in a monument. each generation of excavation, expansion, and renovation has left its mark, layer upon layer, and the sound of jingling and clanging on the rock is faintly emanating from the cracks in the rock and echoing in the air. the chiseling marks during the initial construction, the additions during the reconstruction, the violent destruction during the era of buddhist extermination, the blackened walls where villagers occupied the caves for cooking, and the inscriptions from past dynasties... the details are full of secular flavor, making the dunhuang caves a thousand at the same time. a museum of human traces over the years is also a living entity that is constantly changing.

after the northern song dynasty, the center of the central plains dynasty moved southward, and the maritime silk road gradually replaced the land silk road. in 1372, the ming dynasty established jiayuguan in the northwest, and dunhuang was abandoned outside the pass. dunhuang has become increasingly desolate and desolate, returning to the land of grazing animals, and the mogao grottoes have gradually been forgotten by the world.

it was not until the late qing dynasty more than 500 years later that a cave that was negligible in terms of size was accidentally opened, and the mogao grottoes were "discovered" again. this time, it was not only seen by the chinese, but also attracted the attention of the whole world.

centenary ripples of the buddhist scripture cave

on the only way to the mogao grottoes, a two-story tower stands almost in the middle of the road. this is a tomb tower. the owner is wang yuanlu, better known as taoist wang. he is the one who discovered the buddhist scripture cave and asked european explorers to transport dunhuang documents box by box. become the taoist king of china's sad place.

it was around 1899, the second year after the failure of the reform movement of 1898. the eight-power allied forces would invade beijing a year later, and the empire was in turmoil. a wandering taoist priest came to mogao grottoes and stayed in the abandoned temple. he planned to live here for a long time, clean up and paint the cave opposite the temple, replace the buddha statues with taoist statues, and turn it into a taoist spiritual palace.

at this time, the sound of cave excavation has long been silent, and the colorful sculptures and murals have faded in the dust. local people occasionally donate money to rebuild some buddha statues, or repaint the dim statues with bright colors. but with the depression of dunhuang, most of the caves became deserted and remained silent for five to six hundred years.

after being abandoned for so many years, most of the caves were filled with dust and crumbling rock masses. the caves on the bottom floor were even closed to the point of being closed. taoist wang hired a few guys to help him clean them up. on june 22, 1900, when a man was cleaning the sand, he found cracks in the mural on one side of the corridor. through the cracks, he seemed to see a dark room. in the middle of the night, taoist wang and his assistant dug through the mural. under the candlelight, the dark room in front of them was filled with densely packed white cloth bags stacked up to the top of the cave. taking it apart, each piece of paper is wrapped in white cloth and contains about ten volumes of documents.

that's how weird things are. there are at least dozens of medium and large caves in mogao grottoes, but this one is located opposite the deserted temple. it was selected by taoist wang as the location of the sutra cave. the buddhist scripture cave was excavated in the late tang dynasty and is very small, no more than the size of a northern earthen bed. however, just such a small hole later opened up a world-famous study - dunhuang studies, which also inspired changes in china's century-old academic regret, rise and revival.

a photo circulated by taoist wang shows that he is short, wearing a fat taoist robe, standing under the pillars in front of the grotto, grinning widely, with wrinkles on his forehead. when he was a child, his hometown suffered from drought for many years and he had not enough to eat. as an adult, he traveled around. these hard days made him look miserable. the person who photographed him was the british explorer aurel stein. after taoist wang discovered the documents, he kept selecting some and giving them to bureaucrats and scholar-officials in exchange for merit money. news of the discovery of ancient documents in dunhuang spread immediately, and western explorers who visited xinjiang and gansu followed their footsteps and came here.

top: outside the mogao grottoes sutra cave at the beginning of the 20th century. picture/fotoe bottom: left: pelliot selects documents in the tibetan scripture cave. right: in the early 20th century, wang yuanlu, the abbot of the taoist temple at the lower temple of mogao grottoes. picture/stein fotoe

in 1907, stein was the first to arrive, turned the buddhist scripture cave upside down, and exchanged four horseshoe silver coins (equivalent to 200 taels of silver) for 29 boxes of materials, including 270 chinese and tibetan packages, and more. most of them are non-chinese documents and works of art. less than a year later, the frenchman pelliot also arrived and took away more than 6,000 documents in exchange for 500 taels of silver. both stein and pelliot were academically trained scholars. they carefully selected and took away the essence of the most valuable academic research from the buddhist scripture cave.

the main body of the more than 50,000 documents and works of art in the buddhist scripture cave are buddhist scriptures and buddhist paintings in chinese and tibetan. another part is manuscripts in sanskrit, khotanese, uighur, sogdian and other languages, as well as silk paintings, silk fabrics, etc. the latest date in the document is 1002, and the sutra cave should have been closed shortly after that. there are different opinions on the reasons. stein thought it was an abandoned buddhist scripture, pelliot thought it was to avoid the western xia invasion, and scholars such as rong xinjiang and yin qing thought it might be related to the war in khotan that destroyed the black korean dynasty in 1006. the black korean dynasty located in xinjiang and central asia believed in islam. after conquering the khotan kingdom in the western region, it caused a devastating blow to khotan buddhism. a large number of khotanese fled to dunhuang, which was related to khotan by marriage, prompting the local buddhist temple sanjie temple to hide buddhist scriptures in caves in preparation for the black korean dynasty's eastward advance. a fairly complete khotanese buddhist scripture was also found in the sutra cave, which may have been brought by the khotanese who fled eastward.

regarding the loss of dunhuang documents, the late qing academic community at that time knew nothing about and was not interested. in august 1908, pelliot passed by beijing. in the capital library, he told the director miao quansun without any concealment that the thousand buddhas cave in dunhuang contained a large number of tang dynasty scriptures. he singled out the tang dynasty's "shazhou chronicles", xixia documents, uighur documents, song dynasty and five dynasties publications. but perhaps qing dynasty scholars only had four classics in their eyes, or maybe because they didn't see the actual objects. in the diary of that day, miao quansun only made a faint note: "it's a strange news."

the following year, when pelliot came to beijing again, he brought with him more than fifty documents from the buddhist scripture cave and invited luo zhenyu and other chinese scholars to view them. it was only then that chinese scholars for the first time knew for sure the existence of dunhuang documents. luo zhenyu lamented that this was "an extremely gratifying, hateful, and sad thing."

scholars asked the qing academy to go to dunhuang to collect the remaining documents and make up for it. the ministry of education of the qing dynasty allocated 6,000 taels and asked the gansu government to handle it. however, most of the money was intercepted by the dunhuang government to repair the confucius temple and the city wall, and only 300 taels were given to taoist wang. taoist wang was very dissatisfied and secretly left some documents. in the following years, explorers from japan and russia, as well as stein who returned to dunhuang, did not return empty-handed.

"it can be said that chinese scholars in the late qing dynasty were scholar-bureaucrats in their studies. they did not have the academic sensitivity of stein or pelliot, nor did they have any professional archaeological training. therefore, the loss of dunhuang treasures was an inevitable result of that era." china rong xinjiang, president of the dunhuang turpan society and liberal arts professor at the department of history at peking university and the research center for ancient chinese history, commented this way.

the dunhuang documents and cave photos brought back to europe by stein and pelliot caused ripples in the european academic and art circles. more than ten years later, pelliot published six volumes of "illustrated catalog of the dunhuang grottoes" in france, publishing more than 300 photos of the mogao grottoes. the ancient language documents of the western regions they brought back have promoted great progress in the study of ancient european languages ​​of the western regions, and it will take chinese scholars a century to catch up.

the ripples that started in europe were dunhuang studies. in the 1920s, scholar chen yinke foresaw in the "preface to "remnants of the dunhuang tribulation": "dunhuang scholars are the new academic trend in the world today." this was the first time that "dunhuang studies" were proposed, which mainly refers to the study of the dunhuang scripture cave. the study of documents. later, with the conservation research of the dunhuang grottoes, the unearthing of dunhuang han bamboo slips, turpan documents, and documents from the western regions, many scholars believed that the scope of dunhuang studies should be expanded beyond the tibetan scripture cave documents.

dunhuang was only a small border state in the tang dynasty, but the number of research works on dunhuang has always exceeded that of chang'an, the capital of the tang dynasty, which shows the prosperity of dunhuang studies.

"dunhuang studies have been an international knowledge from the beginning." rong xinjiang believes that from luo zhenyu's interactions with pelliot to subsequent dunhuang study seminars, this cross-border tradition has remained unchanged.

dunhuang studies have thus become another contemporary link connecting the east and the west.

in the late 1970s, due to the interruption of academic exchanges between china and foreign countries for decades, china's dunhuang studies lagged behind those overseas, and there was an urgent need to resume exchanges with the world. in 1981, professor fujieda akira of kyoto university in japan was invited by nankai university to hold a workshop on dunhuang studies. at this time, a discordant note came out. according to academic circles, fujieda akira said in nankai: "dunhuang is in china, dunhuang studies in japan". this sentence made some chinese scholars very dissatisfied. however, according to rong xinjiang's later questioning of several attendees, fujieda akira did not say this sentence, but introduced one of his chinese hosts to ask everyone to pay attention to this sentence. said by a foreign dunhuang scholar.

but the rumors have spread, laying the foundation for academic exchanges between china and japan in dunhuang. in 1988, when i heard that akira fujieda was coming to beijing to attend an academic seminar, ji xianlin, then president of the china dunhuang turpan society, changed two words for that sentence and put forward the saying "dunhuang is in china, and dunhuang studies are in the world." the pattern was instantly opening up has eliminated the barriers between chinese and japanese scholars.

the self-esteem reflected in this rumor also objectively stimulated a generation of chinese scholars and students. since the reform and opening up, chinese scholars have worked hard to catch up and have elevated chinese dunhuang studies to an important academic center in the world.

however, rong xinjiang believes that dunhuang studies are a worldwide academic discipline. dunhuang studies need a spirit of cosmopolitanism. chinese dunhuang studies need to have a broad-minded international vision and should not have a narrow-minded mood.

above: the taoist wang pagoda across the river from mogao grottoes. below: chang shuhong’s former residence opposite mogao grottoes. photography/staff reporter ni wei

now, under the clear blue sky in the northwest, the wang taoist tower shows a "majestic" posture. tourists come and go, but few stop to take a look. taoist wang attracted people's complicated thoughts. he was criticized by the local people during his lifetime. after his death in 1931, his disciples got the permission of the local gentry to erect a monument in his honor. from then on, the scope of the discussion gradually broadened. whether the dispersion of dunhuang documents should be attributed to the ignorance and greed of this ignorant scholar, to foreign explorers, or to that turbulent era, the voices gradually became more diverse. today, his tomb tower is so well preserved, standing on the other side of the river from the mogao grottoes. is this a simple protection of cultural relics, or is it a warning to that sad history?

chang shuhong copied cave 103 of mogao grottoes.

beyond the times, beyond borders

passing the taoist tower and crossing the danquan river, there is a group of simple courtyards opposite the famous nine-story mogao grottoes. a sign hangs on the door of the courtyard - dunhuang academy history exhibition hall. there were originally two temples here. in 1943, when chang shuhong came here to establish the national dunhuang art institute, he used it as an office and dormitory.

chang shuhong's dormitory is still preserved today. there is an earthen bed and a desk in the inner room, tables and chairs in the outer room, a simple bookshelf in one corner and a wooden cabinet in the other side. there is a plaster sculpture of venus de milo on the top of the cabinet, and a small oil painting hangs on the wall. he placed his memories of paris in a simple corner of dunhuang.

"the conditions were too difficult back then. all their generation drank was salt water." at noon one day in early march this year, yu shengji, associate research librarian of the institute of cultural relics digitalization of the dunhuang academy, walked around the history museum of the academy and sighed. . when he came to work in dunhuang in the late 1980s, he no longer had to drink salt water, but he still had to transport water from far away. the working and living conditions in dunhuang were not comfortable until the beginning of this century. when yu zongren, director of the conservation institute of the dunhuang academy, first entered the academy in 2000, the most advanced equipment in the academy only had a microscope.

chang shuhong first came to know dunhuang in the 1930s. when he was studying at the école supérieure des beaux-arts in paris, france, one day, at an old bookstall by the seine river, he accidentally opened a picture album called "illustration of the dunhuang grottoes", edited by pelliot. he was shocked by the sight he had never seen before, and from that moment on, he took the initiative to bind his destiny to dunhuang.

it goes without saying that the living conditions in dunhuang are difficult. life in paris is as different as heaven and hell. life in the desert is no different from the hard labor that russians endured in siberia. chang shuhong described that life as "serving a sentence." he is willing, but others are not willing. he persuaded his wife, who did not want to come to dunhuang, to come with her 12-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son. daughter chang shana remembers that on the first day of arrival, chang shuhong served his family a bowl of noodles with salt and vinegar in two small bowls. chang shana asked her father, where is the food? chang shuhong said awkwardly, "there are no vegetables. we will slaughter the sheep tomorrow and eat the mutton!" chang shana later realized how difficult it was for her father, who had to constantly comfort everyone in a difficult environment. the nationalist government often deducted their wages, making everything worse.

fortunately for the mogao grottoes, the remaining painted sculptures and murals have not suffered a large number of thefts. this is undoubtedly due to the institutional protection of chang shuhong's generation starting in the 1940s.

these mottled courtyards retain the scene from the founding period of the dunhuang academy. in the first half century or so, dunhuang researchers relied on spiritual strength to persevere. the art of dunhuang gave them strength at certain moments. when chang shuhong's wife broke off the relationship with him in the newspaper, in the midst of self-blame, despair and anger, he remembered the mogao grottoes mural "prince satuna sacrificing his life to feed a tiger", and he stayed in dunhuang with a spirit of sacrifice. during the 19 years when fan jinshi was separated from her husband, when she was most painful and depressed, she often went to see the huge reclining buddha in cave 158 and found peace in the buddha's sacred state of nirvana.

in the 20th century, the dunhuang academy had three visionary deans: chang shuhong, duan wenjie, and fan jinshi. the most rare thing is that they foresighted and cultivated a group of reserve talents for dunhuang, who are still the backbone today and have even become world-class scholars. this is especially difficult in a desert city that is remote and economically backward.

the most important task now for zhang xiaogang, director of the institute of archeology of the dunhuang academy, is to continue to promote the compilation and publication of the dunhuang grottoes archaeological report "the complete works of the dunhuang grottoes". in 2011, the first volume of "the complete collection of dunhuang grottoes" was published. in 2023, the second volume has been completed and is being edited and will be published soon. both volumes were compiled by fan jinshi. under the guidance of fan jinshi, the third volume has also been launched, and preparations for the fourth volume have begun. according to the plan led by fan jinshi in the 1990s, the "complete collection of dunhuang grottoes" has a total of 100 volumes.

the reason why the archaeological report needs to be compiled at such a slow speed is that fan jinshi once explained that the archaeological report is the "twenty-four histories" of the grottoes, which requires science, system, and comprehensiveness, and is far more difficult and complex than people imagine. the archaeological report is the most detailed record of the cave. it mainly uses text, mapping and photos to record every detail of the cave, down to the shape of the streamers of each mural figure and the damaged gaps in each painted sculpture. recording must be accompanied by research. it can be said that if an archaeological report is not written on a cave, it will not be fully understood. archaeological reports can become the most accurate basis for research, conservation and other work.

after zhang xiaogang graduated from wuhan university with a major in archeology in 2000, he entered the dunhuang academy. at the age of 27, he got the opportunity to speak to the world's top scholars at an international academic conference. when he finished his speech with trepidation, he did not notice that the audience applauded him twice. from a geographical point of view, dunhuang is remote, barren, and difficult, but on the academic map, dunhuang has always been a center of world attention. the work done in dunhuang is easily visible to the world.

in contemporary times, dunhuang can still play a role in connecting people's hearts in cultural exchanges between china and foreign countries.

ji xianlin, a master of dunhuang studies, once said: "there are only four cultural systems in the world that have a long history, a vast territory, a self-contained system, and far-reaching influence: china, india, greece, and islam, and there is only one place where these four cultural systems converge, and that is dunhuang and xinjiang region.”

he not only viewed dunhuang and xinjiang from the perspective of ancient cultural exchanges between china and foreign countries, but also expressed his expectations from the perspective of the future. he believes that from the perspective of human development, the study of cultural confluence has its special significance. "currently, the best and most well-equipped areas for studying this confluence phenomenon and confluence rules are probably dunhuang and xinjiang."

zhang xiaogang also visited tokyo university of the arts in japan for two years, which benefited from the scholar ikuo hirayama who was the president of tokyo university of the arts. ikuo hirayama is an international friend who is extremely passionate about dunhuang art. he promoted the japanese foundation to donate funds to allow the tokyo university of the arts to train cultural preservation, archaeology, art and other professionals for the dunhuang academy for free on a long-term basis. since 1985, fifty or sixty dunhuang academy staff have benefited from this project. ikuo hirayama’s funding for dunhuang also covered many aspects such as the protection of the grottoes and the improvement of living conditions. he also contributed to the construction of the dunhuang grottoes cultural relics protection research and exhibition center opposite the mogao grottoes with a free aid of 1 billion yen from the japanese government.

ikuo hirayama is a representative who embodies the appeal of dunhuang culture and art across national boundaries, just as he praised dunhuang art - "transcends the times, transcends national boundaries, and transcends all values."

open dunhuang

before visiting the mogao grottoes today, you must go through a warm-up link: first go to the digital exhibition center 13 kilometers away from the mogao grottoes. you will see two 20-minute videos here. one is a reenactment of the excavation process of the mogao grottoes, and the other is a full-dome movie that shows the internal details of the eight caves with 8k high-definition resolution. after watching the movie, the shuttle bus will take you to the mogao grottoes.

this was a change fan jinshi made in response to the increasing number of tourists year by year when he was the director of the dunhuang academy. after scientific calculations with the getty conservation institute in the united states, it is known that the maximum daily capacity of the mogao grottoes is 3,000 people. after adding the digital display center to the visiting process, the audience can first understand some background information through the video, and then add the original two people per person. the time spent visiting the caves has been reduced to about 75 minutes. in this way, the capacity of the mogao grottoes has been increased to 6,000 people per day.

however, the 6,000 tickets soon became insufficient. during the peak season, tens of thousands of people flock to the mogao grottoes every day, and many of them do not make reservations in advance. the annoyance of being shut out can easily escalate in the hot weather. in order to meet the demand for visitors, the dunhuang academy has opened 12,000 emergency tickets in addition to the 6,000 ordinary tickets. regular tickets can visit 8 caves, while emergency tickets can only visit 4 large caves with the highest capacity. every day, the cave's dehumidifier pumps out tankfuls of water. the visiting experience in the off-season is much more comfortable. not only is it less crowded, but you can also see more caves than in the peak season, 12 in total.

fan jinshi once made an analogy: when visitors visit a museum, they go to the exhibition room to see cultural relics, rather than directly entering the cultural relics warehouse. however, entering the grotto to see the murals and sculptures is equivalent to entering the cultural relics warehouse directly. in the 1990s, the dunhuang academy actually built a museum, the dunhuang grottoes cultural relics protection research and exhibition center opposite the mogao grottoes. it displayed several large-scale replicas of the caves, some of which were special caves, and some of which were not open to the public. the murals are all copied by senior art workers from the dunhuang academy. the institute hoped that the museum could divert some of its visitors, but visitors didn't buy it.

there is always a contradiction between the safety and openness of cultural relics, especially fragile and sensitive murals. in foreign countries, some caves with murals are never open to the public. instead, the murals or the entire cave are copied exclusively for tourists.

the dunhuang academy hopes to find a balance between openness and protection. on the basis of long-term research, the dunhuang academy has established a risk monitoring and early warning system for the mogao grottoes. at present, various sensors are installed in most of the mogao grottoes to collect data such as temperature and humidity in real time. when the monitoring data exceeds the threshold, the system will issue an early warning to the staff of the opening and management decision-making departments.

one of the important indicators that affects the safe preservation of murals is humidity. the increase in humidity will stimulate the activity of salt in cliffs and murals. the continuous alternation of salt dissolution and crystallization will lead to the development of diseases such as herpes and alkali. the humidity inside the mogao grottoes is generally about 20% to 30%. once a large number of people enter, if there is rainfall and the humidity rises rapidly and reaches 63%, an early warning will be issued. the thresholds for related environments, including humidity, are scientific conclusions calculated by the dunhuang academy and the getty conservation institute after more than ten years of research, and are not based on human feelings.

yu zongren, director of the conservation research institute of the dunhuang academy, said that extreme weather conditions have increased in recent years, especially heavy rains and floods. after at least four continuous rainfalls in the past 20 years, the precipitation gathered in the upstream mountains poured into the danquan river and overflowed the river embankment in front of the mogao grottoes, causing a dangerous situation. the continued high humidity environment also intensified the development of mural diseases.

the protection of murals is closely related to the entire mogao grottoes ecosystem. "protecting murals not only requires protecting the mural itself, but also ensuring the stability of the cliff. ecological environmental issues such as sand prevention and biological control are all important aspects of cultural relic protection," yu zongren said. improvements in the ecology will also create new risks. for example, small animals such as pheasants and hares, which have increased in number in recent years, run back and forth on the top of the cliff, causing small rocks to fall from the top of the cliff, threatening the safety of tourists. conservation staff have taken measures to drive away small animals and are also studying more methods in order to reduce the risk of rockfall at the top of the cliff to a greater extent.

interior view of cave 285 of mogao grottoes. in this picture, the left side is the west niche in the middle of the cave, and the right side is the north wall, with seven groups of buddhist teaching pictures. picture/visual china

in the past few years, the dunhuang academy has also built a multi-field coupling laboratory for cultural relics protection, which is the first time in the field of domestic cultural heritage. the laboratory's summer warehouse, winter warehouse and wind and rain warehouse can operate 24 hours a day to truly simulate the impact of different natural environments on large-scale ruins. many questions about earthen ruins may be answered in this laboratory.

regarding the mogao grottoes, fan jinshi once said a cruel fact: the disappearance of the mogao grottoes is unstoppable. because the laws of nature are irreversible, all grottoes will eventually disappear. the task of contemporary dunhuang people is to try their best to delay its life course of aging, illness and death.

but this will be a long process lasting thousands or tens of thousands of years. in comparison, human life is as short as a meteor, and every generation is a passer-by. the rows of caves at the eastern foot of mingsha mountain are sometimes prosperous, sometimes desolate, sometimes silent, and the cycle goes back and forth. now, after the epidemic, the excitement will return.