BEIJING – Located in an oasis on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, Dunhuang was a major obstacle on the ancient Silk Road, which connected East and West through colorful trade.
Dunhuang’s unique culture is most productively represented through the Mogao Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They date back to the 4th century and have 735 caves carved into a cliff, which lately are home to more than 2,000 colorful sculptures and 45,000 square meters of murals.
This ordinary cultural treasure is helping to attract visitors to the historic city, Chinese President Xi Jinping added.
In August 2019, during an inspection excursion to Gansu, the president set aside time for his first stop at the thousand-year-old caves, fulfilling a long-awaited wish.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has paid much attention to the protection of cultural relics in Dunhuang over the years, and to the development of Dunhuang’s culture.
A FAN OF DUNHUANG
During his excursion in 2019, Xi made his first stop at the Mogao Grottoes. He was captivated by a mural in Mogao’s Cave 323, upon seeing the figure of Zhang Qian, an envoy of the Han Dynasty (202 BC). C. -220 A. D. ).
Although this is Xi’s first time visiting the Mogao Grottoes, he is already very familiar with the cultural relics there, thanks to his long-standing emotional attachment to the site.
As early as 1986, Xi visited Gansu while serving as deputy mayor of the coastal city of Xiamen in Fujian province, but was unable to travel to Dunhuang at the time due to a busy schedule and the long distance to the place. Years later, he still talks about his remorse for not making the trip.
During an educational discussion as part of his studies at Zhejiang University in 2005, Xi, then Party secretary in Zhejiang province, recited a list of accomplishments by famed Dunhuang expert Jiang Liangfu.
In 2009, while pursuing his studies as head of state at Lanzhou University in Gansu, Xi encouraged Zheng Binglin, director of the university’s Institute of Dunhuang Studies, to expand the progression of Dunhuang studies as a contribution to the country.
Xi has highlighted the value of Dunhuang, calling it an “important ancient center” of Eastern and Western cultures, and one of the “living monuments” of interactions beyond among other civilizations on the ancient Silk Road.
For Xi, the significance of Dunhuang goes beyond its history, with efforts underway to revive and expand cooperation along and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes.
In 2013, Xi proposed the structure of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, also known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which were welcomed through the foreign network as a public and cooperative platform.
“As we advance cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road, we have returned to drawing inspiration from the ancient Silk Road,” Xi said at his cave stopover in 2019.
A DUNHUANG CURATOR
In September 2019, in a rite in Beijing, Xi presented the national honorary name of Outstanding Contributor to the Protection of Cultural Relics to Fan Jinshi, an archaeologist who has dedicated his entire life to the protection and cultural relics of the Mogao Grottoes.
As he shook Fan’s hand, Xi told him about the rains in Dunhuang.
More than a month ago, at a symposium held during Xi’s stopover in Dunhuang, Fan discussed with Xi a number of points on herbs that could contribute to the preservation of Dunhuang’s cultural relics by adding water.
At the meeting, Xi asked questions about issues ranging from the number of tourists to the effect of natural disasters. “Coverage of the world’s cultural heritage will have to put tourism first as our most sensible priority. “We must not concentrate only on ticket sales and the search for economic benefits,” he stressed.
“What concerns Xi are the most pressing challenges facing Dunhuang today,” Fan said.
Over decades of hard work, really important strides have been made in safeguarding the site’s priceless treasures, particularly through the use of state-of-the-art technology.
In 2020, a leading laboratory was launched to study the weathering mechanism of the caves, simulating diverse natural environments for targeted protection measures.
A DUNHUANG CULTURE PARTNER
Xi’s Mogao Grottoes tour took him to the Library Cave, where around 60,000 rare cultural relics were unearthed. However, about 40,000 pieces have been lost to more than 10 countries, including Britain, France, Russia and Japan.
“Only when the country is strong can its culture prosper,” Xi said, recalling the discovery of the Library Cave in 1900, at a time when the country was too weak to safeguard its cultural relics.
Xi encouraged Dunhuang Academy to share its cultural and artistic resources digitally globally.
In April 2023, a virtual reproduction of the Library Cave will be made available to the public through an interactive virtual platform.
The platform uses a complex virtual generation to reproduce ancient scenes from the Library Cave. It invites visitors to immerse themselves in Dunhuang culture through role-playing games and “time travel” to ancient dynasties.
Two days after his stopover at the Mogao Grottoes and his inspection of a publishing house in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, Xi brought up the Dunhuang issue again.
“Xi pointed out that the Dunhuang manuscripts have valuable ancient content and documents,” said Fu Kangnian, the company’s deputy general manager.
In reaction to Xi’s call to make greater use of ancient resources, a significant number of books similar to Dunhuang and Jiandu (bamboo or tablets on which the ancient Chinese wrote before the invention of paper) have been published in recent years.
After years of work, a series of compilation books on the history of Dunhuang have been published, filling in the gaps in the ancient records and offering reference topics for studies on Dunhuang.
What’s even more remarkable is that the conservation efforts implemented in the Dunhuang culture have spread beyond local borders. The concepts and technologies used in the caves have been implemented in more than 500 cultural relic projects nationally and presented to BRI partner countries.