Millennium Dunhuang, Waving Its Veil to the World
The Dunhuang Star Atlas, also known as the Dunhuang Star Atlas (Version A), numbered S.3326, is one of the most famous star maps in Chinese astronomical history. It was drawn during the reign of Emperor Zhongzong of the Tang dynasty and is now housed in the British Museum in London.
Everyone has a Dunhuang in their heart.
One is the Dunhuang of history.
“There are only four cultural systems in the world with a long history, vast territory, self-contained system, and far-reaching influence: China, India, Greece, and Islam. There is no fifth. And the place where these four systems converge is only one: China’s Dunhuang and Xinjiang region. There is no second.” (Ji Xianlin)
One is the Dunhuang of geography.
It was the “throat and key” of the Silk Road, a transit point on the ancient trade highway from Chang’an to Rome, where Chinese and Western cultures met.
One is the Dunhuang of painting.
The Mogao Caves in Dunhuang are a Buddhist cultural heritage combining cave architecture, painted sculptures, and murals. There are 735 existing caves, over 2,400 painted sculptures, and more than 45,000 square meters of murals. Images of venerable figures, Buddha life stories, Jataka tales, nidana stories, mythological tales, Buddhist historical scenes, and sutra illustrations are treasures of human civilization.
One is the living Dunhuang.
It is sung in quzi opera, it dances in the celestial flying figures, it hides in 26 kinds of cakes including hu bing, steamed cakes, and fried pancakes, it transforms into the digitally reconstructed Dunhuang in 3D, it links to the globally shared “Digital Dunhuang Resource Library,” and it crosses over into games, animation, music, and cultural creative products.
“History is fragile because it is written on paper and painted on walls; history is also resilient because there are always people willing to guard its truth, hoping it will never fade.” These words are inscribed on a wall of the Dunhuang Academy.
“Dunhuang is in China, but Dunhuang studies belong to the world.” Because Dunhuang connects the meridians of human civilization, it belongs to all humanity.
As a vital hub on the Belt and Road, and as a backup of Chinese culture and Sino-Western exchange, Dunhuang has always been here—this is fate, a miracle, and the power of devout faith.
Dunhuang is a place name, a piece of history, a field of study, an art form, and a longing. It is mysterious yet generous, desolate yet magnificent. The ancient trade highway from Chang’an to Rome transited here, and 735 caves containing the essence of Chinese culture, along with over 50,000 manuscripts, are treasured here. Over 2,130 years, we have nearly lost it countless times; fortunately, today we can still celebrate its incomparable beauty.
The “Rainy Plowing Scene” mural, Cave 23 at Mogao, north wall west side, early Tang. If Dunhuang were not the strategic intersection of Gansu, Qinghai, and Xinjiang provinces, not the only oasis suitable for human habitation in a thousand miles of desert, not the fork where Central Plains caravans left the Yang Pass and Yumen Pass, not the first stop where Buddhism entered China and took root, it would not have become a resting place for travelers and a transit point for goods, nor would it have become a key point of cultural exchange between East and West. If in 140 BC Zhang Qian had not volunteered to go as an envoy to the Western Regions, if he had died under the Xiongnu leader or given up his mission in any of the 14 years he was detained by the Xiongnu, Dunhuang would not have been directly connected to Central and West Asia, the German historian Ferdinand von Richthofen would not have conceived the name “Silk Road,” and walnuts, grapes, pomegranates, broad beans, and alfalfa could not have been cultivated in the Central Plains; huqin and Ferghana horses would not have been introduced, and silk and iron smelting techniques would not have been exported. If in 111 BC Emperor Wu of Han had not established the four commanderies of Hexi, and had not moved people from the interior to Dunhuang Commandery for farming and garrison, Dunhuang would not have risen to become the first among six counties, with a population exceeding 38,000 by the second year of the Yuanshi era (AD 2) under Emperor Ping of Han; nor would the Han borders have been consolidated, nor the Silk Road thrive.
October 23, 2004: Mural restoration underway in Cave 85 at Mogao. / Visual China. If on that evening in 366 the monk Le Zun had finished his begging meal, if he had not walked until he could go no further in the Daquan River valley at the foot of the Sanwei Mountains, if he had come too late or too early, if by chance he had faced away from the Sanwei Mountains and missed the golden sunset, he would not have had the great vision of the Buddhas of the Three Times, bodhisattvas, and celestial beings appearing together in golden light, and thus would not have carved the first cave at Mogao. If in 534 Emperor Xiaowu of Northern Wei, Yuan Xiu, had not fled from Luoyang to Chang’an to escape the powerful minister Gao Huan, and if he had not been poisoned by Yuwen Tai the following year, there would have been no Western Wei, and no Prince Dongyang of Western Wei, Yuan Rong, ruling Dunhuang for nearly 20 years, who carved ten caves later numbered 246, 247, 249, 285, 286, 288, 431, 432, 435, 437, contributing the style of loose robes and broad belts, delicate bones and clear features, and opening the curtain of a thousand years of cave art. If Dunhuang were not a dry place with over 3,246 annual sunshine hours, evaporation of 2,486 mm, yet an average precipitation of only 39.9 mm, if it were not a northwestern city that can reach over 40°C in summer and below -20°C in winter, if it were not surrounded by desert and Gobi, it could not have preserved murals from before the 10th century, allowing today’s visitors to relive the grandeur of that time.
September 9, 2019: Dunhuang, the replicated Cave 419 at the Dunhuang Grottoes Protection Research and Exhibition Center. / Xuan Canxiong. If in 848 Zhang Yichao had not risen in revolt to expel the Tibetans and reclaim Guazhou, if none of his ten messenger teams had succeeded in delivering the plea for reinforcements to the Tang Tian-de Army stationed in present-day Urad Front Banner, Inner Mongolia, if the monk Wuzhen had not traveled for two years from Hexi and Longyou to Chang’an to report the victory, if the Guiyi Army had not guarded the Dunhuang frontier for nearly 200 years, Dunhuang could not have communicated with the Tang, the Hexi Corridor would not have opened, and the Silk Road would not have been unblocked. If in 1697 Emperor Kangxi had not pacified the Dzungar revolt, if in 1725 Emperor Yongzheng had not established Shazhou Prefecture and carried out large-scale migration and reclamation from 56 counties of Gansu, and if in 1760 Emperor Qianlong had not changed Shazhou Prefecture to Dunhuang County, Dunhuang might not have escaped the decline caused by the closure of Jiayuguan in the Jiajing era of Ming, nor would there be the Dunhuang culture mixed with characteristics of Shanxi, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, etc., nor the birth of Dunhuang quzi opera.
September 9, 2019: Dunhuang, the replicated Cave 217 at the Dunhuang Grottoes Protection Research and Exhibition Center, donor portraits. / Xuan Canxiong. If Wang Yuanlu, after leaving the army and having no home, had not become a Taoist priest, if in 1898 he had not come from Shaanxi to Mogao and been willing to clear the accumulated sand from the caves, if in early summer of 1900 the poor Dunhuang scholar Yang Guo, whom he hired, had not set up a table in Cave 16 to receive incense guests and tapped his pipe on the north wall of the cave, the Library Cave would not have been discovered, nor the subsequent controversies and contests. If the British explorer Aurel Stein had not heard about Dunhuang from the Hungarian geologist Lajos Lóczy, if in early spring 1907 he had not arrived at Dunhuang ahead of Paul Pelliot and spoken with Wang, who was raising money everywhere to build a Taoist temple, if he had tried to buy the manuscripts by force instead of claiming to be “an admirer and follower of Xuanzang,” he would not have gained the trust of the “cunning and alert” Wang, nor would he have obtained 29 crates of over 9,000 artifacts including 8,082 scrolls, 20 woodblock prints, paintings, and embroideries; the British Museum would not have a “Stein Room” filled with Dunhuang manuscripts.
September 2019: Exhibition at the Dunhuang Grottoes Protection Research and Exhibition Center. / Xuan Canxiong. If Paul Pelliot had not received a Tang dynasty Buddhist sutra manuscript from General Chang Geng of Ili, if he had not followed Stein to Dunhuang in 1908, if he had not been proficient in Chinese and relied on interpreters, spending three weeks in the Library Cave examining every scroll, if he had not taken the choicest 6,000 scrolls and over 200 paintings to France, there would have been no foundation for Dunhuang studies to become a world prominent discipline. If in the autumn of 1935, Chang Shuhong had not chanced upon Pelliot’s “Les Grottes de Touen-houang” at a secondhand bookstall along the Seine in Paris, he would not have felt such a strong urge to return. If in 1942 he had not accepted Xu Beihong’s request to take on the heavy responsibility of preparing the “Dunhuang Manuscripts Research Institute” and endured the bitter salty water and freezing cave environment, if after the institute was disbanded he had not led everyone to persist in copying, there would be no Dunhuang Academy today, nor the inheritance of the Mogao spirit. If in 1938 Li Dinglong, like the other 11 members of the “Expedition to Dunhuang,” had retreated as soon as reaching Jiayuguan, if he had not bought a leather coat and felt boots, if after a month of traveling west he had not gotten out of the wilderness, if he had not had that worn quilt on his grass bed, if he had fallen to his death while climbing trees to reach caves, if he had not finished painting the “Paradise of the Western Pure Land,” if he had not held the “Dunhuang Cave Art Exhibition” in Xi’an, Zhang Daqian would not have conceived the idea of going to Dunhuang, and Yu Youren would not have inspected Dunhuang.
September 12, 2019: Crescent Moon Spring at Mingsha Mountain, Dunhuang. An aerial view of the “Desert Spring.” / Wang Jingchun. If Zhang Daqian had not sold 200 ancient paintings and his family property to scrape together 5,000 taels of gold, if he had not brought Lamaist painter-monks Angji, Sanzhi, Gelang, Luosangwaci, and Dujielinqie from Qinghai’s Ta’er Monastery as assistants, if he had not obtained azurite, malachite, and cinnabar from Tibet, if he had not grown vegetables, raised ducks, and picked mushrooms, if he had not painted late into the night and sent works back to Sichuan for sale to raise funds, if on the morning of March 22, 1943 he had been killed by bandits or eaten by wolves blocking the way at Yulin Caves three months later, there would have been no 276 copies of Dunhuang murals, no sensation from the exhibitions in Lanzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Tokyo, no Dunhuang fever, and no inception of his later splashed-ink and splashed-color style. Without the pioneering work of scholars like Liu Bannong, Wang Guowei, Chen Yuan, Chen Yinke, Xiang Da, Wang Zhongmin, Jiang Liangfu, Wang Qingshu in the first half of the 20th century, without the successive establishment of Dunhuang studies institutes at Peking University, Wuhan University, Lanzhou University and more than a dozen universities in the 1980s, without the sustained research contributions from scholars in Japan, France, Britain, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the US, Canada, Australia, India, Malaysia, etc., the legacy of Dunhuang could not have been understood, and Dunhuang culture integrating the four great civilizations of China, India, Greece, and Islam could not have exerted such profound influence both in China and the world.
September 9, 2019: The back of the nine-story tower at Mogao, Dunhuang. The photographer circled to the rarely visited back mountain of the Mogao scenic area to capture this unique angle of the nine-story tower. / Wang Jingchun. If Hirayama Ikuo had not visited Dunhuang in 1979, there would have been no Japanese-funded Dunhuang Grottoes Protection Research and Exhibition Center. If he had not donated 200 million yen to the Dunhuang Academy, there would have been no China Dunhuang Grottoes Protection and Research Foundation. If he had not traveled the Silk Road more than 70 times in his life as a devout Dunhuang enthusiast, Dunhuang would not have opened its doors to students of Eastern painting, nor would generations of Dunhuang painters have gone to study at Tokyo University of the Arts. If over 75 years, generation after generation of young people had not come to Dunhuang, fallen in love with it, and protected it, if Chang Shuhong, Duan Wenjie, and Fan Jinshi had not led the Dunhuang people in protection, exploration, and research, Dunhuang would not have been revived to shine to this day, nor would new artistic paths have emerged.
September 12, 2019: Yulin Caves. The east cliff of Yulin Caves has two levels of caves; the upper-level walkways were built later, with no trace of original walkways on the cliff face. Some scholars speculate that when first excavated, the upper caves had a slope in front, which gradually disappeared, forming today’s precipice. / Xuan Canxiong. If more than 10 million tourists had not visited annually, if the official Weibo account’s 360,000 followers had not given likes to Mogao, if the nightly sold-out show “See Dunhuang Again” had not existed, if Mingsha Mountain were not filled with aunties and silk scarves rolling everywhere, the charm of Dunhuang would not have stayed in more people’s eyes and hearts, carried to farther places. Fortunately, none of the above “ifs” happened. From the time Emperor Wu of Han established Dunhuang Commandery to today, Dunhuang has experienced 2,130 years of rise and fall, and it remains the most mysterious and attractive place in China. In 2018 alone, 10.773 million visits were made to Dunhuang. Over more than two millennia, this place has known both prosperity and decline. Silk Road caravans, meditating monks, garrison soldiers, foreign regimes, frontier migrants, scholar-painters, and tourist fans—all kinds of people have passed through Dunhuang, leaving behind pain, but also products, dialects, writings, and folk arts. Yellow sand cannot cover the Crescent Moon Spring, nor can it cover the murals made with cinnabar, azurite, and mica. As a vital hub on the Belt and Road, and as a backup of Chinese culture and Sino-Western exchange, Dunhuang has always been here—this is fate, a miracle, and the power of devout faith.
A scene from “See Dunhuang Again”: a group of male actors form a formation, lifting a female actor playing a celestial being. This stage play aims to let the audience explore Dunhuang’s history and culture in the form of a maze adventure while walking.
