Dunhuang Grottoes "walked into" the Shangsheng New Institute, in addition to the detailed explanation of the murals, there are also real people on the scene to perform the "Flying Dance"...

The offline multimedia special cave exhibition "Dunhuang Wonderland - The Mystery of the Legendary Cave 220 Caves", which was officially authorized and guided by the Dunhuang Research Institute for the first time, was launched on January 1, 2022 at the Shangsheng New Institute.

For half a month, the exhibition has become a new hot spot in this popular neighborhood, and even in weekday afternoons, the audience is still endless.

Dunhuang Studies is a complex and profound comprehensive historical research topic, and if you want to understand many of its mysteries, the explanations of professionals are indispensable. For this exhibition, the organizer arranges a team of professional commentators to explain the exhibition content in detail every half hour.

In a simple and simple way, the narrators unveiled the mysteries of the sculptures and images in the grotto for the audience.

In the prologue hall of the exhibition, the docent introduces the specific location of Cave 220 presented in this special exhibition among the many grottoes in Dunhuang. The relief of the architectural complex that looks like abstract and beautiful lines is actually a map that restores the layout of the Dunhuang Grottoes. In this exhibition, which is not very large, you can see the ingenuity of design and content to complement each other.

The first exhibit after entering the exhibition hall is a model of Dunhuang Cave 220 that is reduced in equal proportions. Cave 220 is listed as a special cave in Dunhuang and is not easily open to the public on weekdays.

Although it is a model, the special cave can be described as a huge detail in reproducing the various details of the original cave.

Looking closely, the model's depiction of the cave is surprisingly delicate.

In particular, the exhibition shows a picture of music and dance in Cave 220 in a layered form. This image seems to be a beautiful imagination of Western bliss, but in fact it also contains the portrayal of the ideal secular lifestyle of people in the early Tang Dynasty.

The exhibition also dedicates a space to reproduce part of the grotto's landscape.

In the instrument exhibition hall, there are many musical instruments played in the music and dance that appear in the murals.

The young composer Zhang Meng's "Water Drum" based on the dunhuang ancient score "Water Drum Zi" (Dunhuang Pipa Score) re-equipped and arranged the "Water Drum" is also presented in the exhibition. As long as the audience puts on the headphones, they can hear the beautiful music of the ancient instruments.

The exhibition is dedicated to the grand scene of the Yuan Lantern Festival in Chang'an City. Why do you want to show the scene in the "Twelve Hours of Chang'an" in a theme exhibition in Dunhuang?

In fact, this is importantly related to the "cave owner" who built 220 caves, the local Noble Zhai clan of Dunhuang, especially the patriarch Zhai Tong. According to research, when he went to Beijing to take the exam that year, Zhai Tong had the opportunity to witness the grand occasion of the Shangyuan Lantern Festival and left an unforgettable impression on his life. When the Dunhuang Grottoes were built, Zhai Tong used the song and dance Shengping seen in Chang'an as a model to depict the joyful song and dance scene of the Western Heavenly Paradise World. Therefore, scholars who study Dunhuang have always believed that the study of Dunhuang murals is an important material for understanding the way of life of the Tang Dynasty.

The last exhibition hall is a space with a 360-degree surround projection. The animation specially made for this exhibition not only introduces the causes and consequences of the construction of Cave 220 to the audience, but also intersperses the live interpretation of professional dancers to restore the scene of the flying dance at that time.

The exhibition is also accompanied by a series of cultural and creative goods licensed by the Dunhuang Research Institute.

In conjunction with the first exhibition of Shangsheng Xinshuo in 2022, the swimming pool of the former Western School was also hung with traditional lanterns, which complemented the Theme of Dunhuang and the Atmosphere of the New Year.

Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Chunhai Text Editor: Zhang Mo

Source: Author: Dong Tianye