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Walking into Dunhuang, thousands of years.
"If you can only visit one Silk Road site, go to Dunhuang." American historian Le Wei Hansen commented.
"Any legendary magical place in the world is no longer magical if you have been to it once. But only Dunhuang, after your visit, the feeling in your heart is even more magical. Writer Feng Jicai wrote.
Dunhuang, which is located in a desert oasis and at the throat of the Silk Road, is home to three world cultural heritage sites (points) of Mogao Grottoes, Yumen Pass and Hanging Spring. As an important gateway to the Western Regions of China, ancient diverse civilizations converged here.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative. The 6th Silk Road (Dunhuang) International Culture Expo with the theme of "Connecting the World: Cultural Exchange and Mutual Learning among Civilizations" will be held soon. This ancient county of the Silk Road is blooming in a new era in the dialogue and integration of different civilizations.
This is the Mingsha Mountain Crescent Spring Scenic Area taken on June 7 (drone photo). Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Zhang Zhimin
The context continues for a thousand years
Dunhuang often gives people a "sense of travel": the ancient and the present are only one step away.
"You can also buy Coke in Dunhuang." In the summer of 2000, Zhu Lei, a professor at Wuhan University, encouraged Zhang Xiaogang, a "Wuhan Ling" who was about to graduate, to give up his job in Jiangcheng and go to Dunhuang.
Of course, what left this young man behind was the continuous writing of the history of the ancient grotto for thousands of years. "From the 4th century to the 14th century AD, the ancients built the Mogao Grottoes that combine architecture, sculpture and murals. This is a treasure trove worth studying for a lifetime. Zhang Xiaogang, who is now vice president of the Dunhuang Academy, said.
According to the "Records of Dunhuang City", in 111 BC, Emperor Wudi of Han established Dunhuang Commandery to open up Hexi and manage the Western Regions. With the prosperity of the Silk Road, this remote border city in the desert has gradually become a place where diverse civilizations converge, giving birth to Silk Road treasures represented by the Mogao Grottoes.
This is the Mogao cave area taken on April 25 (drone photo). Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Chen Bin
When you enter the Mogao Grottoes, you enter history. Cave 275, built in Northern Liang, is one of the oldest surviving caves in Mogao Caves, dating back more than 1,600 years. The north and south walls are que-shaped niches taken from the traditional Chinese architecture "que", that is, there is a temple roof above the Buddha niche. The means by which the ancients expressed the heavenly palace made today's people feel that "I don't know what year it is in the heavenly palace". Today, this architectural style can still be seen in the Dunhuang Grotto Exhibition Center.
Stroll through Dunhuang like entering the Han and Tang Dynasties. The tiles of the sidewalk come from the lotus pattern and pomegranate pattern in the ruins of the Tang Dynasty, the rebounding Lotte sculpture of the pipa trick in the center of the spiral road, and the golden and red colors often appear in the murals on the exterior walls of urban buildings. When the night falls, when you enter the Shazhou Night Market, you can see the lights and crowds, just like the wine restaurant in the thousand-year-old mural.
Rebound lute diagram of Cave 112 of the Mogao Grottoes. Photo courtesy of Dunhuang Academy
Go further and go to the ruins of Yangguan and Yumen Pass. The sky is high and the clouds are far away, the banner hunting, the ruins of Guancheng, Beacon and the Great Wall of the Han Dynasty are still there, and poems such as "Spring Breeze Does Not Pass the Jade Gate Pass" and "The West Out of the Yang Pass for No Reason" and other poems appear in front of you.
The long history shows the outstanding continuity of Chinese civilization. Firmly holding the cultural roots is inseparable from generations of people who have a great love for national culture.
In the 40s of last century, full of yearning for Dunhuang art, Chang Shuhong, a well-known painter at home and abroad, led Duan Wenjie, Ouyang Lin, Sun Ruxian, Shi Weixiang and a group of young people with a bright future to bid farewell to a good life and come to Dunhuang where the wind and sand howled. The temple was used as an office, the stables were used as dormitories, and the mud in the water was clarified and drunk. Almost with their hands, they cleared the accumulated sand accumulated in more than 300 caves, silently guarding the thousand-year-old cultural treasure house.
Workers work on a fallen mural on the roof of the Mogao Grottoes in Cave 196 (October 1957). Photo courtesy of Dunhuang Academy
Shi Pingting, an old expert of the Dunhuang Academy, once wrote in "The Mogao Cave People Who Can't Be Beaten Away": "People are strange, some people live in happiness and do not know blessings, and some people live in suffering without knowing suffering. ...... They eat human fireworks, and they don't seem to eat human fireworks, because they are so inseparable from the Mogao Grottoes, and the Mogao Grottoes are the 'Pure Land of the West'! ”
Chang Shuhong is buried in the cemetery opposite the nine floors of the Mogao Grottoes. (Photo taken on April 23, 2021) Photo by Zhang Yujie, reporter of Xinhua Daily Telegraph
Unswervingly guarding is the portrayal of generations of Dunhuang people guarding the cultural roots, and it is also the spiritual temperament of an oasis ancient city that continues the cultural context.
Rong Enqi, the first director of the Dunhuang Museum, was known as the "cultural relics idiot", and with his knee damage and high myopia, he found more than 200 cultural relics sites in Dunhuang's 31,200 square kilometers.
"To exaggerate, I grew up feeling that my father valued cultural relics more than his family." Daughter Rong Hongmei said. In 1979, when a major flood occurred in Dunhuang, she was 9 years old and her brother was 1 year old. Rong Enqi did not return home for three days, ate and lived in the warehouse, urgently packed cultural relics, and "vowed to coexist with cultural relics."
After inheriting her father's mantle and working in the cultural and museum industry for 33 years, Rong Hongmei understands her father more and more: behind that "obsession" is a deep "love" for cultural relics. "I hope to continue to protect the things that my fathers have protected, so that more people can enter Dunhuang and understand Dunhuang."
Everything in one place
Dunhuang is an important gateway to the Western Regions, where ancient Chinese civilization converges with ideas, religions, arts and cultures from different countries and regions such as ancient India, ancient Greece and ancient Persia.
Mr. Ji Xianlin once said: "The splendid culture of Dunhuang is the integration of the essence of the cultures of all ethnic groups in the world, and it is also a model of the long history and continuous integration of Chinese civilization for thousands of years. ”
This is a Brahmi document unearthed in the northern area of the Mogao Grottoes. Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Zhang Yujie
Walking into the "Pisa Picking Gold - Exhibition of Cultural Relics in the Collection of the Dunhuang Academy", you can more intuitively feel Dunhuang, the intersection of civilizations: Buddha clay statues from the Tang Dynasty, silver coins from the Sassanid Dynasty in Persia, wooden movable characters in Western Xia, copper crosses, and various documents written in ancient Tibetan, Mongolian, Syriac, Brahmi and other languages, and the murals depict many ethnic groups in the Central Plains and Western Regions...
This is a Persian silver coin unearthed in the northern area of the Mogao Grottoes. Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Zhang Yujie
"The Chinese nation continues to absorb foreign cultures with a broad mind, and this inclusiveness is very evident in the Mogao Grottoes." Zhao Shengliang, secretary of the party committee of the Dunhuang Academy, said. The statues of bodhisattvas in the early caves of Dunhuang have a distinctly Gandhara style, and the Gandhara art of Central Asia is the product of the fusion of Greek culture and Indian culture. Lianbead patterns often appear in caves of the Sui Dynasty, which have typical characteristics of Persian culture.
Gandhara sculpture on display at the exhibition Ikuo Hirayama's Silk Road World (pictured August 7, 2018). Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Zhang Yujie
Interestingly, despite the variety of foreign cultures, Dunhuang is like a huge shaping hand, widely absorbed and integrated with Chinese culture, and finally presents an artistic style with Dunhuang characteristics. People can see at a glance: this is Dunhuang!
Today, walking through Dunhuang, you can still feel the unique heritage of this Silk Road town and immigrant city from the diverse and integrated customs and habits and "nostalgia on the tip of the tongue".
"The most intuitive embodiment of Dunhuang's inclusiveness is food." Shi Mingxiu, director of the Dunhuang City Cultural Relics Protection Center, said. Today's Dunhuang people not only like to drink canned tea and pulp water from the agricultural areas of the upper reaches of the Yellow River, but also learn to drink milk tea from the surrounding Kazakh and Mongolian herders. The most interesting is a Dunhuang cuisine called "juice", where rich ingredients such as mutton soup, pork balls, and egg cake and meat filling are combined into a bowl and steaming hot.
In the early hours of the morning, Shazhou Food Station is still lively and fragrant. Guzi haggis, Wusun finger rice, Shule baked buns, Che Shi grilled lamb chops... Various snacks work together to create a map of Silk Road cuisine. Wang Jiandong, a tourist from Ruoqiang County in Xinjiang, has come to Dunhuang for the third time, "There are so many stories in Dunhuang, it is like drifting in the long river of history, how many times you will never get tired of it."
The staff of Shazhou Food Station is introducing food to guests. Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Zhang Yujie
Shen Hongjie, a native of Hunan, has moved to Dunhuang for nearly 20 years and has become a "new Dunhuang person". "I originally came to Dunhuang for tourism, but when I saw the Mogao Grottoes, I couldn't walk and stayed." He runs a woodcarving shop that uses carvings to show the scenery of the desert and the charm of murals. Some people were attracted by his works, worshipped him as a teacher, and stayed in Dunhuang like him. "Dunhuang is not big, but it has retained many people and nourished many artists. This little oasis in the desert Gobi is truly magical. ”
On June 1, Shen Hongjie, the representative inheritor of Dunhuang woodcarving painting, displayed the woodcarving work "Rebound Pipa" in the studio. Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Zhang Zhimin
Since Dunhuang became a tourist city open to the outside world in 1979, tourists from more than 100 countries and regions have come to this desert town. Shen Hongjie's shop is often visited by foreign tourists, and he even summed up a set of "international aesthetic experience": Japanese love deserts, Koreans love flying, Europeans prefer relief...
Out of a common love for the cultural heritage of mankind, experts from Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries have worked with mainland experts to carry out the protection of Dunhuang cultural relics.
Japanese painter Ikuo Hirayama continued to participate in the protection of Dunhuang cultural relics and became a bridge for friendly exchanges between China and Japan. After his death, the cultural relics along the Silk Road were exhibited in Dunhuang many times. American expert Agnew often flew thousands of miles to Dunhuang. In front of the nine floors of the Mogao Grottoes under the moonlight, three cultural protection experts, Agnew , Fan Jinshi and Huang Kezhong, celebrated their 80th birthday together, and the scene was moving.
The dance drama "Silk Road Flower Rain", based on Dunhuang murals, uses the bridge of art to connect China and the world. Over the past 40 years, this classic Chinese dance drama has visited more than 40 countries and regions and performed more than 3,900 times.
Ikuo Hirayama's "Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes" (taken on August 1, 2018). Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Zhang Yujie
After the "Belt and Road" initiative was proposed, Dunhuang once again attracted the attention of the world. In 2016, the first Silk Road (Dunhuang) International Culture Expo was held, attended by more than 1,500 representatives from 86 countries and 5 international and regional organizations. This is also the first comprehensive expo in mainland China with the theme of "Belt and Road" international cultural exchanges.
At the upcoming 6th Dunhuang Cultural Fair, more than 300 foreign guests and more than 800 domestic guests from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Germany, France and other countries will gather in Dunhuang to conduct exchanges and discussions on cultural relics protection, cultural exchanges, and the joint construction of the "Belt and Road".
"An important reason why the Chinese civilization represented by Dunhuang culture has been living for thousands of years is to constantly communicate with foreign cultures and absorb advantages for our use. The Tang Dynasty had a lot of 'Hu qi', but it was not 'Huhua', which is inseparable from cultural self-confidence. To inherit Dunhuang culture, we must also not forget the original, accept the outside, and face the future. Zhao Shengliang said.
A new chapter with ancient rhyme
If you can really cross it, you may have a surprising discovery: Bianguan Dunhuang, but there are the latest things of that era.
Mogao Grottoes Cave 254 of Northern Wei has a history of more than 1,500 years. On the south wall of the cave, there is an excellent painting in the history of Chinese art, and artists such as Zhang Daqian, Chang Shuhong, Dong Xiwen and other artists have devoted themselves to copying this mural. The mural uses five key scenes to tell the story of Shakyamuni's predecessor, Prince Satan, who sacrificed his body to feed the tiger and accumulated good deeds.
Tiger diagram of Cave 254 of the Mogao Grottoes. Photo courtesy of Dunhuang Academy
The Buddhist scriptures from India were difficult and obscure, and the ancient Chinese creatively transformed them into intuitive murals to educate the masses, which can be said to be the earliest "new media".
In Dunhuang, the enterprising spirit of keeping the right and not keeping the old, respecting the ancient and not retro, continues to this day.
Nowadays, before visiting the Mogao Grottoes, all visitors with an appointment will first have a "Dunhuang Dream": the bodhisattva who is looking at him is approaching, the sky is almost soaring, and the murals in the dim cave are all faint... The dreamy experience of riding a spaceship makes people deeply feel that Dunhuang is not a specimen that has died for a thousand years, but a life that has lived for a thousand years.
Enter the Mogao cave area, pick up your mobile phone, and a nine-colored deer wearing a ribbon actually "flew down" from the mural. Touch it, and the well-behaved deer will also twist its body and interact with people. Human, physical cave and virtual images appear in the camera at the same time, which makes visitors feel more novel.
Visitors interact with nine-colored deer (profile photo). Photo courtesy of Dunhuang Academy
The "Cave Visit" model, which combines Dunhuang culture with digital technology, not only shortens the time tourists spend in the cave, so as to better protect cultural relics, but also allows people to understand the history and value of Mogao Grottoes through multiple experiences.
Dunhuang is like a selfless mother, as long as it is grafted with the appropriate epochal content, it will reap fruitful fruits.
At the end of the 70s of last century, "Silk Road Flower Rain" was born, which became an immortal classic in the history of Chinese dance drama. In the 2005 Spring Festival Gala, the dance "Thousand Hands Guanyin" became popular overnight. Today, performances such as "Happy Dunhuang", "See Dunhuang" and "Dunhuang Festival" show the different styles of Dunhuang for tourists from afar.
Actors perform "Silk Road Flower Rain" at the Lanzhou Yellow River Theater (pictured on July 25, 2019). Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Nie Jianjiang
At the Dunhuang Grand Theatre, dancers from the China Disabled Arts Troupe changed their dance movements very neatly and quickly, performing the sitcom "A Thousand Hands and Thousand Eyes". "These cultural messengers have a special power to spread. When I came to Dunhuang to travel and watch such a show, I received a spiritual baptism. We should spread the truth, goodness and beauty contained in Dunhuang culture. Shi Lin, secretary of the Dunhuang Municipal Party Committee, said.
Actors of the China Disabled Art Troupe rehearse "A Thousand Hands and Thousand Eyes". Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Zhang Zhimin
Creative transformation and innovative development continue to expand the boundaries of Dunhuang culture. In Mogaoli Artisan Village, research courses such as color sculpture making and mural copying allow young people to create their own Dunhuang works. Du Yongwei, the person in charge, said: "The more you do art, the bigger your heart. Each era has the style of each era, and I hope that if you look at the present a thousand years from now, you can also see the characteristics of this era. ”
On May 11, participants learned sculpture skills at Mogaoli Artisan Village in Dunhuang City. Photo by Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter Guo Yu
Chen Lisong, a Shanghai-based designer who has traveled to Paris, Florence and other world-famous "art capitals", took Dunhuang as the starting point for his business. In 2017, she opened a souvenir shop near the Mingsha Mountain Crescent Spring Scenic Area. She draws creative nourishment from Dunhuang murals, incorporating elements such as nine-colored deer, rebounding pipa, and mojing motifs into more than 30 products. Two years later, she used Silk Road cuisine as her entrepreneurial idea to create Shazhou Food Station, which reminded tourists of the lively scene of Hu Xuan music and dance and silk and bamboo chirping thousands of years ago.
"Dunhuang is a city of freedom and tolerance. Culture gives business a warmth and more to see. Chen Lisong said.
This is Dunhuang. Some people come and don't want to leave, and some people come and come again. Some people have always guarded the historical context, and some people have boldly innovated to depict the brilliance of the times. These thousands of people have created thousands of Dunhuang sides. And these thousands of Dunhuang sides merge into the great river of Chinese civilization that has not been interrupted for 5,000 years, rushing all the way and moving forward. (Participating reporter: Zhang Zhimin)
Source: Xinhua News Agency