As a top cultural IP, the Forbidden City will give you a reason to go every year, but this year, you have two!
You read that right, another national treasure museum, not far away, "moved" into the Forbidden City.
From the opening on September 17 to the closure of the exhibition on November 18, although the "Dunxing Far Away: The Forbidden City Dunhuang Special Exhibition" is only two months, this does not affect its weight in the slightest.
As two monuments in the history of Chinese culture, this is the first reunion of "Dunhuang of Mankind" and "Forbidden City of the World" in nearly 70 years.
For this exhibition, 11 museums and cultural institutions, such as the Palace Museum, Dunhuang Research Institute, Gansu Provincial Museum and Gansu Jianmu Museum, have gathered more than 180 rare pieces (sets) of fine cultural relics.
The 1500-year-old nine-colored deer finally met the 600-year-old bronze lion of the Forbidden City, which is the highest-standard exhibition in the second half of this year, belonging to the kind of "regret for a lifetime if you miss it once"...
What is even more amazing is that Mogao Grottoes has moved all three replica caves of Cave 285, Cave 220 and Cave 320 to the Forbidden City in one go, which is the first time in history.
Mogao Caves Cave 285 (reproduction). Source: Dunhuang Research Institute
So today, we will take this opportunity to appreciate together, Dunhuang 1655 years, never stop the charm ...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" >What is "Dunhuang"? </h1>
The first exhibit of the Dunhuang Special Exhibition of the Forbidden City is a remnant of the Han Dynasty, on which the two big characters of "Dunhuang" are written in Hanli in a dignified manner, and thousands of years have passed, and the ink is as new as new.
This is perhaps the earliest written record of "Dunhuang" that we can see now.
Source: The Palace Museum
From this piece of Jane, a colorful and poetic chapter is gradually unfolding, and its vastness and prosperity are the beginning of all things in the exhibition hall, far exceeding the boldest imagination of those who wrote at that time.
However, according to the canonical records, the word "Dunhuang" was first mentioned in Zhang Qian's report to Emperor Wu of Han in the "Chronicle of the Chronicle of Dawan":
The Shiyue clan lived in Dunhuang and Qilian.
The more understandable explanation comes from the Eastern Han Dynasty Ying Shao's Annotation of the Book of Han, which has been circulating for thousands of years, and until now, it is the mainstream interpretation of the word "Dunhuang":
Dun, big also. Huang, Sheng also.
But in fact, with the various archaeological discoveries in modern times, people have gradually felt that perhaps these statements above do not represent the whole truth of history, and many scholars believe that the etymology of "Dunhuang" is not Chinese.
For example, the Japanese scholar Toyohachi Fujita has argued that Dunhuang may be a transliteration of Tokhara.
The Chinese scholar Cen Zhongmian believes that the etymology of Dunhuang is "Taohuashi" (Taugas).
Wang Zongwei considered "Dunhuang" or "Dunxue (hōng)" or a transliteration of "Tocharian" and deduced that Dunhuang was the homeland inhabited by the Tocharians.
Cave 465 of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, Yuan Dynasty. Photo by Sun Zhijun
However, regardless of the truth of the origin of the name "Dunhuang", it is an undeniable fact that since 111 BC, when Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty classified Dunhuang as one of the four counties in Hexi, the colorful history of Dunhuang has really begun.
In the early history of Dunhuang, there were two most important people: one was the famous Eastern Han General Ban Chao, and the other was the Dunhuang Taishou Cangci of the State of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period.
Ban Chao threw his pen at The Han Ming Emperor when he increased his troops in the Western Regions.
Ban Chao as Obs. Source: Dunhuang: Born legendary
In Dunhuang, Ban Chao did two things that are crucial to the future history of Dunhuang.
The first was to send an envoy to the good country.
Ban Chao's decisiveness made King Shanshan obey and swear an oath of allegiance to the Great Han at the moment. This incident spread throughout the Silk Road and suddenly changed the understanding of the Han Dynasty in many countries.
Source: Dunhuang: Born legendary
The second is to outsmart the Guishuang Empire.
By 93 AD, after twenty years of political alliances and military shock, Ban Chao had made great contributions to the return of the Western Regions.
If Ban Chao runs Dunhuang with martial arts, then Cangci uses wenzhi to bring Dunhuang back into the hands of the Central Plains Dynasty.
In 227, Emperor Ming of Wei sent Chang'an Lingcangci, who was supposed to return to his hometown, to serve as the Taishou of Dunhuang.
After Cangci arrived, he not only thoroughly rectified the source of the disaster, but also made a lot of help for Dunhuang trade.
For example, to ensure that western merchants were treated fairly, but also to send troops to escort them on the road, and at the same time to issue them letters of introduction, providing a lot of convenience for the purchase of goods.
Cangci also proposed an order to intermarry between other ethnic groups, which could not only eliminate ethnic estrangement, but also increase the population.
Dunhuang, which once lost its law, became brilliant again, and Dunhuang once again became a prosperous trade city, which also laid a solid foundation for the trade and cultural prosperity of Dunhuang for nearly a thousand years from the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Yuan Dynasty.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="167" > Dunhuang's "rebirth"</h1>
As far as dunhuang's nearly thousand-year history is concerned, the most outstanding representatives of them are not the "Mogao Grottoes", in a sense, they have almost become synonymous and inseparable.
Mogao Caves, built in 366 AD.
Since then, the number of caves has been increased through successive generations of construction, and by the 7th century AD, there were more than a thousand caves here.
Exterior of dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, photographed by Joseph Needham, 1943. Source :Century Dunhuang
Therefore, the Mogao Caves are also known as the "Thousand Buddha Caves".
For thousands of years, the Mogao Grottoes have been at the intersection of Eastern and Western civilizations, the intersection of various nationalities and religions, and have alternated prosperity and prosperity.
After the Ming Dynasty, the overland Silk Road was almost interrupted, and the Construction of the Mogao Grottoes was also stopped, and it was gradually forgotten.
Until June 22, 1900, the summer solstice.
The Taoist monk Wang Yuanzhen was still sweeping the quicksand in the cave day and night, hoping to repair one of the Buddhist halls into his dojo as soon as possible.
Yang Guo, a poor farmer he had hired to clean with him, inadvertently knocked on the wall, and the empty sound echoed behind the wall, now numbered Cave 16.
That night, the two men knocked on the outer wall and found a small door that was less than one person high, completely blocked by mud.
When this door was opened, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves hid the scripture cave and reappeared in the human world.
The location of cave 16 and tibetan scripture cave of Dunhuang Mogao Caves
It's hard to imagine what a shocking situation that would have been.
Countless scrolls, paintings, documents, fabrics, banners... From the ground to the top of the cave, the relics sealed in the grotto for nearly a thousand years have reappeared.
Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes has nine floors. Photo by Sun Zhijun
In the more than 120 years since the Mogao Grottoes were rediscovered, Dunhuang Studies has gradually emerged, and the Mogao Grottoes have also been listed as a World Cultural Heritage.
Mogao Cave 322 Cave West Wall Shrine Sun Zhijun photo
Once it was like a leaf dried in the desert, but now it is like a book that has been "soaked" again, and the more you read it, the thicker it gets.
If the Forbidden City is like an enterprising emperor, and what happened here has changed the course of Chinese history again and again, then the Mogao Grottoes are like a dignified old man, silently preserving the imprint of every step of our civilization.
In addition to the popular star "Nine Colored Deer", which has been transformed into an animated film, there is no shortage of out-of-print national treasures.
Cave 257 of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, south of the west wall. The murals painted by the Northern Wei Dynasty are divided into three layers, and the middle is the famous story of the nine-colored deer saving drowning people. Photo by Sun Zhijun
For example, have you ever seen Li Shimin's "real handwriting"? There is one in the Dunhuang suicide note.
Li Shimin's "Hot Spring Inscription" was extremely rare during the Two Song Dynasties, and the Dunhuang fragment is an authentic Tang Tuo Tang frame, which is now in the National Library of France.
Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France
And when we were in middle school, we memorized Li Bai's "Will Enter the Wine", compared with the original "original version" of the Tang Dynasty in the Dunhuang Testament, and after more than a thousand years, we found that what we were carrying was actually the "harmonious version" of the Song Dynasty.
The real original version is called "Cherishing the Bottle"
"Gaotang Mingjing" is written as "Bedside Mirror", "Qingsi" in "Towards the Green Silk Twilight Into Snow" is written as "Qingyun", "Born I will be useful" is "Born with talent"... "Ancient sages are lonely" is written "Ancient sages are dead".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="169" > people, stories, Dunhuang</h1>
From Ban Chao to Cangci to the nameless painter, the lives of countless people are forever linked to Dunhuang, and their stories are also the stories of Dunhuang.
Fan Jinshi, honorary president of the Dunhuang Research Institute, known as the "daughter of Dunhuang", spent more than 40 years of her life in Dunhuang, saying:
It is a treasure trove of cultural exchanges between the East and the West on the Silk Roads, a unique treasure trove of human art and culture.
Ji Xianlin once said:
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, islam, and there is no fifth.
There is only one place where these four cultural systems converge, that is, China's Dunhuang and Xinjiang regions, and there is no second.
Dunhuang and the Mogao Grottoes are like a "miracle", attracting generations of people to explore.
In fact, Dunhuang has experienced vicissitudes, especially in the middle of the 16th century, when the Ming Dynasty government closed Jiayuguan and the people outside the Guanwai moved inland, dunhuang was once again reduced to a border wasteland.
In the nearly four hundred years from the closure of the customs to the establishment of the Dunhuang Art Research Institute in 1944, the Mogao Grottoes were left unattended and maintained, allowing the eaves of the cave to decay, the cave door to be missing, the cave chamber to collapse, the wind and the sun, the sand to invade, and the river to flood...
After all kinds of natural and man-made destruction, this most famous monument in Dunhuang has become very fragile.
Documentary "Dunhuang"
Protection is our theme today. Mogao Grottoes is like an "old man" who has suffered from wind and frost, which is old, very fragile, and constantly diseased, and needs to carry out more refined restoration and protection work; on the other hand, it is also necessary to continuously conduct in-depth research on this "old man" to provide more theoretical basis for preventive protection and make the cave more long-lasting.
Ah Xin sometimes thinks that maybe one day, the murals and painted sculptures made of mud, grass, wood, mineral pigments, and animal glue in the Mogao Grottoes will disappear into the long river of history, but the stories of these "children of Dunhuang" will be passed down from generation to generation together with these cultural legends, which is the cultural memory of all Chinese.