A "Dunhuang Handbook" for Hong Kong University Students

Xinhua News Agency, Hong Kong, June 6 Title: A "Dunhuang Handbook" for Hong Kong University Students

Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Yuchuan

Turning over the cowhide cover of the handbook, a series of watercolor paintings come into view, the brown Buddha Hall, the yellow rock, the blue Jiayuguan Airport... This is a hand-painted "Dunhuang Handbook" by first-year student Luo Xiaoman of Hong Kong Baptist University.

Luo Xiaoman is a quiet and elegant girl. Her money was not spent on clothes and cosmetics, but on stationery such as books, adhesive paper, and paint, "hoping that others would know me through my words and paintings." She used the color representing Dunhuang in her heart to paint her account.

There are so many beautiful and interesting places in the motherland

Luo Xiaoman came to Hong Kong with his parents from Guangdong when he was a child. Because her father had a habit of keeping a diary, she heard about it and wrote her joys and sorrows into the book since she was a child. From the beginning there were only words, to the later pictures and texts, every page was carefully done, just like this, one book after another, Luo Xiaoman has made seven or eight handbooks.

A book of cowhide handbooks neatly arranged on the desk, they are Xiao Man's "good friends". From time to time, Xiao Man took it out and flipped through it, and each handbook told a story.

In 2012, Lo Xiaoman participated in the Hong Kong students' exchange group to the mainland for the first time. That trip to Yunnan broadened her horizons: it turned out that there were so many beautiful and interesting places in the motherland. Xiao Man remembers riding a car with dozens of Hong Kong students for more than five hours to deliver water to villagers in a remote village. An old grandmother held Little Man's hand tightly in her calloused hand and sang a song for her in dialect, "No one has ever thanked me in this way."

In the spring of 2017, Luo Xiaoman once again participated in the exchange group of Hong Kong students to the mainland. This time, she went to Dunhuang, which she had longed for for a long time.

Marvel at the exquisite Dunhuang murals

30 Hong Kong university students set off from Shenzhen, first to Xi'an, and then to Jiayuguan, although all the way to The Labor, but everyone was very excited. These Hong Kong children, born around the time of Hong Kong's return to the motherland in 1997, are all going to the great northwest of the motherland for the first time, and they are amazed by the comfortable and fast high-speed rail, clean city streets, large and small windmills along the way, and the mobile payment available everywhere. "The interior has changed a lot, and Dunhuang has also been modernized." Luo Xiaoman said that the development of the western region was greatly unexpected by the students.

Not only are the exquisite murals of the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes amazing, but the exquisite and unique Dunhuang dance also amazes them. After watching the Dunhuang dance performance, the students were deeply attracted, and some girls were also interested in learning some basic movements of Dunhuang dance from the dancers.

Standing in front of the famous Mogao Cave Cave No. 96 ("Nine Floors"), Xiao Man was thrilled. She used yellow and black small letters to record every detail of the cave in detail in the handbook, such as why the rebound lute in the fresco was... Since there were no photographs in the cave, she searched for photos of the murals she saw one by one on the Internet, printed them out, and carefully pasted them into her handbook.

The handbook contains a page of photographs of camels and Buddhas, and the blank space of the photograph is covered with earth yellow, coffee and black. She said that Dunhuang is the main road of the Silk Road, many merchants have ridden camels to come here, after a thousand years of baptism, Dunhuang's splendid culture has been discovered by future generations, "to be able to touch dunhuang's long-standing culture in the museum, is the luck of today's people."

Visiting the Dunhuang Research Institute History Exhibition Hall, the Dunhuang notes made by Dunhuang researchers in different periods shocked Luo Xiaoman and his classmates. The researchers studied each cave in Dunhuang very carefully, the notebook was thick, the paper was yellow, and every stroke of the pen was very hard. Xiao Man was shocked to hear that some researchers had not been out of Dunhuang for more than 40 years, and she admired these people who had devoted their lives to Dunhuang. Because the Dunhuang murals are made of minerals as paint, air and sunlight will damage the murals, so the notes left by researchers in different periods are very precious.

In Xiao Man's handbook, Teacher Zhao of Dunhuang College of Northwest Normal University is an important person. Teacher Zhao has been copying Dunhuang murals for decades, spending more than 10 hours a day copying them, and has also spent ten years copying a painting. Teacher Zhao said that the significance of copying is that if one day, future generations can no longer see the true face of Dunhuang, they can still feel Dunhuang from the copied murals.

Dunhuang has murals of about 40,000 square meters, the caves stretch for 45 kilometers, and the collection is more than 30,000 pieces. Teacher Zhao told Xiao Man that in Dunhuang, even those who have read thousands of books will feel that they have only learned a shallow learning. Xiao Man admired Teacher Zhao for being lonely in order to continue Dunhuang culture, "after thousands of years of construction by countless people, Dunhuang was cast."

Let more Hong Kong people know that Dunhuang loves Dunhuang

Before the trip to Dunhuang, Xiao Man only knew that to study art, she had to learn the West and learn new things, and now she understood that there were many good things in Chinese culture that could be discovered and had to be found.

Xiao Man said that although Hong Kong is a place where Eastern and Western cultures blend, there are very few friends around her who know Dunhuang, so she can't wait to let more Hong Kong people know about such a mysterious and beautiful place. How to better promote Dunhuang and carry forward traditional Chinese culture in the way that Hong Kong people like, Luo Xiaoman is groping, "to learn more things and invest more time."

After returning from Dunhuang, she made a personal social networking page and put the notes of visiting the 16 caves in Dunhuang on her social network, which received a lot of likes. It turned out that there were still many Hong Kong people who were interested in this, and Xiao Man was more confident. She is determined to devote herself to learning and promoting traditional Chinese culture as Teacher Zhao did in protecting Dunhuang culture.

She said that the roots of Hong Kong culture are traditional Chinese culture.

According to the person in charge of the Dunhuang exchange group, the dunhuang researchers were very touched by the tens of thousands of words of the Dunhuang Report written by these Hong Kong children. They are actively preparing with Dunhuang related units to make 60 replicas of Dunhuang Caves exhibited at various universities and secondary schools in Hong Kong during the year.

"I am willing to volunteer to explain to more Hong Kong people the knowledge of Dunhuang that I have gained." Little Man said with a smile.