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Silk Road cave paintings facing new threat
Silk Road cave paintings that survive from the 4th
century facing new threat - from tourism and the lure of profit
Abandoned for centuries, the Mogao Grottoes have somehow
survived everything that nature and man could throw at them from earthquakes
and floods to marauding Muslim rebels and plundering European
explorers. But now the exquisite Buddhist frescoes are in peril once
more...
Tourists queue to enter the Mogao Grottoes during China's National Day
holiday ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images
At the heart of
the ancient Silk Road, on the edge of the Gobi Desert, lies a centuries-old
place of pilgrimage: hundreds of caves hewn from a sandstone cliff containing
some of the most exquisite Buddhist frescoes and figures in the world.
Abandoned for centuries, the Mogao Grottoes somehow survived everything that nature and man could throw at them, including earthquakes, floods and sandstorms. Marauding Muslim rebels, plundering European explorers and White Russian soldiers all left their mark. Rampaging Red Guards were turned away at the height of China’s Cultural Revolution.
Today, the caves
outside Dunhuang, in western China, enjoy a new stature at the heart of
Communist China’s efforts to revitalise and rebuild the Silk Road as a
testament to its growing power in Asia. They also stand as a symbol of
Sino-American cooperation in China’s cultural preservation, thanks to
pioneering work by the Getty Conservation Institute.
A crumbling, 1,000-year-old Buddhist fresco from inside in the Mogao Grottoes (PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)
But the fragile
wall paintings, some of which date to the 4th century and show stories from
Buddha’s life and visions of the afterlife, face another threat — from a new
army of tourists and the lure of profit.
“In the past 100
years, most of the damage has been done by nature, but visits by more tourists
will break the original balance inside the caves,” said Wang Xudong, president
of Dunhuang Academy, which runs, preserves and restores the site. “Constant entrance
and exit changes the temperature and humidity inside the caves. Human bodies
also carry microorganisms, and if they start to grow inside the caves, it
would be very scary.”
More than 1.1
million tourists visited the caves in 2015, a rise of 40 per cent in just a
year and a roughly 20-fold jump in the past two decades.
The vast
majority are Chinese, as the country’s growing wealth fuels a huge boom in
domestic tourism and as interest is renewed in China’s Buddhist past.
With advice from
Getty’s experts, the Dunhuang Academy initially tried to cap the number of
tourists at 3,000 a day but later realised “that limit just would not stop
people from coming,” Wang said. The limit was then raised to 6,000 a day, but
demand regularly exceeds that in the peak July-to-October season.
Experts fear an
increase in tourism 'will break the original balance inside the caves'
(ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)
To relieve the
pressure, tourists are asked to register in advance and, before visiting the
site, watch two 20-minute movies in a sweeping new visitor center on the
history of Dunhuang and the caves themselves.
Later, they are
guided through a selection of the 40 caves that are open to the public,
forbidden to take photographs in case their camera flash damages the frescoes.
Register too
late, above the 6,000 cutoff, and you’ll miss the movies and get to see only
four caves. By giving these latecomers “a very bad experience,” Wang said he
hopes to encourage more people to come during the low season, when ticket prices
are halved.
The question is
whether Wang can stem the tide. Beside the visitor center, nine miles from the
caves, construction workers are building a privately funded tourist complex,
including a theater and hotels.
Visitors view
replicas of artwork form the Mogao Grottoes at the Dunhuang Art Exhibition
(China Photos/Getty Images)
In the city of
Dunhuang, a $250 million conference center and a bigger, 2,000-seat theater are
being built to house an annual Silk Road Cultural Expo. The large modern
airport is being expanded, with a $150 million upgrade.
“There is
enormous commercial pressure,” said Neville Agnew, who has been visiting and
working in the caves for 28 years for the Getty Conservation Institute. “The
growth of the city of Dunhuang depends ultimately on the Mogao Grottoes. They
are going to have their work cut out to control visitation, and, of course, I
think you’d find many people who are interested in development of the region
want more visitors.”
Yet there is
also state-of-the-art restoration work going on here, thanks to a long-standing
collaboration between the Dunhuang Academy, Getty and other foreign experts.
Painstakingly,
the restorers start in each cave by taking hundreds of high-resolution
photographs, in color and black and white. Then the frescoes are examined to
see what materials were used — and the causes of deterioration diagnosed —
before experts decide on the best materials and methods to restore them.
Experts are
documenting the stunning frescoes on the walls of the Mogao Grottoes (Ed
Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
Some of the
paintings, rendered on a base of mud and grass, are partly detached from the
rock face, and enormously vulnerable to humidity or earthquakes. Different
kinds of grout were extensively tested before one was chosen to fill the gaps.
The project has
produced guidelines that have been applied to other grottoes across China as
well as principles that have helped the country better manage its heritage
sites. It has also spawned a major new exhibition at the Getty Research
Institute in Los Angeles that runs from May until September and includes
full-size replicas of three of the caves.
It is a much
happier example of Sino-Western collaboration than the caves experienced a
century ago. In 1907, Hungarian British archaeologist Aurel Stein persuaded a
local monk to sell him 24 trunks packed with ancient Buddhist scriptures and
five trunks of paintings, embroideries and other artworks that had only
recently been discovered in a small walled-up cave. He paid the equivalent of
130 pounds.
French, Japanese
and Russian explorers took thousands more priceless documents in subsequent
years before American Langdon Warner showed up in 1923 to find the portable
treasures gone. Determined not to leave empty-handed, he took some of the
sculptures and used adhesive glue to rip a dozen paintings off the walls.
The official
history calls them the “despicable treasure hunters.”
Others who
weren’t seeking relics inflicted their own sorts of damage. In 1870, Muslim
rebels turned up at the caves, burning down many of the wooden ladders that
gave access. They may also have been responsible for scratching the faces off
some of the paintings.
In 1921, White
Russian soldiers who had retreated into China during the war against the
Bolsheviks were detained by the Chinese government and temporarily jailed in
the caves. The damage from their fires, and their graffiti, is still visible in
several caves.
But history was
kinder during China’s Cultural Revolution, when, on orders from Premier Zhou
Enlai, People’s Liberation Army soldiers and police were dispatched to protect
the caves from gangs of Red Guards intent on destroying them.
Technicians
restore Buddhist art in the Mogao Grottoes (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
Today, 735 caves
remain, hewn from the cliff over a period of 1,000 years. Nearly 500 have
paintings on the walls — undecorated caves were for meditation — while more
than 2,000 sculptures have survived.
With partners
all over the world, the Dunhuang Academy is working on a major digital
archiving project, photographing the caves and everything that was once
contained within them. Wang said that more than 40,000 artworks or scriptures
are scattered around the world but that this is a way to unite them and
preserve them forever.
“Of course, we
hope that when the world truly becomes a big family, they can come back to
Mogao caves and unite with the other relics here,” he said. “But reality is
quite cruel sometimes. If we can get them back to the Internet family through
digitalization, that is a target we can achieve for now.”
© The
Washington Post
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