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Home> China City Guide> Dunhuang
Offering the breif description of Dunhuang, the Mogao Grottoes, the Crescent Moon Lake, the Wei Caves and the Sui Dynasty Caves.
Introduction (Dunhuang)
Dunhuang, located in west Gansu Province, is a well-known historical and cultural site listed by the State.
After travelling for hours towards Dunhuang, the flat, barren desert landscape suddenly gives way to lush green cultivated fields with mountainous rolling sand dunes as a backdrop. The area has a certain haunting beauty, especially at night under a star-studded sky. It's not so much the desert dunes and romantic nights that attract so many tourists to Dunhuang, but the superb Buddhist art at the nearby Mogao Caves.
Legend said a monk, Yue Zun, dug the first cave and also cut a statue of the Buddha into the sandstone cliff face of Mingsha mountain, where are now the famous Mogao Grottoes, about 25 kilometers southeast of Dunhuang. Over 1000 caves were cut out of cliffs between the 4th and 14th centuries. The art of Dunhuang began to decline in the 12th century and was ignored until the early years of the 20th century. Today 492 caves remains in the 1600-meter-long cliff face. The Mogao caves are one of the best preserved and most extensive collections of Buddhist paintings and sculptures in the world. The Buddhist art of Dunhuang is truly fascinating.
The Buddhist Art of Dunhuang
Serving as the westernmost fort of the early Tang Dynasty, Dunhuang was not only a key trading post situated on the "Silk Road" but also the military headquarters for the operations in the Western Regions. Foreign merchants and monks from the West as well as officials and soldiers from central China brought their own cultures to Dunhuang and made the trading center a cultural "melting pot." The economic, military, political and cultural activities which took place at this cross-roads provided the basis for the flourishing of one of China's earliest Buddhist centers.
Most Buddhist monks came to China from India and Central Asia by way of the Silk Road. As the westernmost Chinese station on the route, Dunhuang became the ideal place for these foreign monks to learn the Chinese language and culture before entering central China. Foreign monks and their Chinese disciples formed the earliest Buddhist communities at Dunhuang in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. Many Buddhist sutras were translated at Dunhuang and then distributed into central China. Monk Zhu Fahu, a famous translator of Buddhist texts, organized his translation team at Dunhuang and became known as "The Bodhisattva of Dunhuang." Enormous economic and human resources were used to produce Buddhist sutras and to build places of worship, including thousands of cave temples. By the 5th century, Dunhuang had become an important center of Buddhism on the Silk Road.
The Art of Dunhuang Caves
Although it was only a small oasis town located in the desert of northwestern China, Dunhuang became the site of the largest
complex of ancient Chinese art. Particularly, the Mogao Caves, which are located in the gobi-desert 25 kilometers away from the city, consist of 492 caves with 25000 square meters wall paintings and more than 3000 painted sculptures. These well preserved caves span a period of one thousand years, from the 4th to the 14th century, and visually represent with vivid detail the culture of medieval China. The discovery in 1900 of a secret library cave, which was sealed around the mid-11th century and remained untouched for nine hundred years, has further made Dunhuang an extremely important site for the studies of medieval Chinese civilization. In addition to the Mogao Caves, a few other sites of Buddhist caves are located in the Dunhuang region, including the Yulin Caves (42 caves), Eastern Thousand Buddhas Caves (23 caves), and Shuixiakou (8 caves) in Anxi county, the Western Thousand Buddhas Caves (22 caves) in Dunhuang, and the Five-temple Caves (6 caves) and One-temple Cave (2 caves) in Subei county.
Despite a surge in tourism development, the town still has a fairly relaxed feel to it, and it's easy to kick back here for a few days. There are several sights worth visiting in the surrounding area, and the town is just lively enough to keep you entertained.
Also called Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, the grottoes, 25 kilometers southeast of the Dunhuang town, were hewn, beginning in 366 A.D., In a 1,600-meter expanse across the sheer Cliffside running from south to west. The remaining 492 grottoes contain 2,415 painted statues and 4,500 square meters of murals.
The smallest cave is only about 0.3 meter tall, merely allowing one to pop his head in, whereas the largest one covers a space of 268 square meters. The tallest grotto stands from the foot to the top of the hill, looking like a high-rise from the outside. All are randomly scattered like a honeycomb.
Despite harsh weathering through the centuries, the murals in the grottoes still remain colorful and brilliant, with their content focusing mainly on Buddhist stories. They are a showcase for the development and evolution of China's art from the Northern and Southern dynasties (420-589) to the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368). The influence if the artistic styles and techniques of India, Greece and other Middle East countries can also be traced. The numerous murals are priceless both academically and artistically. Grotto No. 17 is a sutra-keeping cave well-known at home and abroad. The over 50,000 sutras, ancient documents, embroideries and portraits discovered here in 1900 once produced wide repercussions in the academic circles of the world.
The grottoes, the greatest, epic art treasure-house in the would today, is like a shining pear inlaid in the "Silk Road" where the East met the West with their cultures, attracting an endless flow of scholars and tourists with their everlasting charms.
Echoing-sand Mountain
The Echoing-sand Mountain is located six kilometers south of Dunhuang City. A sand mountain, it is over 40 kilometers long from east to west, and over 20 kilometers wide from south to north. Its peak, surrounded by rolling ridges and precipitous cliffs, has a relative height of 250 meters.
The lake is 6km south of the centre of Dunhuang at the Singing Sand Mountains, where the oasis meets the desert. Spring water trickles up into a depression between huge sand dunes, forming a small, crescent-shaped pond (not to be confused with the concrete storage pool nearby).
The climb to the top of the dunes is sweaty work, but the dramatic view back across the rolling desert sands towards the oasis makes the effort worthwhile.
Out here the recreational activities include the predictable camel rides, the more novel "dune surfing"(sand sliding) and paragliding (jumping off the top of high dunes with a chute on your back). There is also a tow-gliding operation closer to the entry gate: continue past it if you want to jump off a dune.
This reconstructed Song Dynasty town, complete with 5m-high city walls, was built in 1987 as a movie set for a Sino-Japanese co- production titled Dunhuang.
Standing isolated out in the desert some 16km to the southwest of Dunhuang, from a distance the Old City has a dramatic and strikingly realistic appearance. It's a reasonably interesting place for a short visit.
Northern Wei, Western Wei and Northern Zhou Caves
The Turkic-speaking Tobas, who invaded and conquered the country in the 4th century, inhabited the region north of China and founded the Northern Wei Dynasty around 386 A.D.
Friction between groups who wanted to maintain the traditional Toba lifestyle and those who wanted to assimilate with the Chinese eventually split the Toba Empire in the middle of the 6th century.
The eastern part adopted the Chinese way of life and the rulers took the dynasty name of Northern Qi. The western part took the dynasty name of Northern Zhou and tried in vain to revert to Toba customs. By 567 A.D., however, they had managed to defeat the Qi to take control of all of northern China.
The fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 A.D. sent Confucianism into decline. This, plus the turmoil of the Toba invasions, made Buddhism's teachings of nirvana and personal salvation highly appealing to many. Under the patronage of the new rulers, the religion spread rapidly and made a new and decisive impact on Chinese art which can be seen in the Buddhist statues at Mogao.
The art of this period is characterized by its attempt to depict the spirituality of those who had achieved enlightenment and transcended the material world through their asceticism.The Wei statues are slim, ethereal figures with finely chiseled features and comparatively large heads, and clearly show the influence of Indian Buddhist art and teachings.
The Sui Dynasty began when a general of Chinese of mixed Chinese-Toba origin usurped the throne of the Northern Zhou Dynasty. Prudently putting to death all the sons of the former emperor, he embarked on a series of wars which by 589 A.D. had reunited northern and southern China for the first time in 360 years.
The Tobas simply disappeared from history, either mixing with other Turkish tribes from central Asia or assimilating with the Chinese.
The Sui Dynasty was short-lived, and very much a transition between the Wei and Tang periods. This can be seen in the Sui caves: the graceful Indian curves in the Buddha and bodhisattvas figures start to give way to the more rigid style of Chinese sculpture.
During the Tang period, China pushed its borders forcefully westward as far as Lake Balkhash in today's Kazakhstan.Trade expanded and foreign merchants and people of diverse religions streamed into the Tang capital of Chang'an.
Buddhism became prominent and Buddhist art reached its peak; the proud bearing of the Buddhist figures in the Mogao Caves reflects the feelings of the times, the prevailing image of the brave and warrior, and the strength and steadfastness of the empire.
This was also the high point of the cave art at Mogao. Some 230 caves were carved, including two impressive grottoes containing enormous seated buddha figures. The statue residing in cave 96 is a towering 34.5m tall-a slightly shorter (26m) counterpart in cave 130 is no less impressive.
The portraits of Tang nobles are considerably larger than those of the Wei and Sui dynasties and the figures tend to occupy important positions within the murals. In some cases the patrons are portrayed in the same scene as the Buddha.
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