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A place that is associated with strange tales is a mystery in itself, and fascinating Dunhuang in northwestern China’s Gansu Province is just such a place. A tangle of mysteries and exotica, it has attracted not only curious tourists but also film directors who seek the atmospherics of antiquity and mysticism for their work.
Two decades ago Japanese director Junya Sato came here to shoot his war epic The Silk Road (1988). His selection of Dunhuang’s stark wilderness and vast solitude fit with the film’s basic themes. Twenty years later award-winning Hong Kong film director Gordon Chan also made this the location for China’s first horror-fantasy film, Painted Skin, based on a piece from Strange Tales from a Carefree Studio – a Qing-dynasty collection of supernatural stories. He put to good use the Gobi Desert, the Great Wall, ancient Gansu murals, and a mysterious cave with a wealth of Buddhist manuscripts.
Dunhuang is a rich pocket of Chinese history, deeper than 2,000 years. It borders the Taklimakan Desert, China’s second largest, and since ancient times has served as a traffic hub that links the East with the West. Sitting on the Old Silk Road, it witnessed the migration of Buddhism from India and facilitated political, commercial and cultural exchanges between the Oriental and Occidental civilizations.
Mogao Grottoes and the Cave of Buddhist Manuscripts
The Mogao Grottoes, also known as the “Thousand-Buddha Caves,” are 25 kilometers southeast of downtown Dunhuang. They form the largest cluster of Buddhist grotto art in China, comprising 735 caves excavated by various dynasties and aligned in three-to-four levels across the 1,600-meter-long cliffside of Mingsha Mountain. Among them are 492 numbered caves, all decorated with colorful frescos, and some with painted Buddhist statues as well. The motifs reflect the life of the times, representing their contemporary architecture, social conventions and major family events such as weddings and funerals.
However, Buddhism is the real subject of these murals and statues. Dunhuang hugged the passageway along which Buddhism was introduced into China, and many of its ancient residents were converts. Artists painted stories of the Buddha and rendered the scriptures on walls to help people understand and appreciate the foreign religion. Apart from Sakyamuni, they depicted many flying apsaras (celestial nymphs who dwell in the heavens) in elaborate dresses with diaphanous banners, dancing, playing music and scattering flowers around him. There are more than 6,000 of these angels in the Mogao Grottoes – the largest population of the frescoed world – and the size of their images ranges from five centimeters to more than two meters in length. They have been frequently borrowed as symbols of Dunhuang by today’s artisans and designers.
At the time the frescoes were painted, many Buddhist monks lived in Dunhuang, translating and transcribing Buddhist scriptures that were later introduced inland. Monk Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty may be the most famous Buddhist in Chinese history and his reputation was spread farther afield by the classic novel Journey to the West. He stole away via Dunhuang along the Silk Road into India, brought back Buddhist scriptures and helped with their dissemination east into China’s interior. In 2005, one of his translations was discovered in Dunhuang.
The dry climate has helped ensure the survival of the Dunhuang murals that grace the cliff faces. Studies show that the Mogao Grottoes were dug and chiseled out between the fourth and 14th centuries, spanning more than 10 dynasties. The dynastic differences in the murals and statuary are reflected in the disparities of style. It is not uncommon to find that a fresco from a previous dynasty has been obscured by a surface mural from a later dynasty.
Historically, Dunhuang has been through several periods of warfare and massive turmoil. To protect Buddhist treasures, monks built a cave and safely stored more than 40,000 volumes of handwritten scriptures, manuscripts and art works. The Silk Road (1988) depicts this episode of history in great detail. Everything hinged on keeping the cave a secret, so the monk-builders left town after sealing the cave, and, concealing their identity under new assumed names, adhered to a pact never to return to Dunhuang. Several hundred years later in the early 20th century, a Taoist monk stumbled on the cave unawares. After the news spread, Western adventurers showed up in droves and smuggled much of this literary and religious treasure trove out of China. Most of it is now held in the public and private museums of Britain, France, Russia and Japan.
To protect the murals in the Mogao Grottoes, all the caves have been installed with doors to prevent damage from sunlight and ventilation. Only a small number of the works are available for public viewing. The local government has duplicated the caves for visitors to obtain a panoramic view of the murals. It is expected that before long all the caves might be locked up, leaving only their duplicates to quench the thirst of pilgrims.
Singing Sands and Eternal Springs
Several sand dunes in western China have a particular kind of structure that causes a peculiar phenomenon: the sand generates a thundering din as it flows downwards, hence the name Mingshashan, or Singing Sand Mountain. The one in Dunhuang is the most famous of them all, thanks to a body of clear water – the Crescent-Moon Spring – at its foot.
The Mogao Grottoes were built into the vertical face of the eastern slope of Mingshashan. To the back of the cliff is a desert, composed of fine-textured red, yellow, green, white and black sands. In sunlight, the five-colored slope glistens beautifully. During the daytime, sand grains tumble down the dune faces under the influence of gravity. At night, sweeping winds carry them back up to the heights of the slope. Day after day and night after night, this tug of war goes on without ceasing, yet the sand dune remains where it has always been for centuries.
Perhaps more fascinating than the perpetual hourglass of the slopes is the Crescent-Moon Spring, wrapped in a wreath of indomitable sand dunes. The pool is 100 meters long, spanning 25 meters at its widest girth and bottoming out at five meters where it’s deepest. It has also existed for hundreds, or even thousands of years, never drying up in this merciless desert where the rate of evaporation is more than 100 times that of precipitation. Nor has it ever been filled in by the shifting sands.
On the southern bank of the pool is an oasis, where ancient temples were built in the shade of its greenery. Famous sites include the Patriarch Lü Memorial Hall, the Dragon God Temple and the Mingsha Academy of Classic Learning. The oasis is a haven for congregations of Daoists. The northern bank, in sharp contrast, is an intimidating stretch of lifeless desert, which, strangely enough, is of little detriment to the mirror-like spring pool. The yellow desert and green waters nestle against one another peacefully.
A Tale of Two Passes
The Silk Road bifurcates west of Dunhuang, and the Yumen and Yangguan passes guarded the entrances to these two routes. The gates functioned like today’s customs offices, and stepping cross the passes meant departure from the Central Plains Area. Today the facilities of both the passes have gone, leaving behind only the ruined foundations from which tourists can imagine their past glories.
The Yumen (Jade Gate) Pass controlled access to the northern route. It was so named because Hotan Jade from the Western Regions was carried through the pass into the inland areas where the stone enjoyed a great reputation. Its ruins form a square city wall of rammed yellow earth, rising abruptly on the limitless horizon of the Gobi Desert. After more than 2,000 years, it is still in admirably good shape, and at 10 meters tall and between three and five meters thick, allows people and horses to traverse it.
According to historical records, the Yumen Pass experienced its heyday from the second century B.C. to the third century A.D., during the Han Dynasty. The Han rulers sent envoys to local regimes in the Western Regions in order to establish good relations with them and open commercial exchange. The best known of the envoys accessing the Western Regions via the Yumen Pass was Zhang Qian. By the fourth century, the Silk Road traffic broke trails further north; the pass gradually declined, and was finally swallowed into oblivion.
The Yangguan Pass was a contemporary of the Yumen Pass, also built on the Gobi Desert but to the south of Yumen, because the ancient Chinese considered south to be yang. The Chinese phrase, “the thoroughfare of the Yangguan Pass,” which is still used today, indicates the past prosperity of the major commercial traffic that passed through it.It was close to two water sources, the Wowa Pool and Xitu Ditch. Further west of the pass was the Taklimakan Desert, and that fact explains why the Yangguan outlived the Yumen Pass.
During the days when camels were the major means of transport, water was very important for survival in the desert. All the caravans and travelers that headed for the desert stopped at the Yangguan Pass for replenishment, so that pass stayed in service much longer than the Yumen. In 1274 Italian traveler Marco Polo went to Dunhuang via the Yangguan Pass and recorded the local folklore in his travelogue. The pass was just a memory after the 13th century, gently reclaimed by a massive amount of mud and silt delivered by constant flooding.
The Wowa Pool survives as part of the Yellow Dam Reservoir, and the site of the Yangguan Pass is still known as Antique Beach. According to locals, the place used to be littered with ancient jade articles, potsherds, coins and weapons. The Yangguan Pass Ruins Museum was built in 2003, covering an area of 100,000 square meters and exhibiting the history, architecture and folk art of the ancient pass. Visitors can buy at a cost of a few US dollars a Silk Road “passport“ as a souvenir.
The Voices of Ghost Town
Yardang means “steep earthen mount” in the Uygur language. It is a wind erosion phenomenon particular to arid areas. The Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark in Gansu Province, 180 kilometers northwest of Dunhuang, is better known by its rather frightening nickname, “Ghost Town,” referring to the eerie collection of yardang found there.
The park is an important part of the mysterious Lop Nor and covers an area 25 kilometers from east to west and five kilometers from north to south. Its light red-brown landmass is thick with neatly aligned, row upon row, natural formations of earthen mounds. They are thought to resemble many of the world’s famous architectural accomplishments, such as Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, Lhasa’s Potala Palace, the Pyramid and Sphinx of Egypt, Arabic mosques, and European castles of the Middle Ages.
Walking through the naturally formed “streets” and “squares” and around the many “buildings” of the “walled town,” one can hear a strange, persistent woo-woo crying, which, the locals insist is made by ghosts. The cries of the departed in “Ghost town” are actually produced by the friction of the flowing wind on the strange undulations of the geography.
The Dunhuang Yardang Geopark is the largest of its kind in China and offers the largest natural wonders of landmass –a tourist magnet of the highest order. It has attracted many film directors, including Zhang Yimou, who shot his international hit film Hero in its bizarre surrounds.
Travel Tips:
It is often recommended that visitors to Dunhuang bring an electric torch with them. However, torches are strongly discouraged because light will fade the color of the murals more quickly, as proven by the fact that the pigments of the murals that face the entrance of a cave are always fainter than those in the darker corners. Guides of the Mogao Grottoes will provide lighting for visitors to see the murals while they conduct a narrated tour.
Travel Tips:
Tourists can opt to ride a camel or take an electric car into the desert in the Mingshashan Park. Sand sports include slides and motors.
During the peak season, it is recommended that tourists visit the park after 2:00 pm and be prepared for direct sunlight, for there is no place to escape it. The dusk is the most beautiful moment to visit the Crescent-Moon Spring. Tourists can rent a pair of shoe covers at the entrance of the park, or bring their own, to prevent the sand from filling their shoes.
Warning: To avoid unnatural flows of sand downward that may break the ecological balance and cause damage to the pool, tourists are asked not to climb the sand dune on the northern bank of the Crescent-Moon Spring.
The Putaogou (Grape Gully) Village is encountered on the way back from the Yangguan Pass. Visitors can stop here for a folklore tour, a northwestern rural meal, or to pick fresh fruits.
The Yumen Pass is 90 kilometers northwest of downtown Dunhuang, and the Yangguan Pass is 70 kilometers southwest of it, with no public transit between them. Visitors have to either rent a car or join a tour group at Dunhuang.
Travel Tips:
Warning: Those who want to drive there by themselves better use an all terrain vehicle. They can follow the beaten tracks left by other trekkers on the Gobi Desert, but should hire a local guide to avoid getting lost.
To avoid confusion you should be aware that there are several places that are called Yumen Pass in China. The one at Dunhuang is a legacy of the Han Dynasty, which is different from its Tang-dynasty counterpart.
Travel Tips:
Dunhuang has a typical continental climate (temperate), with persistent droughts and little rain year round. The sunshine is strong during the daytime, resulting in an acute day-night temperature disparity. This tourist city’s peak season is from May to October, concurrent with the local fruit and melon harvesting seasons. Because of the sharp diurnal/nocturnal temperature disparity, local apricot, peach, date, grape, pear and Hami melon are very sweet. Local handicrafts include jade ware and bone carvings; artisans mostly take the camel as a motif or borrow from Dunhuang murals. Local diet mainly consists of mutton, beef and wheat flour. Dunhuang has an airport and train station, and transportation is convenient.
Two decades ago Japanese director Junya Sato came here to shoot his war epic The Silk Road (1988). His selection of Dunhuang’s stark wilderness and vast solitude fit with the film’s basic themes. Twenty years later award-winning Hong Kong film director Gordon Chan also made this the location for China’s first horror-fantasy film, Painted Skin, based on a piece from Strange Tales from a Carefree Studio – a Qing-dynasty collection of supernatural stories. He put to good use the Gobi Desert, the Great Wall, ancient Gansu murals, and a mysterious cave with a wealth of Buddhist manuscripts.
Dunhuang is a rich pocket of Chinese history, deeper than 2,000 years. It borders the Taklimakan Desert, China’s second largest, and since ancient times has served as a traffic hub that links the East with the West. Sitting on the Old Silk Road, it witnessed the migration of Buddhism from India and facilitated political, commercial and cultural exchanges between the Oriental and Occidental civilizations.
Mogao Grottoes and the Cave of Buddhist Manuscripts
The Mogao Grottoes, also known as the “Thousand-Buddha Caves,” are 25 kilometers southeast of downtown Dunhuang. They form the largest cluster of Buddhist grotto art in China, comprising 735 caves excavated by various dynasties and aligned in three-to-four levels across the 1,600-meter-long cliffside of Mingsha Mountain. Among them are 492 numbered caves, all decorated with colorful frescos, and some with painted Buddhist statues as well. The motifs reflect the life of the times, representing their contemporary architecture, social conventions and major family events such as weddings and funerals.
However, Buddhism is the real subject of these murals and statues. Dunhuang hugged the passageway along which Buddhism was introduced into China, and many of its ancient residents were converts. Artists painted stories of the Buddha and rendered the scriptures on walls to help people understand and appreciate the foreign religion. Apart from Sakyamuni, they depicted many flying apsaras (celestial nymphs who dwell in the heavens) in elaborate dresses with diaphanous banners, dancing, playing music and scattering flowers around him. There are more than 6,000 of these angels in the Mogao Grottoes – the largest population of the frescoed world – and the size of their images ranges from five centimeters to more than two meters in length. They have been frequently borrowed as symbols of Dunhuang by today’s artisans and designers.
At the time the frescoes were painted, many Buddhist monks lived in Dunhuang, translating and transcribing Buddhist scriptures that were later introduced inland. Monk Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty may be the most famous Buddhist in Chinese history and his reputation was spread farther afield by the classic novel Journey to the West. He stole away via Dunhuang along the Silk Road into India, brought back Buddhist scriptures and helped with their dissemination east into China’s interior. In 2005, one of his translations was discovered in Dunhuang.
The dry climate has helped ensure the survival of the Dunhuang murals that grace the cliff faces. Studies show that the Mogao Grottoes were dug and chiseled out between the fourth and 14th centuries, spanning more than 10 dynasties. The dynastic differences in the murals and statuary are reflected in the disparities of style. It is not uncommon to find that a fresco from a previous dynasty has been obscured by a surface mural from a later dynasty.
Historically, Dunhuang has been through several periods of warfare and massive turmoil. To protect Buddhist treasures, monks built a cave and safely stored more than 40,000 volumes of handwritten scriptures, manuscripts and art works. The Silk Road (1988) depicts this episode of history in great detail. Everything hinged on keeping the cave a secret, so the monk-builders left town after sealing the cave, and, concealing their identity under new assumed names, adhered to a pact never to return to Dunhuang. Several hundred years later in the early 20th century, a Taoist monk stumbled on the cave unawares. After the news spread, Western adventurers showed up in droves and smuggled much of this literary and religious treasure trove out of China. Most of it is now held in the public and private museums of Britain, France, Russia and Japan.
To protect the murals in the Mogao Grottoes, all the caves have been installed with doors to prevent damage from sunlight and ventilation. Only a small number of the works are available for public viewing. The local government has duplicated the caves for visitors to obtain a panoramic view of the murals. It is expected that before long all the caves might be locked up, leaving only their duplicates to quench the thirst of pilgrims.
Singing Sands and Eternal Springs
Several sand dunes in western China have a particular kind of structure that causes a peculiar phenomenon: the sand generates a thundering din as it flows downwards, hence the name Mingshashan, or Singing Sand Mountain. The one in Dunhuang is the most famous of them all, thanks to a body of clear water – the Crescent-Moon Spring – at its foot.
The Mogao Grottoes were built into the vertical face of the eastern slope of Mingshashan. To the back of the cliff is a desert, composed of fine-textured red, yellow, green, white and black sands. In sunlight, the five-colored slope glistens beautifully. During the daytime, sand grains tumble down the dune faces under the influence of gravity. At night, sweeping winds carry them back up to the heights of the slope. Day after day and night after night, this tug of war goes on without ceasing, yet the sand dune remains where it has always been for centuries.
Perhaps more fascinating than the perpetual hourglass of the slopes is the Crescent-Moon Spring, wrapped in a wreath of indomitable sand dunes. The pool is 100 meters long, spanning 25 meters at its widest girth and bottoming out at five meters where it’s deepest. It has also existed for hundreds, or even thousands of years, never drying up in this merciless desert where the rate of evaporation is more than 100 times that of precipitation. Nor has it ever been filled in by the shifting sands.
On the southern bank of the pool is an oasis, where ancient temples were built in the shade of its greenery. Famous sites include the Patriarch Lü Memorial Hall, the Dragon God Temple and the Mingsha Academy of Classic Learning. The oasis is a haven for congregations of Daoists. The northern bank, in sharp contrast, is an intimidating stretch of lifeless desert, which, strangely enough, is of little detriment to the mirror-like spring pool. The yellow desert and green waters nestle against one another peacefully.
A Tale of Two Passes
The Silk Road bifurcates west of Dunhuang, and the Yumen and Yangguan passes guarded the entrances to these two routes. The gates functioned like today’s customs offices, and stepping cross the passes meant departure from the Central Plains Area. Today the facilities of both the passes have gone, leaving behind only the ruined foundations from which tourists can imagine their past glories.
The Yumen (Jade Gate) Pass controlled access to the northern route. It was so named because Hotan Jade from the Western Regions was carried through the pass into the inland areas where the stone enjoyed a great reputation. Its ruins form a square city wall of rammed yellow earth, rising abruptly on the limitless horizon of the Gobi Desert. After more than 2,000 years, it is still in admirably good shape, and at 10 meters tall and between three and five meters thick, allows people and horses to traverse it.
According to historical records, the Yumen Pass experienced its heyday from the second century B.C. to the third century A.D., during the Han Dynasty. The Han rulers sent envoys to local regimes in the Western Regions in order to establish good relations with them and open commercial exchange. The best known of the envoys accessing the Western Regions via the Yumen Pass was Zhang Qian. By the fourth century, the Silk Road traffic broke trails further north; the pass gradually declined, and was finally swallowed into oblivion.
The Yangguan Pass was a contemporary of the Yumen Pass, also built on the Gobi Desert but to the south of Yumen, because the ancient Chinese considered south to be yang. The Chinese phrase, “the thoroughfare of the Yangguan Pass,” which is still used today, indicates the past prosperity of the major commercial traffic that passed through it.It was close to two water sources, the Wowa Pool and Xitu Ditch. Further west of the pass was the Taklimakan Desert, and that fact explains why the Yangguan outlived the Yumen Pass.
During the days when camels were the major means of transport, water was very important for survival in the desert. All the caravans and travelers that headed for the desert stopped at the Yangguan Pass for replenishment, so that pass stayed in service much longer than the Yumen. In 1274 Italian traveler Marco Polo went to Dunhuang via the Yangguan Pass and recorded the local folklore in his travelogue. The pass was just a memory after the 13th century, gently reclaimed by a massive amount of mud and silt delivered by constant flooding.
The Wowa Pool survives as part of the Yellow Dam Reservoir, and the site of the Yangguan Pass is still known as Antique Beach. According to locals, the place used to be littered with ancient jade articles, potsherds, coins and weapons. The Yangguan Pass Ruins Museum was built in 2003, covering an area of 100,000 square meters and exhibiting the history, architecture and folk art of the ancient pass. Visitors can buy at a cost of a few US dollars a Silk Road “passport“ as a souvenir.
The Voices of Ghost Town
Yardang means “steep earthen mount” in the Uygur language. It is a wind erosion phenomenon particular to arid areas. The Dunhuang Yardang National Geopark in Gansu Province, 180 kilometers northwest of Dunhuang, is better known by its rather frightening nickname, “Ghost Town,” referring to the eerie collection of yardang found there.
The park is an important part of the mysterious Lop Nor and covers an area 25 kilometers from east to west and five kilometers from north to south. Its light red-brown landmass is thick with neatly aligned, row upon row, natural formations of earthen mounds. They are thought to resemble many of the world’s famous architectural accomplishments, such as Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, Lhasa’s Potala Palace, the Pyramid and Sphinx of Egypt, Arabic mosques, and European castles of the Middle Ages.
Walking through the naturally formed “streets” and “squares” and around the many “buildings” of the “walled town,” one can hear a strange, persistent woo-woo crying, which, the locals insist is made by ghosts. The cries of the departed in “Ghost town” are actually produced by the friction of the flowing wind on the strange undulations of the geography.
The Dunhuang Yardang Geopark is the largest of its kind in China and offers the largest natural wonders of landmass –a tourist magnet of the highest order. It has attracted many film directors, including Zhang Yimou, who shot his international hit film Hero in its bizarre surrounds.
Travel Tips:
It is often recommended that visitors to Dunhuang bring an electric torch with them. However, torches are strongly discouraged because light will fade the color of the murals more quickly, as proven by the fact that the pigments of the murals that face the entrance of a cave are always fainter than those in the darker corners. Guides of the Mogao Grottoes will provide lighting for visitors to see the murals while they conduct a narrated tour.
Travel Tips:
Tourists can opt to ride a camel or take an electric car into the desert in the Mingshashan Park. Sand sports include slides and motors.
During the peak season, it is recommended that tourists visit the park after 2:00 pm and be prepared for direct sunlight, for there is no place to escape it. The dusk is the most beautiful moment to visit the Crescent-Moon Spring. Tourists can rent a pair of shoe covers at the entrance of the park, or bring their own, to prevent the sand from filling their shoes.
Warning: To avoid unnatural flows of sand downward that may break the ecological balance and cause damage to the pool, tourists are asked not to climb the sand dune on the northern bank of the Crescent-Moon Spring.
The Putaogou (Grape Gully) Village is encountered on the way back from the Yangguan Pass. Visitors can stop here for a folklore tour, a northwestern rural meal, or to pick fresh fruits.
The Yumen Pass is 90 kilometers northwest of downtown Dunhuang, and the Yangguan Pass is 70 kilometers southwest of it, with no public transit between them. Visitors have to either rent a car or join a tour group at Dunhuang.
Travel Tips:
Warning: Those who want to drive there by themselves better use an all terrain vehicle. They can follow the beaten tracks left by other trekkers on the Gobi Desert, but should hire a local guide to avoid getting lost.
To avoid confusion you should be aware that there are several places that are called Yumen Pass in China. The one at Dunhuang is a legacy of the Han Dynasty, which is different from its Tang-dynasty counterpart.
Travel Tips:
Dunhuang has a typical continental climate (temperate), with persistent droughts and little rain year round. The sunshine is strong during the daytime, resulting in an acute day-night temperature disparity. This tourist city’s peak season is from May to October, concurrent with the local fruit and melon harvesting seasons. Because of the sharp diurnal/nocturnal temperature disparity, local apricot, peach, date, grape, pear and Hami melon are very sweet. Local handicrafts include jade ware and bone carvings; artisans mostly take the camel as a motif or borrow from Dunhuang murals. Local diet mainly consists of mutton, beef and wheat flour. Dunhuang has an airport and train station, and transportation is convenient.