dunhuang, dun huang, dunhuang travel, dunhuang tour, dunhuang city information, mogao grottoes, buddhist grottoes
Home<> Group Tours<> Private Tours<> Flights<> Hotels<> China Guide<> FAQ<> Contact Us<>
About China China Maps Tourist Information Entertainment Gallery
Cities & Attractions | China Visa Application | China Weather | Health & Quarantine | China Travel Tips
Survival Chinese | Chinese Currency | Journal & Blogs | Statistics | Related Links
Links to Major Tourist Cities
Links to Major Tourist Attractions
 China Provinces

Dunhuang, Gansu Province

Dunhuang  Introduction

Dunhuang Local Time:

Dunhuang, a small city in Gansu Province, is located near the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road. It is made famous largely by the Buddhist Grottoes, known as the Mogao Grottoes, which are one of the

World’s most important sites of ancient Buddhist culture. The grottoes, also known as Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, preserve nearly a thousand years of Buddhist cave-temple architecture, clay sculpture, mural paintings, and manuscripts, dating from the 5th to the 14th centuries.

The rediscovery of the caves and their treasures in 1900 opened a new field of study that uses the monuments and documents found at Dunhuang to illuminate the complex cultural interactions of ancient Central Asia. The Dunhuang finds reflect periods of Chinese, Tibetan, and Uygur control, and the images and texts reveal the impact of many other Asian regional styles and languages. The intermixture of Indian, West Asian, Central Asian, and Chinese elements reveal a dynamic, eclectic, and thoroughly multicultural context that had a profound impact on the later development of narrative literary forms as well as on Buddhist image-making. This early internationalism has an echo in the contemporary distribution of Dunhuang material and Dunhuang studies around the world. The discovery of a sealed-up library of manuscripts and painted scrolls at the Mogao Grottoes led to the acquisition of significant collections of such portable items by museums and libraries in London, Paris, St. Petersburg (Leningrad), and New Delhi.


1,000-year old mural in Mogao Grottos of Dunhuang

The Mogao Grottoes are carved into desert cliffs overlooking a river valley about 25 km southwest of Dunhuang. The caves vary enormously in size, from tiny single-room cells that served as living quarters for individual monks to huge, cavernous worship halls housing monumental sculptures and mural cycles. The caves honeycomb a 1,600-meter-long cliff face running north and south, and contain some 2,000 clay sculptures and more than 45,000 square meters (484,000 sq. ft) of mural paintings. The soft stone in the region is unsuitably brittle for carving, so the sculptures are primarily made of clay, coated with a kind of plaster surface that allowed finishing details to be painted on or engraved.

Of the 1,000 or so caves cut between the foundation of the site in 366 AD and the last efforts in the 14th century Yuan period, 492 are still more or less well preserved. All have been subjected to some degree of various kinds of damage or indignities, from the long term erosion of wind and water, to the smoke from fires built by bivouacked troops. The damages have also stemmed from the modern perils of mass tourism, where the moisture from the breath of crowds of visitors can damage delicate murals that have survived for centuries in the dry desert climate. Ongoing restoration efforts are underway to preserve the caves and their contents. The Dunhuang Research and Exhibition Center, as part of that effort, has constructed replicas of some of the most important and representative of the Mogao Caves. Visitors can study full-scale replicas of the caves and their sculptural and painted contents close-up and under excellent lighting conditions, without danger of adding to the deterioration of the originals.

Dunhuang Related Report Links
Mysterious scenery of Dunhuang, NW China

Scenic spots in Dunhuang offers half-price tickets (April 12, 2009)

Famed Silk Road grottoes in China get fewer visitors amid financial crisis

The global financial crisis has slashed the number of tourists to Dunhuang, a Silk Road city and home to historic Buddhist grottoes, city tourism bureau chief Gong Ying said on Monday.

Gong said domestic tourist arrivals were likely to decline 30 percent this year, with those of foreigners down 40 percent.

Dunhuang, in northwest China's Gansu Province, had 1.4 million tourists last year, including 100,000 from overseas.

Gong said major natural disasters, such as prolonged snow early in the year and the devastating earthquake in May, had also affected tourism.

"We are not optimistic about the market next year, as the financial crisis is worsening," he said.

The Mogao Grottoes, a UN-listed World Heritage site known as the Cave of a Thousand Buddhas, received fewer than 100 tourists daily, compared with an average of 1,500 per day last year, the official added.

 Gong said the bureau will tap the Taiwan market next year, to take advantage of cross-Strait direct air and sea services that began earlier this month amid warming ties.

 A 261 million yuan (about 38 million U.S. dollars) rehabilitation project began on Monday to protect the fragile ancient paintings and sculptures. (Xinhua, Dec. 29, 2008)

Transport bottleneck curbs tourism along Silk Road
July 4, 2007 - It was once the main route for goods and people across Asia and into Europe, but international experts in development are now lamenting the inadequate transport links on the centuries-old Silk Road. The lack of sufficient transport between China and Central Asia, especially air links, has become an obstacle to tourism development along the Silk Road, according to the United Nations Development Program. (Click for full report on ChinaView..cn)

 

Mogao Grottoes Opened Five New Caves

In an effort to relieve tension on protection of Mogao Grottoes in Duhuang aroused from seasonal imbalance of tourists, relevant authorities opened another five grottoes which were never available to tourists before to the public recently. These five newly opened grottoes include the No. 290, No. 296, No. 407, No. 196 and No. 9 ones which have high artistic value and are typical of the period from the North Zhou Dynasty (557-581AD) to the late Tang Dynasty (618AD-907AD). Tourists can still visit grottoes which were opened before. The Buddhist scriptures library, the Dunhuang Academy history & Mr. Chang Shuhong memorial hall, and the cultural relic protection and exhibition center will remain open too. Admission fees for Dunhuang Singing Sands Mountain and Crescent Spring offer a 50% discount over that of high seasons. As a world renowned cultural heritage site, Dunhuang's Mogao Grottoes has nearly 500 existing caves. Also known as "Pearl of the Oriental Art" and Thousand-Buddha Cave, Mogao Grottoes were initially chiseled in 366AD. After caverning from the Sixteen Kingdoms period (304-436AD) through the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1367AD), Mogao Grottoes formed a large stone grotto cluster affluent in contents. Dunhuang Academy suggested domestic and foreign tourists visit Mogao Grottoes in winter or spring, when there are fewer visitors. Visitors will have more time to enjoy broad space in the grottos, listen to illustrations, and carefully watch the fine frescos and statues.
 

Dunhuang to Build International Airport
Xinhua News, Oct. 19, 2006 - Dunhuang in northwest China's Gansu Province is planning to build an international airport because the number of overseas tourists flocking in to see the ancient Buddhist cave paintings is growing by 30 percent annually. The new airport will first open to international charter flights to and from Hong Kong, Osaka and Seoul, said Feng Shiping, head of Dunhuang's Commerce Bureau. About 370 charter flights will fly these three routes in the peak travel seasons between late April and mid October each year. He said, "China Southern Airlines, Air China and Hainan Airlines will be operating these flights." (Click for full report)

 

Mogao Grottoes Opened Five New Caves

In an effort to relieve tension on protection of Mogao Grottoes in Duhuang aroused from seasonal imbalance of tourists, relevant authorities opened another five grottoes which were never available to tourists before to the public recently. (Click for full story)

Floods Threaten Silk Road Grottoes
Flooding and rain threaten the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes hidden in northwest China's vast Gobi desert...

China to Build Digital Dunhuang Grottoes China will invest 200 million yuan or more than US$24 million to build digital Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes. The digital version is so real that tourists will feel like they are visiting the real grottoes. The world-famous Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang are located in northwest China's Gansu Province. The Grottoes date back to 336 A.D. They are the one of the three major Buddhist art treasures in China and are the largest in terms of scale of all existing art collections in the world. The grand grottoes went on the World Heritage List in 1987. (CRI Mar. 5, 2004)

Wounds of Time to Dunhuang Grottoes Aired
Shanghai Star November 11, 2004 - China Central Television's recent live broadcasts from Dunhuang's grottoes may be the first time Chinese media have focused on these mysterious marvels. The programmes showed more than 10 grottoes that had never before been exposed to public view. (full coverage)

 

 
 

More Dunhuang Pictures

 


Crescent Spring and Singing Sand Dunes, Dunhuang

 

A Mural Image in Mogao Grottoes