OPINION> Alexis Hooi
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OPINION> Alexis Hooi
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Home set for rightful return of treasures
By Alexis Hooi (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-17 07:51
I fulfilled a long-cherished desire three weeks ago, when I arrived at the Mogao Grottoes near Dunhuang in Gansu province. I was finally at the site that held some of the most splendid Buddhist art the world has ever known. As I walked through 10 of the 735 caves that helped preserve works spanning more than a millennium, my heart began to sink. The grottoes seemed like a pale phantom of its former glory amid the deserts of Gansu; and, it was not the 1,600 years since the first cave was conceived that wreaked the most damage. Yes, Mogao is also known for its priceless frescoes, sculptures, scrolls, books and other artifacts that were flagrantly (mis)appropriated by foreigners from at least five countries in the early 20th century. Most of my morning visit to Mogao was spent on peering into Cave No 17: a small, empty room known as the Library Cave. It used to house over 50,000 manuscripts and documents dating from AD 406. But a decade after the cave was discovered by its self-proclaimed guardian and Taoist priest Wang Yuanlu in 1900, foreign archaeologists paid off Wang and helped themselves to the treasures. British explorer Aurel Stein is said to have hauled from the site at least 7,000 complete manuscripts and 6,000 fragments, with the Diamond Sutra (the world's oldest complete and printed book) included in his stash, while French rival Paul Pelliot reputedly stayed for extended periods of time in the cave to pick out the most valuable works by candlelight because he could read Chinese. Today, only about 8,000 original pieces from the Library Cave are said to remain in China. The International Dunhuang Project aims to "make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet and to encourage their use through educational and research programmes". The number of images in the project's database attributed to China currently make up only about 10 percent of the nearly 230,000 images. Many of the relics taken from Mogao remain scattered across the world. They include those in the British Library's Stein Collection (named after Aurel Stein), and Harvard University's Fogg Museum, which holds the murals that American Langdon Warner ripped out of the cave walls. Some of the artifacts are possibly still in the hands of private collectors, if not lost forever. After going to the Mogao caves, I now count myself as one of those who have become deeply affected by the marauding expeditions and believe that the relics should be returned to their place of origin. Some have said that the foreign "caretakers" of Mogao's relics actually shielded them from the ravages of time, but any visitor to China's museums will know that the country is now fully capable of preserving and maintaining its cultural relics and heritage. Earlier last year, I had the opportunity to visit The Lights of Dunhuang exhibition in Beijing's National Art Museum of China. Visitors from home and abroad thronged to catch a glimpse of the murals covering the 10 duplicate Mogao caves, and the artwork, painstakingly put together by generations of Chinese researchers and artists. If only they were looking at the real thing. E-mail: alexishooi@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 07/17/2009 page8) |
