Cave 17 is home to about 60,000 ancient documents.[Photo provided to China Daily]
Dunhuang Academy's first full-time foreign researcher is helping to bring the magic of Mogao to the world, Wang Kaihao reports in Dunhuang, Gansu.
In 1987, Neil Schmid, then an undergraduate studying Chinese language at Georgetown University in Washington DC, traveled to Dunhuang, Gansu province, for the first time.
When Schmid finally arrived at the Mogao Grottoes, he was enthralled.
In front of him, 492 caves filled with murals and statues spanning the fourth to 14th centuries unveiled Chinese history, as well as the story of the Silk Road. More than half of the carvings were created during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), a pinnacle of social prosperity during imperial times.
"It's so complex, and thus it's so interesting," the 56-year-old American Sinologist tells China Daily in his office in Dunhuang. "I immediately fell in love with them."
That same year, the grottoes were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, as one of the earliest Chinese entries.
Schmid first heard of Mogao when he participated in a student-exchange program in Taipei.
"There were no photographs, and we only had edited texts," Schmid recalls. "So, I decided to go there myself."
He dug deeper into his study of Dunhuang in the following years. He took courses at Tokyo's Waseda University and L'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, before earning his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He has since taught in universities all over the United States, including Duke University, the University of North Carolina and University of Pennsylvania.
After Schmid had returned to Dunhuang for numerous academic exchanges, Wang Xudong, who was then director of the Dunhuang Academy, the research and management institution of the site, asked: "Why don't you just join us?"
"I was very touched and honored by the unique opportunity," Schmid says, smiling. "It's like a kind of yuanfen (destiny)."
Last year, Schmid became the first full-time foreign researcher in the history of the academy.
Neil Schmid, a full-time researcher at the Dunhuang Academy, has engaged in extensive field research of the Mogao Grottoes and has created detailed records of their murals.[Photo provided to China Daily]
To protect and serve
The Dunhuang Academy was founded in 1944 by the Chinese government to protect the Mogao Grottoes.
In 1900, 60,000 ancient documents, in many different languages from along the Silk Road, were discovered in Cave 17, also known as the "library cave". The manuscripts, both religious and secular, were encyclopedic in nature and spanned almost a millennium.
"It's a unique ethnographic recording," he says. "The manuscripts are like slices of time. We see people's daily lives and social relationships in fantastic detail."
However, upon hearing the news, foreign explorers and archaeologists swarmed to the site, and many manuscripts were taken to Europe. For example, the Vajracchedika sutra, which bears the date 868 and is the world's earliest-known printed work, now resides in the British Library.
Though that period of history provided an opportunity for Western academia to understand Chinese and Central Asian cultures, Schmid notes that this is not an excuse to condone their behavior.
"Their approach to obtaining antiquities belongs to a different era that no one would deem acceptable in 2019," he says.
Less than one-third of the remaining Dunhuang manuscripts are currently housed in China. The lack of materials was indeed a threshold for relevant research in the country, and there was common saying: "Dunhuang belongs to China, but Dunhuang studies belong abroad."
However, things began to change after the 1990s, Schmid says.
"Accessibility has been greatly improved by the digitization of manuscripts, material objects and caves ... and databases containing the scholarship and research of Dunhuang materials," he explains.
"Now, individuals all over the world can access Dunhuang resources in ways unimaginable to scholars from the 20th century."
The global cooperation program, the International Dunhuang Project, is now a foundation for such joint research. The academy signed memorandums of understanding for cooperation with 10 overseas institutions in 2018 alone, including the British Library, University of California, Berkeley, and Pritzker Art Collaborative in Chicago. Also, 17 international symposiums were held by the academy last year, attracting 58 scholars on Dunhuang studies from around the world.
Additionally, the e-Dunhuang project, a database established by the Dunhuang Academy, has also taken high-definition pictures of about 220 caves, 30 of which are online for public viewing.
"Schmid is crucial in building our connections with European and US research institutes," says Mao Ming, a fellow researcher at the academy.
"It started with a pilgrimage, and he hasn't lost that passion, even after three decades. I admire his diligence in his studies."
Another researcher, Zhang Yuanlin, who is in charge of the database of the academic resources, says: "As someone devoted to Buddhist images and religious artworks, Schmid has a particular preference for Dunhuang. His original views are creative and widely recognized in academic circles."
The image of Apollo with a Chinese face (left upper corner) found in Cave 285 reflects ancient Dunhuang's multiculturalism. [Photo provided to China Daily]
Bridging the gap
When Schmid was hired, Wang expected him to be "a bridge and resource for international scholars, who come to Dunhuang for research".
A language barrier still exists, as an official announcement by the academy on his appointment states. Critical literature on Dunhuang studies in China is not widely translated and is, therefore, limited to academics who can read Chinese.
The American Sinologist now has an ambitious project ahead of him.
Schmid is preparing The Comprehensive Guide to Scholarly Resources for Dunhuang Studies, the first-ever encyclopedic reference for international scholars in the field. It will include introductions to text resources, sociological methodologies, linguistics, religion and philosophy.
He adds that digitization also makes in-depth interdisciplinary studies possible.
The Sinologist points out that Dunhuang provides significant inspiration for cultural exchanges today.
"Dunhuang is cosmopolitan," Schmid says. "Even if you go there 100 times, you will always learn something new."
He points out that, in Cave 285, for example, there are Taoist motifs and images of Apollo with a Chinese face alongside the Hindu deities of Vishnu and Ganesha, even though the cave is designed to worship Buddha.
"Different religions can exist in one space, and they mix," Schmid explains. "Dunhuang is a model for different civilizations and ideas to come together without conflict.
"Nowhere in the world does a comparable collection of such a complex set of resources exist from the past. Therefore, these materials offer the profound potential to help us understand the past, ourselves in the present and the possibilities for a globalized future."
He believes that studying Dunhuang with a long vision will help people break ethnocentric stereotypes.
Still, there is a long way to go to improve public knowledge of Dunhuang in the West, despite the booming academic interest.
"When friends and family ask what I research, I mention a unique archaeological site on the Silk Road in the far west of China," he wrote in an article in 2014.
"Few know Dunhuang or certainly Mogao, but in the unfurrowed ground of ignorance lies the wealth of potential harvests."
New ideas have been developed to fill this gap. For example, Schmid has cooperated with Getty Museums in Los Angeles over the past two years to bring artists and musicians to Dunhuang to find inspiration.
"I would say it (Dunhuang) is very seductive. People are interested because it's all about humanity," Schmid says.
Schmid also reveals to China Daily that there will be a new docudrama on Dunhuang, and an American opera director has turned to him for help in preparing a production in which Buddhist sutras from some of the murals are featured.
"We have a responsibility to ensure the inestimable value of these truly incomparable materials are made known to, and available to, the world," he says.
