Building on a legacy

Protection and tourism

A boom in tourism arrived during the 1990s, bringing with it risks, as well as economic benefits.

Shortly after Fan stepped into the director's office, there was a proposal to include the Mogao Caves as part of a tourism conglomerate, which the developers planned to list on the stock market. Fan strongly opposed this level of commercial development.

Echoing her sentiments, a protection rule on the Mogao Caves was promulgated by the Gansu government in 2002 to make the conservation of the caves a priority and forbid the construction of new permanent buildings within the protected zone.

Following her guidance, only up to 6,000 visitors are allowed to enter Mogao Caves every day to protect the site. Humidity and temperature sensors were also installed in the caves. If the microclimate is disturbed by an overwhelming number of visitors, the caves will be closed.

However, tourists are now also offered a better visiting experience. Since the caves are usually too small (only 18 of the Mogao Caves are larger than 100 square meters) to receive large number of visitors, a tourist center is set up outside the core zone, where visitors can enjoy videos of the murals shot in high-definition before they visit the actual site. This helps to shorten the amount of time visitors spend in the caves.

This ongoing digitization project to collect images of the caves also facilitates academic research. Ultrahigh definition images of some of the caves have also been posted online through its public website, e-dunhuang.com. Digitized images of the Mogao Caves have been exhibited nationwide.

"I once met a very small child, who told me he knew about Dunhuang. When I asked him how he knew about it, he replied, 'I saw it on a mobile phone'," Fan recalls proudly.