Dunhuang Museum
China is to build a museum to display the cultural relics found in the world-famous "Sutras Cave" of Mogao Grotto in Dunhuang, in west China's Gansu province.
The museum, scheduled for opening in July, will be built on the former residence of Taoist Wang Yuanlu, who found the Cave by chance about 100 years ago.
The Dunhuang cave is located on the ancient Silk Road, and contains ancient records and pictures of the region's social and political life spanning six thousand years of China's Middle Ages.
The "Sutras Cave," is actually a small stone room housing thousands of cultural relics, priceless manuscripts, documents, and Buddhist instruments.
Discovery of the room immediately attracted many foreign explorers, who stole hundreds of hand-copied and printed sutras, exquisite embroidered objects, and colored sculptures. A considerable portion of the cultural relics from the "Sutras Cave" have been found in museums, cultural organizations and private collections in more than 10 countries.
Chen Yanke, best known Chinese scholar, described the history of the discovery of the "Sutras Cave" as "a heartbreaking history".
"Peng Jingzhang, researcher with the Dunhuang Academy, said that the purpose of the museum is to remind Chinese people that the heartbreaking history of Dunhuang should not happen again.
The museum is to exhibit about 1,000 cultural antiques found in the "Sutras Cave" together with other replicas, introduction charts and graphs, video materials and computer search services.
The Bingling Grottoes (Bingling shiku), also known as the Bingling Temple (Bingling si), are a series of Buddhist caves
The place is famed for the romantic love story of Emperor Xuanzong and his concubine Yang Guifei in the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
Jiayuguan Pass is the first pass at the west end of the Great Wall of China and was built during the Ming Dynasty.
