DUNHUANG \u2013 On the lawn of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM), a 6m inflatable jostles for height with nearby trees.<\/p>\n
This illuminated cartoon figure with a cherubic smile, draped in a gravity-defying sash, is an avatar of the apsaras, the \u201ccheerleaders\u201d of Buddhism. Where they are, it is said, there is music and flowers, a nirvana saturated with fragrance.<\/p>\n
These celestial beings have become synonymous with the north-western Chinese desert city of Dunhuang \u2013 a tourist hot spot for China\u2019s domestic travellers.<\/p>\n
A slice of this arid city now sits at the ACM\u2019s blockbuster exhibition, Sacred Caves: Dunhuang, Buddhism, And The Silk Road, created in partnership with China\u2019s state-run Dunhuang Academy.<\/p>\n
From Sept 25, visitors can step into 1,000-year-old grottoes filled with monumental sculptures and floor-to-ceiling murals from the renowned UNESCO World Heritage site Mogao Caves, so named for its \u201cpeerless\u201d status.<\/p>\n
Comprising four full replica caves, 22 paintings and 47 original artefacts, it is the biggest show of Dunhuang treasures in South-east Asia and is on till March 7.<\/p>\n
The Mogao Caves, a hive of 500 ornately decorated chambers chipped into the soft gravel facade of the Mingsha mountains, is still relatively little-known outside China. But in culture and history circles, it has long been famous as a repository of some of the world\u2019s most eloquent Buddhist art.<\/p>\n
Think the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, but multiplied hundredfold.<\/p>\n
The man-made caves are diverse in size and are illustrative of the prayers of humble workers and the demonstrative vanity of the rich, their efforts at accumulating merit spanning the fourth to 14th centuries.<\/p>\n An inflatable apsara stands tall on the Empress Lawn in front of the ACM.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The images they contain are a portal into humanity\u2019s reverential imaginings, from a human-faced bird in Chinese mythology to Hindu elephant-faced Ganesha to suggestions of Greek sun god Apollo.<\/p>\n ACM curator Louise Lui says: \u201cEven though ancient Dunhuang and contemporary Singapore are very far apart in time and space, they share many traits. One is on the Overland Silk Road, the other is on the Maritime Silk Road.<\/p>\n ACM curator Louise Lui in front of a replica of a Mogao Caves mural in Dunhuang, China.<\/p>\n PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n \u201cBoth cities were shaped by trade movement, and cultural encounter and exchange, which is not something that is modern, but something that\u2019s been happening for thousands of years.\u201d<\/p>\n In the ACM foyer, a 13m-long reclining Buddha greets visitors, a shrunken replica as the original at 15.6m was simply too long for the space. Assembled in parts, its head alone weighs some 200kg and required 12 full-grown men to manoeuvre up the heritage building\u2019s stairs.<\/p>\n It is patently impossible to capture in ACM the mystique of the Mogao Caves, around which an entire tourist industry has blossomed, catering to nearly 20 million visitors annually.<\/p>\n Apsara sculptures tower in hotel lobbies. Two elaborate immersive theatre shows with purpose-built arenas are powered by state-of-the-art light equipment, with hundreds of actors popping out from niches to tell the Mogao Caves story, given a nationalistic spin.<\/p>\n One is directed by Wang Chaoge, co-director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Actresses playing goddesses wail from behind gauzy sheets: \u201cAfter so much time, tell me, am I still pretty?\u201d<\/p>\n Elaborate immersive shows tell the stories of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, digging into the endless possibilities of its pantheon.<\/p>\n PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n A chorus bemoans the traitorous 20th-century sales of precious manuscripts found in the caves to Western archaeologists.<\/p>\n Chinese domestic tourists still make up the bulk of visitors. For those committed to seeing them in person, the Mogao Caves is a 12-hour flight from Singapore via a Beijing transfer, and then a one-hour car ride from the airport.<\/p>\n Securing entry requires fast fingers: Ticket sales are limited to 6,000 a day, tied to identity card numbers to prevent multiple bookings and price gouging, with extra \u201cemergency tickets\u201d during peak seasons.<\/p>\n Each slot allows visitors entry to just four to eight caves to prevent overcrowding. Curator Lui, on her third visit to Dunhuang, has seen fewer than 20 even with privileged access.<\/p>\n The Mogao Caves is carved into the cliffs on the edge of the Gobi Desert.<\/p>\n PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Human sweat and breath are all hazardous to the delicate works. At any point, vigilant guides are wont to usher visitors out when a hygrometer measuring humidity sounds the alarm.<\/p>\n Despite all precautions, there is damage, most visibly from before 1944 when the state began institutional protection. Without doors, animals took shelter in the caves and chafed against the stone surface. Pre-modern visitors were not averse to graffiti. Sun rays exacted a toll.<\/p>\n The ACM exhibition \u2013 and Dunhuang Academy\u2019s role in exporting it \u2013 is, therefore, primarily a matter of access.<\/p>\n The show features four replica caves, mostly reproduced in a one-to-one ratio either by digital scans or hand-drawn over years by Dunhuang Academy artists in a copying tradition called linmo drawings. Three are special access caves that are highly regulated and cost more to enter in Dunhuang.<\/p>\n A linmo artist takes months to complete a drawing, building it layer by layer.<\/p>\n PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n They are constructed just as one would encounter them. Access is through a narrow entryway.<\/p>\n Inside, the space opens up high and wide to reveal an intricate pantheon where the Eastern practice of leaving empty space is ignored.<\/p>\n Deity sculptures, moulded from wooden frames and given flesh with straw, occupy each cave nominally created to honour them. Despite harsher lights, their eyes still slope downwards, entreating visitors to bend for a brief moment of darshan, or mutual gazing.<\/p>\n The story the ACM wants to tell, however, is not one of reconstruction of temples.<\/p>\n In the eclectic fusion of figures in the paintings, so numerous they require a guide and glossary, is a tale of multiculturalism before the word came into vogue and provoked recent global backlash.<\/p>\n Curator Lui says of Dunhuang\u2019s cosmopolitan nature: \u201cThe early caves adopted a lot of Indian and Central Asian painting styles, and you find this unique synthesis. In a way, Dunhuang and Mogao transmit these kinds of styles towards the central plains and that influences \u2018traditional\u2019 Chinese painting as well.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the replica caves shows the commingling of Buddhist, Taoist and other imagery from Chinese mythology.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n That cross-cultural cosmos manifests in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n One can spot horoscopes, originally from ancient Mesopotamia (a historical region in the Middle East), making their way into paintings by way of Greece.<\/p>\n That 13m reclining Buddha, sponsored by Tibetan monks, is flanked by a gory fresco of rulers from far-ranging parts of the world mourning by cutting into their chests or painfully removing their noses.<\/p>\n Its dense iconography means not all mysteries have been unravelled. The ACM exhibition has chosen to begin its story with the enigmatic symbol of three rabbits in a circle, found adorning the symbolic fireproof capstone of one of the caves.<\/p>\n This is a motif that has been sighted across Eurasia, from Iranian metalwork to Jewish synagogues to European churches. The example in Dunhuang is its earliest provenance, though its meaning has been endlessly speculated upon, from rabbits being associated with water and the moon to the Holy Trinity.<\/p>\n Curator Louise Lui during a media preview of the ACM exhibition.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Lui says: \u201cWe don\u2019t actually know the origins of it and why and how it was transmitted. I think the reason it has been so pervasive is that different cultures adopted it and made it their own.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mogao Caves also cannot be seen purely through a religious lens. Some of the original artefacts are sutras \u2013 recordings of Buddhist sermons in a variety of scripts \u2013 telling of the evolution of written language.<\/p>\n There are coins and custom permits. Narrative paintings speak of the bandits caravans encountered on trade routes, while portraits of female patrons show the distinctive use of flower petal paintings or appliques as make-up, again pre-empting the modern use of the pimple patch or glitter for creative expression.<\/p>\n The increasing size of the figures tells its own implicit story of human ego. Measured from headdress to dress hem, one comes up to nearly 2m tall, a donor aspiring to the scale of the gods.<\/p>\n Larger-than-life portraits of patron women show the distinctive use of flower petal paintings or appliques as make-up.<\/p>\n PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n \u201cA lot of them relate very closely to our contemporary experiences,\u201d says Lui, who made sure a section of the exhibition is reserved for the secular.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have mundane things like a piece of paper where someone was practising their calligraphy.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope people will find joy in or be moved by these, and we also have things that speak to deeper emotions like filial piety and devotion.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Dunhuang Academy exports exhibitions all around the world, and engages in a race against time to digitise the contents of its fertile caves.<\/p>\n Its deputy director Zhang Yuanlin says this is in part because of the belief that Dunhuang can provide inspiration for a framework from which to build humanity\u2019s common destiny.<\/p>\n Dunhuang Academy uses high-resolution scans and other methods of 3D imaging to digitise the Mogao Caves.<\/p>\n PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n He is aware there are those who still see the replicas they export as inferior, but says: \u201cThey are true to the original. People can look at them without a barrier between themselves and the work. We\u2019ve even captured their decolourisation over time, and they are good enough for us in our research.\u201d<\/p>\n Linmo paintings, the copies of the original by hand, are regarded as works of art in their own right in China, completed by famed artists including Dunhuang Academy\u2019s founding director Chang Shuhong.<\/p>\n Naturally, there are spectacles ACM could not bring to South-east Asian shores, including a 35.5m-tall Maitreya Buddha that is the third-largest Buddha sculpture in China, housed in a nine-storey pagoda built directly against the cliff edge.<\/p>\n Size constraints aside, Lui, who has dreamt of working on the Mogao Caves, says the fulfilment rate of her wish list was \u201cpretty good\u201d, including several that have not been exhibited outside China.<\/p>\n There is a tragic epilogue to this city. Spanning over 10 Chinese dynasties including the best-known Tang Dynasty, Dunhuang would meet an ignominious end in the Yuan Dynasty due to desertification and the rise of the Maritime Silk Road.<\/p>\n The desert dunes of Dunhuang have become photo hot spots for dolled-up tourists.<\/p>\n PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The effects of climate change may not be directly addressed in the exhibition, but there are obvious parallels.<\/p>\n Still, the successive generations of workmen offer a rejoinder to Percy Bysshe Shelley\u2019s lament of autocratic vaingloriousness Ozymandias (1818) \u2013 \u201cRound the decay\/ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare\/ The lone and level sands stretch far away.\u201d<\/p>\n In China, the sands still stretch, but over 700 years since the last drop of ink dried, their achievement now sounds echoes across the seas.<\/p>\n Dunhuang Academy\u2019s Zhang says: \u201cThey show us what happens when different civilisations interact. What changed? Why did some things change or didn\u2019t change? It\u2019s one of the reasons so many people love our site.\u201d<\/p>\n Where:<\/b> Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place <\/picture><\/div>
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Bringing history out of China<\/h2>\n
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More than religion<\/h2>\n
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Invaluable replicas<\/h2>\n
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Book It\/Sacred Caves: Dunhuang, Buddhism, And The Silk Road<\/h2>\n
When:<\/b> Sept 25 to March 7, Saturdays to Thursdays, 10am to 7pm; Fridays, 10am to 9pm
Admission:<\/b> $10 for Singaporeans and permanent residents; $25 for foreigners
Info:<\/b> str.sg\/qWhWB<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n