Mural Duty

An artist with a genius for reproduction spent years capturing Dunhuang's cultural legacy. His work is now on display in Beijing. Lin Qi reports.

When Chang Shuhong arrived in Dunhuang in 1943 to prepare for the establishment of the Dunhuang Research Academy, he was welcomed by Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), the maestro of traditional Chinese ink-brush painting.

Zhang had already been living in Dunhuang for nearly three years, copying murals at the Mogao and Yulin grottoes. The remote, desert-bound area in northwestern China's Gansu province was then a little-known treasure trove of Buddhist art, with several hundred caves housing a vast number of imposing murals and colored statues produced between the fourth and 14th centuries.