A British custodian of Dunhuang manuscripts

For more than 30 years until her retirement in 2013, Frances Wood worked alongside her Chinese peers to repair, conserve, catalogue and study the Dunhuang manuscripts from Mogao Caves in Northwest China's Gansu province, which were taken to the UK a century ago.

The former head of the Chinese section at the British Library has witnessed the eventful life of the Dunhuang relics in London. She has seen how the restoration was carried out through the tireless efforts of Chinese and British conservators, and how more than 14,000 items were eventually conserved and cataloged in "beautiful" condition.

Speaking at the Vision China event in London on Thursday, Wood described herself as an almost "accidental custodian" of this vast body of Chinese heritage.

The views of Chinese scholars were central to her work throughout the conservation and digitization process, she said.

Wood encountered the relics during her first year at the British Library, where some 7,000 complete manuscripts and 6,000 fragments were piled up in a row of dark blue boxes. "These were small, crumpled pieces of paper …which clearly required extensive conservation work before they could be seen by scholars," she recalled.

So began the huge task of transforming the "debris". One of Wood's top priorities was to bring in Chinese conservators — no straightforward undertaking at a library then unaccustomed to sourcing outside support.

But Wood was certain that this was the correct way to manage the work. "I remember how excited our Chinese visitors were to open up and flatten out a piece of paper and discover the distinctive flat-tailed characters of pre-Tang Dynasty (before AD 618) script or find an imperial seal on a Tang Dynasty (618-907) government document or a personal letter. They were fully conscious that they were uncovering their own history," she said.

Coming to England meant sacrifices for the Chinese scholars, who found themselves far from home in unfamiliar surroundings. Wood and her colleagues became hosts and guides, looking after those who had come to take care of the Dunhuang fragments.

"It took up much of our time, even at weekends, as it was important to keep our visitors happy," she said. "Despite having young children, Beth McKillop (Wood's then colleague at the British Library) and I both worked as hard as we could, raising money, finding accommodation, and supporting these Chinese scholars as best we could."

Alongside the work of cataloging and conservation came a growing awareness of another responsibility: making the Dunhuang collections accessible to more people in China, Wood said. After all, not everyone is privileged enough to seek out the treasures in a place thousands of kilometers away.

A printing project was embarked upon, with the documents photographed and reproduced in facsimile. Some 15 volumes were published exclusively in China for Chinese scholars.

The digitization of the archives soon followed. In 1994, led by Wood, the International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online, now known as the International Dunhuang Programme, was set up, with the aim of making information and images of the Dunhuang relics available online for all.

It now brings together more than 40 collaborating institutions worldwide, with around half a million images of materials from Dunhuang and other sites along the Silk Road available through its database.

zhengwanyin@mail.chinadailyuk.com