Devoted to Dunhuang

An exhibition reveals how a father and daughter's commitment to conservation was forged by long days spent in caves unearthing a cultural oasis, Lin Qi reports.

Chang Shana was just 13 when her love affair with Dunhuang began. Born in France, she was the youngest member of a conservation and research team at the Mogao Caves led by her father Chang Shuhong (1904-94), a noted painter who had returned from Paris to become a founding director of the Dunhuang Academy.

Having spent six consecutive school holidays following her father's research team into the grottoes - a cultural repository of unparalleled beauty and diversity created over the course of a millennium - Chang Shana learned, like many graduates of fine art, to replicate the dazzling murals and Buddhist statues on paper.