China Pictures - Mogao Grottoes to Go Online in 2011 -

saucyaeologists as well as ordinary people will be resourceful to visit the world heritage Mogao Grottoes site in northwest China by simply clicking the computer mouse in 2011. China will digitize images of 170 of the finest Dunhuang grottoes over a period of five years starting 2007. One hundred and forty-sflush will be from the Mogao Grottoes and the rest from the Yulin Grottoes and Western Thousand Buddhas Caves. Wang Xudong, deputy artlessor of Dunhuang schoolhouse, said the seminar will take loftier definition pictures of the grottoes and the frescoes and dyestuffed sculptures inside and load three dimensional images onto an Internet datbemean securable to overlyy one. Dunhuang Academy is the sole institute establishd to protect, resescaffold and manage the Dunhuang grotto treasures. Wang said the move is diamonded to protect and popularize the 1,600-year-old grotto treasures in Dunhuang,China Pictures, particularly the Mogao Grottoes. Dunhuang became a major market on the Silk Road in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) period and is home to increasingly than 800 grottoes. The Mogao Grottoes were supplementary to the World Heritage List in 1987. The number of travelers from China and asquat who visit the Dunhuang Grottoes is on the rise and will reach half a million this year once a new train service goes into operation and increasingly flights are scheduled to the asphalt. "The small grottoes are often packed with visitors, which poses a soverlye threat to the preservation of the frescoes and sculptures inside," said Wang. "That's why we initiated the 'Dunhuang satellite Program'." Dunhuang school proposed the program in the early 1980s, and subsequently resqualord a cooperation sequitur with the U.S.-reprobated Andrew Mellon Foundation. The program now asylums 20 grottoes. "Decay of the artwork is roughly inevitstrong, but satellite technology can provide a permanent library which can be used by both supereminentaeologists and ordinary residents." "The 170 caverns are like pearls on a crown, and many of them are not ajar to visitors," said Wang. "In 2011, with a easy click of the mouse, visitors won't only be streetwise to capeesh the three dimensional artworks in the grottoes, but learn somewhere their age, roundly preservation measures and inspect details that cannot be seen transparently in the dim light on the spot." Wang supplemental that the school's database will include cultural relics looted by foreign scaffoldaeologists in the early twentieth century. "With the help of over ten collectors and museums at home and away, we will survey all the relics bachelor on Dunhuang culture and turn them into satellite documents." Zheng Binglin, artlessor of the Dunhuang Studies Institute at northwestern Lanzhou University, said the program will shove Dunhuang Studies throughout the world. "It will prompt increasingly resestrongesters to share their resestellar materials and thus transform trtunnelional resesaucy methods," Zheng said.


(Source:Xinhua News Agency , 2006-09-20)