Heritage conservation in China: why ‘Daughter of Dunhuang’ devoted her life to keeping Buddhist caves and relics alive
- Chinese archaeologist Fan Jinshi has spent more than 50 years protecting the Dunhuang caves from erosion, overtourism and even Mao’s Red Guards
- Her recent work with the British Library has seen the site’s exquisite cultural heritage digitalised and put into archives for the global community to enjoy
Anyone with more than an ounce of interest in Dunhuang will have heard of Fan Jinshi.
Now 81, the Chinese archaeologist who has spent more than half a century researching and preserving the caves at the heart of the ancient Silk Road in Gansu province is known as the “Daughter of Dunhuang” in her field, though “protector” is probably a more fitting description.
Fan has been studying the historical site since the early 1960s, first as an archaeology undergraduate from Peking University, then as a conservationist when she became the deputy director of the Dunhuang Research Academy in 1984, which serves to protect the ancient site from erosion and collapsing.
“It is over a thousand years old. It is an old person, an extremely vulnerable old person. It has a lot of illnesses. If you are a little careless, it would be gone. Gone forever,” Fan says.
