China News Service, Beijing, March 7, Title: "Cultural Relics Doctor" Wang Wanfu: Unlocking the Youth Code of Thousand-Year Dunhuang
China News Service reporter Ding Si
How can the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, which is a thousand years old, enter the next thousand years safely?
"As long as the external environmental conditions do not change significantly, relying on the current technological power of cultural conservation, there will be no problem in extending the life of the Mogao Grottoes for the next thousand years." Wang Wanfu, deputy to the National People's Congress and deputy director of the Conservation Research Department of the Dunhuang Academy, told a reporter from China News Service said in an exclusive interview.
Wang Wanfu, who has been guarding the Mogao Grottoes for 32 years, has witnessed the youthful story of Dunhuang.
At the age of 23, he graduated with a major in forestry. He has grown from a "novice" in conservation and restoration to an expert "cultural relics doctor" in the conservation and restoration of murals and painted sculptures.
"Our work is the same as that of doctors. Doctors treat people, and we treat cultural relics. When facing the same illness, the doctor's diagnosis and treatment level is the key." Wang Wanfu recalled that when he first entered the Dunhuang Academy, he scanned the cave area. Rescue protection such as sand, cliff reinforcement, and mural restoration were the most urgent tasks at that time.
In November 2022, aerial photography of the Mogao Grottoes in late autumn.
Photo by Wang Binyin
After 80 years of exploration by generations of Mogao people and decades of international cooperation, the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, which was plagued by disease, were not only able to turn the crisis around, but also initiated preventive and rescue protection. The new stage of equal emphasis has restored the glory of Mogao Grottoes.
The construction and demonstration of the preventive protection system for sandstorm disasters in Mogao Grottoes, the first national engineering technology research center in China's cultural relics system, the first key scientific research base of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage for the protection of ancient murals, the construction of the first multi-field coupling laboratory, and the first proposal The concept of digitalization of cultural relics... Over the years, the cultural relics protection team of the Dunhuang Academy has set many precedents and promoted and applied the complete set of Dunhuang cultural preservation technologies developed in the countries co-building the "Belt and Road".
"Technology is the core driving force for the development of cultural relics protection and is the secret to making the Mogao Grottoes last forever." In this regard, Wang Wanfu also suggested setting up a national key laboratory in the field of cultural heritage protection to crack the technology in the field of cultural heritage protection and inheritance. Bottleneck: formulate and promulgate unified cultural relic digital standards at the national level, incorporate the entire process of collection, sorting, storage, processing, and use into standards and specifications, strengthen the open sharing and development application of cultural relic resources, data, and information, and realize resource sharing of publicly available data on cultural relics. .
In February 2023, at the Mogao Academy of the Dunhuang Academy, the research instructor taught the students the copying techniques of Dunhuang murals.
Photo by Zhang Xiaoliang
How to bring the thousand-year-old Dunhuang into line with the times?
In Wang Wanfu’s view, “Young people are a group worthy of attention, including young tourists and young cultural preservation talents.”
Wang Wanfu said that "Digital Dunhuang" fully unlocks the "trend gene" of ancient culture. "Dunhuang Travel" and "Digital Scripture Cave" have been launched one after another, allowing the beauty of Dunhuang to connect ancient and modern times; offline, the hospital implements the "Dunhuang Culture Watcher" Charity activities such as the Global Volunteer Dispatch Program and the "Hong Kong Youth Dunhuang Internship Program" launch diversified digital cultural and creative products to bring the company closer to young people.
In February this year, nine departments in Gansu jointly formulated 15 "hard-core" measures to strongly support the Dunhuang Academy in strengthening its talent team.
"Among the practitioners in the cultural and museum system, there is a shortage of professional and technical personnel, and cultural relics conservation and restorers with superb restoration skills and knowledge are even scarcer." Wang Wanfu suggested that relying on the advantageous majors of universities, scientific research institutes and cultural and museum institutions to speed up the construction of national-level majors The technical personnel continuing education and training base and the high-skilled personnel training base carry out high-skilled personnel training, technical research, and skill inheritance, etc., so that the cultural heritage protection industry can truly have successors and talents emerge in large numbers.
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