In a blink of a thousand years, "Seeing Dunhuang Again"

If you want to go to Dunhuang, remember to see the Mogao Grottoes, the spring breeze at Yumen Pass, the afterglow of the Great Wall of Han Dynasty, and "Seeing Dunhuang Again".

When we arrived in Dunhuang, it was 6:30 in the morning in early winter. The stars were still high in the cold northwest, and it would take two hours for the dawn to rise. The girl who came to pick me up was from a local travel agency and planned the itinerary for me. The girl asked if I wanted to watch a show in the evening. There are two major plays in Dunhuang: "Flowers on the Silk Road" and "Meet Dunhuang Again".

I didn’t know much about these two performances, so I asked her about them in detail. "Flower Rain along the Silk Road" is based on dances from Dunhuang murals. It has been released for more than 30 years and includes the famous Thousand-Armed Avalokitesvara. Then she talked about "Meeting Dunhuang Again", directed by Wang Chaoge, which just started last year and tells the stories of historical figures in Dunhuang. "It was quite shocking. Many people cried."

"Many people were Cry it out.” Her last words struck a chord in my heart and I was immediately interested. Before coming to Dunhuang, I read the book "Dunhuang", which chronicles the characters who contributed to the protection of Dunhuang. I was moved by the characters in it. Could it be that "Seeing Dunhuang Again" is about Chang Shuhong and his friends who were quietly guarding the Gobi Desert?

After checking into the hotel, we took a taxi and drove directly to the Mogao Grottoes. In the car, we chatted with the driver about various attractions and two themed plays. "Seeing Dunhuang Again made me cry, especially the part about Taoist Wang." said the master.

This is the second time a local has told me that it will make people cry. I really want to see this show. So after watching the sunset from Mingsha Mountain, I rushed to the performance that night without hesitation.

The theater is right next to the Mogao Grottoes ticket office. The building part on the ground is made of blue glass spread out one floor above another. Under the light, it looks like blue sand dunes flowing in the night. The theater is under this dune.

After checking in, we came to a large waiting area where several high platforms were placed. On the high platforms were several books, all about Dunhuang. Many people entered the waiting area one after another. There were no seats or a stage. There were only people looking at each other in confusion or interest, flipping through the books on the high platform.

When the scheduled moment arrived, the lights in the venue dimmed, and a speaker holding a book appeared on a high platform, illuminated by a beam of chasing light. The speaker said in recitative words that the performance had begun. This performance was different from usual. Everyone needed to watch and experience it while walking. He also kindly thanked everyone not to turn on the flash or record the video.

So, next, everyone entered into a situational stage experience of walking around and seeing. There are four transitions and four unique scene arrangements. Each scene doesn't have a special name. I named them based on the scene.

History

This is a venue similar to a T stage show. The audience is divided on both sides of the T stage. The stage is covered with white sand, like a silk road. The long sandy journey. All the figures in Dunhuang history are on stage, from General Suo Jing of the Western Jin Dynasty to Chang Shuhong, the first director of the Dunhuang Academy. They all come from history, transcend time and space, and appear on this stage together.

Among them, the most touching one is Zhang Qian, the opening figure of the T-stage catwalk show. "Is this Dunhuang?" "Is this Dunhuang?" He asked at least five times in a row. Each time he received a positive answer, he asked again more excitedly. "I just want to hear you tell me this is Dunhuang! I'm finally back!"

We all know the story of Zhang Qian's hollowing out of the Western Regions. He was captured twice by the Huns and detained for more than ten years. , Only then returned to the homeland of the Han Dynasty. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent him as an envoy to the Western Regions when he was still a teenager. When he finally completed his mission, he saw the middle-aged Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty again. Those days outside the Pass and the years in the Huns camp did not destroy his ambition, but how did they torture his homesickness? We have no way of knowing, but when he returned to the land of the Han Dynasty, his high-pitched questions made people moved. Because of his reunion after a long absence, Dunhuang remembered him, the Silk Road remembered him, and through generations, we also remembered him.

The characters who appear next come from history books, Dunhuang posthumous documents, murals, and Buddhist scriptures. Far and near, virtual and real, they are all alive today.

Zhenbao is separated

After the characters spanning ancient and modern times met, the stories of this land began to revive in our minds, and the emotions began to expand in the magnificent background music. With ignited emotions, everyone entered the next scene.

The stage of this scene is distributed around, and the audience stands in the center and looks up to watch. What is told here is the story of the treasures in the scripture cave being sold and the suicide notes being boxed and taken away.

At the beginning, a modern man holding a history book asked Taoist Wang, "What do you think?" The formation looked like Yu Qiuyu who was about to draw his sword to duel with Stein.

In this scene, Taoist Wang was hunched over from beginning to end, as if he had just stepped off the pillar of shame and was still being weighed down. "Don't ask, don't ask. How did I know it would be like this? I had no choice but to do so." Taoist Wang kept waving his hands. Then everyone took advantage of the night to wipe their faces red, reluctantly carried the boxed suicide note, and comforted themselves: "If you put your face red, the ancestors won't recognize me, right? If you put your face red, the Bodhisattva won't recognize me, right?"

In folk tradition, people always blush when they do something that goes against ethics and conscience, such as the executioner on the execution ground. Regardless of whether these porters in history really knew what they were transporting or whether they really suffered in their hearts, today we feel the same struggle when we see our treasures being transported away.

Then, the stage scene changed to an entire wall. The wall was divided into many blocks, and the scenery on each block looked like wooden boxes. As the music rises and falls, the dancers in each compartment present the Bodhisattva shape on the mural. This scene symbolizes the Buddhist scriptures being carried away with the wooden box and going away. The Bodhisattvas inside seem to come to life and struggle to come out.

Priest Wang in the middle of the venue began to repent and apologize to the Bodhisattvas who were being transported away. He staggered to the front of the Bodhisattva and begged us onlookers: "I'm just a nobody. Please do your best." , just move your finger and turn over my page!" For a little man who has been condemned for decades, this may really be his inner voice. The scattering of Dunhuang treasures was not only the fault of Taoist Wang alone. He reported it to the officials, but they ignored it. Later, the government began to pay attention, and many of the remaining treasures were stolen during the transportation. However, we do not know the names of the black hands behind this, and we have never condemned them in this way. Zhang Daqian, another man who seriously damaged Dunhuang murals, was never nailed to the pillar of shame. Perhaps it is easier for humans to condemn and approve the weak.

The Bodhisattva leaning out from the high wall expressed his understanding of this "child", the kind of "I am your earth, I am the wheat field on your earth, I am the blue sky above the wheat field" "The divinity that embraces all things, the Buddha-nature that embraces all love, hate, and suffering in the world, is truly the true nature of a Bodhisattva.

If Taoist Wang had not discovered the Sutra Cave on that hot day in July 1900, his life might have passed in obscurity, and no one would have remembered that there was such a Taoist priest guarding the cave. . But fate just gave him this heavy burden. We cannot conclude his decisions, his merits and demerits, nor can we easily understand them.

In this world, only those Bodhisattvas who were transported away are qualified to forgive Taoist Wang.

In a Small Space

This sad interpretation of a stolen treasure leaves the audience with a myriad of thoughts and mixed feelings. When people today look at history, they always look at it easily and condescendingly. And what about ourselves? When we experience those historic moments, will we be able to make choices that will make today's people look at the ancients as future generations look at today's people?

Amidst the waves of thoughts, he stepped into the next unique stage scene. In this session, the audience is divided into a number of small cubicles. The bottom and top of each cubicle are made of glass. The story here is played up and down and on the four walls of this small darkroom. Each divided compartment tells a different story, that is, a different audience, and a glimpse of a different history.

The first is a story about Miwe, a Sogdian woman. The audience sees Miwe’s small room at the bottom through the glass at their feet. She was writing a letter to her heartless husband, complaining that her businessman husband abandoned her and her daughter in the vast desert.

"I have written to you again and again, but I have never received even a reply from you. I have completely lost hope in you. All my misfortunes are that, for you, I am in Dunhuang Been waiting for three years.

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Mi Wei never heard back from this letter throughout her life. After waiting for 1,700 years, her husband failed to read it. Finally, it was picked up by Stein in the windy and sandy beacon.

The top of the compartment lit up, and a traveler pushed aside the thin yellow sand to look at the onlookers in the room. It was as if Stein had pushed back the yellow sand a hundred years ago and uncovered the story of Mi Wei. Going up to the yellow sand, we are left behind as if we were buried. Thousands of years later, will our own stories be buried like this?

The beauty of this scene lies in this cramped division? , in a small space, we see stories buried deep in the sand one after another. The suicide notes in the scripture cave are also like such square windows. Through the pages of descriptions, we can have a glimpse of the past Dunhuang and the past. The prosperous Tang Dynasty.

A Millennium Moment

The last stage was finally set up in a theater style, and the audience could sit down and have a look at the stage.

On this stage. Above, figures from Dunhuang's thousand-year history appear again: General Suo Jing of the Western Jin Dynasty, Zhang Yichao, the governor of Hexi Province, and Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty who lit up palace lanterns to welcome Wu Zhen's messenger. The stories of the ups and downs, the historical moments, their joys and anger, their faces, were gathered and reborn at this moment, some of them turned into bones on the sandbank, and some were carved in the grottoes. Some of them are hidden in the fragments of the scroll.

How long is ten years? To the long sand, how long is a hundred years?

The progress of mankind is just a moment in the vastness.

From the entrance to the end, it seems like a thousand years have passed, and it seems like it has only happened in a moment.

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How many stories are still being sung, how many stories have been buried, and those faded faces can still be seen and invisible.

In "In a Moment" sang by Huang Qishan, these thousands of years have passed. The end of Dunhuang. What is the core of history? What is the core of characters? In each of these shining stories, we see Dunhuang again. It embodies situational interpretation, and you can experience one scene after another while walking. In the emotional performance of the actors and the profound background of the music, Dunhuang's past glory, twists and turns, and the sorrow of a thousand years are truly moving. It almost makes people cry.

If you go to Dunhuang, remember to see the Mogao Grottoes, the spring breeze of Yumen Pass, and the afterglow of the Han Dynasty Great Wall. Look, "Seeing Dunhuang Again".