Why can't I take pictures with my camera when I enter Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes?

The space in the grottoes is narrow and there are many tourists every day. Taking pictures may cause confusion. At the same time, tourists staying in the cave for a long time will produce a lot of carbon dioxide, and the changes of humidity and temperature will aggravate the "shrinking" of the cave, and the pigment particles will dissolve, resulting in the mural falling off.

Mogao Grottoes, commonly known as Thousand Buddha Cave, is located in Dunhuang at the western end of Hexi Corridor. Founded in the pre-Qin period of the Sixteen Countries, after the Sixteen Countries, Northern Dynasties, Sui and Tang Dynasties, Five Dynasties, Xixia and Yuan Dynasties, it has formed a huge scale, with 735 caves, 45,000 square meters of murals and 24 15 clay sculptures. It is the largest and richest Buddhist art site in the world.

The Mogao Grottoes have been little known since the Yuan Dynasty, and have remained basically the same for hundreds of years. However, after the discovery of the Sutra Cave, it attracted many western archaeologists and explorers. They obtained a large number of precious books and murals from the king at a very low price, and transported them out of China or scattered among the people, which seriously damaged the integrity of the Mogao Grottoes and Dunhuang art

In modern times, in addition to the carving up of cultural relics in the Tibetan Sutra Cave, Dunhuang murals and statues also suffered huge losses, and all the murals in the Tang and Song Dynasties were not in Dunhuang. 1923 Periot and Langdon Werner, who arrived at Harvard University, successively taped a large number of valuable murals, and sometimes even uncovered only a small piece of image in the murals, which seriously damaged the integrity of the murals. Wang also destroyed many murals to open some caves. 1922, hundreds of Russian czar soldiers were held in the Mogao grottoes, and they were filled with smoke in the caves, causing great damage.