Who Tells the Story of Dunhuang? Digital Heritage, Power, and Possibility
- EPOCH
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
Yuxin Tao | Lancaster University
At the British Museum, I stood before a delicate silk painting from Dunhuang. Behind the glass, a seated Buddha looked out with calm detachment, flanked by two donor figures. The caption read: 'Paintings from the Silk Roads collected by Aurel Stein'. It provided a brief biography of the Hungarian-British explorer, detailing his expeditions to western China, and listing the institutions that now house his findings. However, it said nothing about how these objects left China, or what they meant to the people who once venerated them. There was no Chinese, no audio guide, no context, only the language of acquisition and display. For many visitors, this painting is beautiful but silent. And for those of us who know its origins, the silence speaks volumes.
Dunhuang, a vital Silk Road town, houses thousands of Buddhist murals, manuscripts, and sculptures from its fourth to fourteenth century caves. In the early twentieth century, 'Cave 17' opened, leading to foreign acquisition and material removal by explorers like Aurel Stein to museums worldwide. These artefacts increasingly exist online. Two major platforms, the International Dunhuang Project (IDP), led by Western institutions, and Digital Dunhuang from China's Dunhuang Academy offer public access. Both aim for preservation. My exploration revealed vastly different visions: one rooted in archival logic, the other in immersive storytelling. This raises a deeper question: in the digital age, who truly tells Dunhuang's story, and who is left out?
Founded in 1994 and led by the British Library, the IDP digitises Central Asian manuscripts. While achieving preservation and open access via high-resolution scans and metadata, it must be asked: what audience does it serve? When I searched for a Tang dynasty manuscript connected to Aurel Stein's collection, I found a detailed image of a Guanyin Sutra scroll. The resolution was impeccable, every brushstroke of classical Chinese was visible, even the cracks and tears in the aged paper. But the page offered little else. There was no translation, no introduction, no suggestion of what this sutra meant or how it was used. For a general visitor, it is an image without a voice.
The site's interface, designed for scholars, relies on item numbers, technical metadata, and English-only descriptions. This creates distance for non-specialists: objects are visible, but their stories remain inaccessible.
What stands out even more is the language of historical detachment. The site does mention that 'explorers of the early 1900s purchased many of these items and brought them back to their own countries'. But this phrasing is curiously passive with no exploration of context, no acknowledgement of unequal power, and no reflection on the consequences of removal. Aurel Stein appears in neutral biographical notes; his role in extracting sacred materials from Mogao's sealed cave is recorded without question or critique. History, in this telling, becomes a list of transactions: who acquired what, when, and where.
The IDP presents Dunhuang heritage as a meticulously catalogued, decontextualised dataset, paradoxically offering access without fostering understanding; it preserves material while stripping meaning. This perceived neutrality is a form of power, dictating what is visible, hidden, and who holds interpretive authority. As a Chinese student reading a Chinese text through a British interface, I could recognise the characters but not hear the story. In a platform designed to share knowledge, that silence speaks louder than any annotation.
These platforms embody profoundly different curatorial philosophies: IDP emphasises scholarly neutrality; Digital Dunhuang, emotional storytelling. A living museum compared to IDP's quiet archive.
Developed by the Dunhuang Academy and launched in 2016, Digital Dunhuang replaces metadata with narrative, offering not a catalogue, but an experience. Its homepage opens with a panoramic image of the Mogao Caves bathed in desert light, inviting users to 'walk into the Dunhuang Grottoes'. Rather than presenting isolated artefacts, Digital Dunhuang allows users to explore entire cave complexes, such as Cave 45 or Cave 285, through immersive, zoomable 3D tours. Visitors can enter chambers, hear audio guides, and read curated explanations of mural scenes, Buddhist iconography, and conservation efforts. It feels less like browsing an archive, and more like entering a carefully staged, emotionally resonant exhibition. Here, Dunhuang is not a dataset, it is a story. Users are not just readers, but visitors.
Beyond aesthetics, this approach reflects a fundamental philosophy: Dunhuang is a cultural inheritance to be felt, narrated, and reclaimed. Through immersive 3D walkthroughs, interactive murals, and multilingual commentaries, it guides users through each cave's visual and spiritual life, inviting emotional engagement.
The platform, available in both Chinese and English, is intuitive and visually striking. It offers more than preservation: it centres interpretation, rooted in the community and tradition it represents. While the IDP keeps users at a distance through technical metadata, Digital Dunhuang invites engagement through emotion and narrative. The Mogao Caves are presented not as static records, but as a living site of memory. Visitors do more than view: they listen, learn, and, in a small way, participate.
This act of storytelling is not neutral. It is curated by a state-affiliated institution with a clear cultural mission. The narrative is tightly interwoven with China's broader discourse on civilisational continuity, heritage pride, and soft power. Dunhuang is framed not as a shared past, but as an emblem of Chinese resilience and ownership. In this sense, Digital Dunhuang is a deliberate counterpoint to Western archival practices. Where platforms like the IDP abstract and decontextualise, Digital Dunhuang recontextualises with intention and authority. It does not whisper, it asserts: we are reclaiming the right to narrate. Yet this reassertion comes with boundaries. The platform is accessible, but not participatory. Users cannot annotate, remix, or contribute alternative interpretations. Just as the IDP centralises scholarly gatekeeping, Digital Dunhuang centralises cultural sovereignty. Both platforms, in different ways, preserve but also prescribe. In a digital landscape where heritage is often fragmented, it offers a powerful example of how digitisation can be used to speak and reclaim the past.
Broader comparisons of platform design and ethos remain abstract without examining the artefacts they present. To understand curatorial philosophies, it is possible to compare a Tang dynasty Guanyin Sutra scroll on the IDP and a Pure Land mural from Cave 220 on Digital Dunhuang. Though both from Dunhuang's religious traditions, their digitisation, narration, and accessibility differ profoundly. These examples take us beyond theory, prompting us to think not just about what we see, but how it is shown, and who it is really for.
On the IDP platform, I searched for a Tang dynasty manuscript associated with Aurel Stein's collection and found a scroll of the Guanyin Sutra. The digitised image was stunningly detailed: one could zoom in to see every curve of each character, even faint smudges left behind by someone long gone remained. But beyond the visual clarity of the facsimile, the webpage was stark. The only accompanying information was a string of item numbers, bibliographic references, and a brief metadata note in English. There was no translation, no contextual introduction, no explanation of the sutra's devotional significance or ritual use. There are the IDP's strengths and constraints. It excels at preservation and scholarly access but speaks to a limited audience. The Guanyin Sutra appears not as a living text of prayer and protection, but as a specimen in a database. As a viewer, I could see the object but not understand it.
In contrast, Digital Dunhuang's Cave 220 offers a strikingly different encounter. This Tang dynasty mural depicts the Pure Land of Amitābha, a luminous paradise filled with lotus thrones, celestial musicians, and serene bodhisattvas. On the platform, the user can virtually enter the cave through a 3D tour, moving freely across the painted chamber. Multilingual content guides the viewer through each symbolic element: the Western orientation, the symmetrical composition, and the iconographic motifs symbolising rebirth and release. Unlike the Guanyin Sutra scroll, which appears as a static fragment, the Cave 220 mural becomes part of a spatial and emotional narrative. It is not simply shown but staged. The viewer is not a researcher, but a guest invited to listen, to reflect, and to feel.
Yet this engagement remains carefully curated, emphasising continuity, harmony, and national pride. There is little mention of contestation or multiple interpretations. Digital Dunhuang does not open the mural for dialogue; it frames the story, beautifully, but firmly reminding us that even affect has a structure, and every immersion has a boundary.
Through these two artefacts we glimpse not only different digital formats, but also different philosophies of cultural stewardship. What emerges is not a binary of right and wrong, but a question of priorities: is heritage best preserved through neutrality, or reclaimed through story? Who is imagined as the viewer: a scholar, a citizen, or a global public? These case studies show how quiet design choices shape our engagement with the past.
As digital platforms evolve, the task is to combine access and effect. The IDP, rooted in archival logic, offers scholarly access and meticulous cataloguing. Lacking narrative, it provides access without understanding, perpetuating historical hierarchies through silence. Digital Dunhuang, conversely, prioritises affect and storytelling, guiding users through immersive, culturally proud experiences, framing Dunhuang as a resilient national inheritance with central interpretation.
While the IDP makes heritage searchable and Digital Dunhuang makes it resonant, both possess limits: one risks detachment, the other, curated control. Both exert control by framing what is shown, and for whom.
In the end, the question is not whether a scroll is digitised or a cave reconstructed. It is whether the user walks away with a file or with a story.
If the IDP preserves without presence and Digital Dunhuang narrates without participation, digital heritage's future demands co-authorship of meaning, beyond digitisation. Imagine a platform that bridges worldviews, where English and Chinese curators collaborate, presenting murals through diverse voices, scholars, historians, communities, artists, and everyday viewers. This unfolds heritage in dialogue and layered perspectives, not from a single authority.
This is no fantasy. Multilingual interfaces, open annotations and collaborative metadata already exist in the digital academic space. What is missing is the willingness to share control. True co-curation demands more than access, requiring institutions to share interpretive authority and embrace complexity. This raises essential questions: what if an object's meaning is contested, or its story changes with each narrator? What if a platform becomes a conversation, not just a showcase?
These possibilities are uncomfortable, especially given colonial legacies. Yet, if unchallenged, the digital realm risks becoming another polished, preserved, but silent echo of the past. Digital heritage promises plurality: spaces where memory is shared and reimagined. Small collaborations can model an equitable, co-authored future. To achieve this, focus must shift from mere preservation to active participation, from high-resolution scrolls to stories in shared voices.
When I stood before the Dunhuang painting at the British Museum, its fine silk faded, its story untold, I realised that what unsettled me was not just what I could see, but what I could not hear. There was no voice, no context, no trace of the hands that had brushed its lines or the faith that once animated it. Only a label. A dynasty. A collector. Aurel Stein. That silence was not confined to one gallery. It reverberated through digital archives, exhibition walls, and even through platforms built with care. We are learning that visibility is not voice; that access does not ensure understanding; that preservation without participation risks becoming another form of erasure. So, the question is no longer merely about ownership, who holds the object, but about authorship: who tells the story, and how.
The IDP and Digital Dunhuang present distinct visions of digital heritage. The challenge is not in choosing one approach over another to display history but combining their strengths: building platforms rigorous yet resonant, meticulous yet human, preserving with care and curating with courage. Memory, then, will not be silently filed away, but spoken, shared, and shaped together. Heritage is not merely what we inherit, but how we remember and who speaks in that remembrance. When Dunhuang's murals are recognised as sites of dialogic multiplicity, beyond 'Stein's collection' or 'national treasure', digital technology can unlock heritage's political potential.
Further Reading:
Susan Whitfield, Life Along the Silk Road, 2nd edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015)
Frances Wood, The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia (London: British Library, 2002)
Wu Hung, Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (London: Reaktion Books, 2016)
Tim Winter, Geocultural Power: China’s Quest to Revive the Silk Roads for the Twenty-First Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019)
Digital Dunhuang: https://www.e-dunhuang.com/
International Dunhuang Programme: https://idp.bl.uk/
Yuxin Tao, from China, is a master’s student in History at Lancaster University. Her research explores archival histories in the early modern and modern periods, with particular interests in visual materials, narrative methods, and the use of digital tools in historical storytelling. Before beginning her postgraduate studies, she worked in archives and museums and taught history at a high school. She has a strong interest in the history of medicine and is especially drawn to questions of gender representation and historical memory. She is also keen to explore how digital heritage can open up new ways of engaging with the past.