In 1987, the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Northwest China’s Gansu Province, joined UNESCO’s World Heritage List. That same year, Neil Schmid, then an undergraduate at Georgetown University studying Chinese in the US, first set foot in the remote desert city. He says his bond with Dunhuang began with yuanfen, a fateful affinity.
More than thirty years later, in 2018, Schmid became the first full-time foreign researcher at the Dunhuang Academy. At the Mogao Caves, home to the world’s largest and best-preserved collection of Buddhist art, his arrival brought a new international dimension to the ancient site. Since then, he has spent thousands of hours examining the caves’ murals and sculptures, an experience he describes as "extremely fortunate."
"Each visit reveals something new, and the more time I spend inside them, the more I come to appreciate how these spaces were carefully crafted to engage the body, the senses, and the mind in a profound act of devotion and storytelling," Schmid told the Global Times.
In the interview, Schmid discussed his bond with Dunhuang, his research on its art and history, his outreach to global audiences, and the affection he holds for the place he now calls home.
’A crucible of innovation and creativity’
Schmid’s connection to Dunhuang began decades ago in 1986, by chance, in a bookstore in the island of Taiwan. There he discovered an English translation of vernacular narratives from the hidden cache of medieval manuscripts and objects in the Mogao Caves. The endnotes, teeming with insights into the cultural worlds behind the texts, left him spellbound.
Soon afterward, he made the journey to Dunhuang, arriving there for the first time on his birthday. By coincidence, the translator of that book, which he had read about the Mogao Caves, became his PhD advisor at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Now, years later, I find myself living and working at the Dunhuang Academy, a path perhaps shaped by the Chinese concept of yuanfen, the deep affinity that binds lives and places across time and space," said Schmid.
For Schmid, the Mogo Caves are unlike any other place on Earth. The Mogo Caves is a place where visual, textual, and historical worlds converge.
"For me, this makes the Mogao Caves a kind of living laboratory, a place to test hypotheses, ask new questions about medieval life, and immerse oneself in the details of past worlds and lost ways of living on the Silk Road," he said.
His current research "gets at the heart of the Mogao Caves and Dunhuang as a site shaped by centuries of cultural, religious, and artistic exchanges."
One of his current studies centers on a 10th-century mural in Mogao Cave 98 depicting the King of Khotan, a nearby kingdom located in what is now southern Xinjiang, whose rulers once forged alliances with Dunhuang.
According to Schmid, this portrait is remarkable for its stunning details, which present not only notions of Chinese kingship but also strikingly showcase Persian and Central Asian symbols and concepts of kingship and divine authority.
In Cave 25, he discovered a familiar gesture in one of the murals, a hand pose that strikingly resembles that in Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. The Dunhuang version predates da Vinci by more than five centuries, dating to around 950 AD.
"I’m now researching how might this ’Dunhuang da Vinci’ and the portrait from 1500, two very different paintings, could share such extraordinary visual connections across such vast distances of time and space," he said.
Both projects, he believes, underscore Dunhuang’s identity as a unique crucible of cultural fusion.
"The caves stand as enduring evidence of how cultural exchange can generate entirely new visual languages and devotional forms, making Dunhuang not just a crossroads, but a crucible of innovation and creativity," Schmid noted.
Sharing Dunhuang with the world
Schmid sees himself not only as a researcher but also as a storyteller.
"Dunhuang is not just an academic subject, it’s a cultural treasure that belongs to the world," he said. "To deepen global understanding, we really need to tell Dunhuang’s stories in a way that speaks to diverse audiences: scholars, students, artists, and of course the general public."
Over the years, he has advanced that goal through lectures, exhibitions, social media, and documentary work. His current flagship projectis a global guide to Dunhuang studies, a multilingual road map for scholars and students navigating the field.
"Dunhuang studies spans archaeology, Buddhist history, art history, philology, digital humanities, and more, yet there has never been a centralized reference that brings these threads together across cultures and languages, " Schmid told the Global Times.
Now based his long stay in Dunhuang, Schmid says he feels deeply connected to the place and its people.
"Over the years I’ve always felt welcomed by the people of Dunhuang, with warmth, hospitality, and a deep pride in their heritage," he said.
He has watched the oasis transforming, new roads, housing, and green parks reshaping the desert city. Yet amid the changes, the ancient caves remain his steady source of inspiration.
"Dunhuang teaches us that coexistence doesn’t mean uniformity or enforced homogenization; it means exchanges, mutual respect, and creativity. In a divided world, Dunhuang reminds us that history’s most enduring achievements often come from cultural openness, not isolation," Schmid said.
原文地址：http://en.people.cn/n3/2025/1110/c90000-20388399.html