Mogao Li Craftsman Village

Cultural heritage

Mogao Li Craftsman Village stands in Xindun Village of Dunhuang's Mogao township, a dozen-plus kilometres from the Mogao Caves, built with funds from the painted-sculpture representative inheritor Du Yongwei as a cultural cluster centred on studying, protecting, handing down and showing the Dunhuang painted-sculpture craft. Within are the Mogao Academy, the Du Yongwei Art Gallery, the "Hundred-Year Dunhuang" hall, old workshops and an intangible-heritage studio, bringing together Dunhuang-culture lectures, mural and calligraphy study, art and design, sculpture teaching and seal carving—a key site for the living transmission of Dunhuang's intangible heritage.

Visiting: Inside the village, visitors watch craftsmen frame, clay and paint by old methods, re-creating the steps of the Mogao images; guests may join workshops in sculpture-making, mural copying and stone-powder painting, feeling for themselves the texture of mineral pigment and refined clay, and admire historical sculptures and fine mural copies in the Du Yongwei Art Gallery—a living classroom for understanding just how Dunhuang art was made.