-- As autumn sweeps across the southern suburbs of Nanjing, the woods of Niushoushan deepen in color, layer by layer. The mountain is home to ancient pagodas, cliff carvings, and the underground palaces of the Southern Tang Mausoleums that have slumbered for a millennium. This autumn, a breeze from Dunhuang drifted into these Jiangnan woodlands. The Niushoushan-Dunhuang Cultural Week invited Fan Zaixuan, a researcher at the Dunhuang Academy and 2025 National Craftsman of the Year, to the mountain. He arrived without a boisterous ceremony. Instead, like one absorbed in wall meditation emerging from the cave chambers, he shared his forty-year story of communing with murals with local children, young visitors, and anyone willing to slow down and listen.
Forty Years of "Wall Meditation": Restoration as a Slow Practice
Fan's story begins in 1981, when he started out as an apprentice. He recounted how generations of Dunhuang guardians—Chang Shuhong, Duan Wenjie, Fan Jinshi—devoted their entire lives to one calling. In Eastern culture, "wall meditation" carries the inherent meaning of spiritual practice. For Bodhidharma, it was an inward quest for awakening; for mural restorers, it is a quest across time for answers. Plaster disruption, the destructive salt deterioration of murals, is often called the "cancer" of murals by conservators. How is a four-square-meter section of detached mural painstakingly pieced back into place over two years? Behind these seemingly technical questions lies a deeply Zen mindset: the goal is not to rush to make the ancient look brand-new, but to preserve the traces left by time with dignity.
During the cultural week, Niushoushan transformed into a temporary "mountain conservation studio." Experts gave lectures and hosted workshops; under their guidance, children worked on mural test panels, learned conservation tools, and wrote their very first "restoration lab reports." This hands-on experience brings visitors closer to the texture of culture than viewing exhibits behind glass. Restoration is not about painting something new, but about letting antiquities age slowly. Patience, reverence, steady hands, and a calm mind—these qualities resonate across cultures.
Land and Sea: Two Silk Roads Converge on One Mountain
Dunhuang is a jewel of Buddhist art on the overland Silk Road; Niushoushan sits where the river meets the sea. It was from these hills that Zheng He embarked on his ocean voyages, and here he was laid to rest; the echoes of the Maritime Silk Road linger still. Buddhist art, merchants, and sea winds once converged along far-flung routes across Asia. Today, that convergence takes tangible shape. The Cultural Relics Conservation Center of the Dunhuang Academy is carrying out mural protection work at the Southern Tang Mausoleums on Niushoushan. The guardianship of Dunhuang and the guardianship of Niushoushan now meet on the same mountain. Meanwhile, the digital exhibition "Dunhuang No Longer Distant: From Mogao Caves to Niushoushan" is on display. Visitors no longer need to travel thousands of miles to encounter the timeless hues of Mogao.
Niushoushan itself is a "national treasure mountain right on our doorstep." Its heritage sites include Hongjue Temple Pagoda, cliff carvings, the Southern Tang Mausoleums, Zheng He's Tomb, the relics of Yue Fei's resistance against the Jin, and the tomb of Li Ruiqing. Standing alongside the digital Dunhuang show, they form a unique cultural itinerary. Niushoushan shares a deep connection with the Oxhead School of Chan (Chinese Zen). The pagoda shadows, stone carvings, and forest trails naturally breathe the Zen charm of Jiangnan. Buddhist pagodas and murals are familiar sights, yet few places weave together Jiangnan woodland Zen, Dunhuang mural conservation, and Maritime Silk Road heritage along a single walking path.
Pagoda Shadows and Grottoes: Another Expression of Zen Culture in Jiangnan
Dunhuang's Buddhist realm unfolds on cliff faces: flying apsaras, sutra paintings, and donor portraits capture the faith and aesthetic vision of an age, preserved in sandstone. Niushoushan, by contrast, embodies Buddhist and Zen culture amid mountain woods, pagoda silhouettes, and underground palaces. The profound depths of the Southern Tang Mausoleums, the still-standing Hongjue Temple Pagoda, and the weathered marks on cliff carvings are not mere exhibits—they are time speaking for itself. The digital exhibition uses light and projection to bring Mogao's timeless palette to Jiangnan, letting grotto art and Jiangnan Zen mirror one another on this mountain.
This juxtaposition is not simply a touring exhibition brought in from afar. It lets two cultural expressions illuminate each other: grotto art shows how faith was painted onto walls; Jiangnan's mountain landscapes reveal how Zen settles into ordinary scenery. For those acquainted with Buddhist art, Dunhuang's apsaras and sutra paintings are well known. What Niushoushan offers is a living, tangible Zen space in the Jiangnan wilderness—pagodas nested in mountains, mountains within the city, and visitors wandering gently along trails. Culture is not merely something to be viewed; it is something to be experienced as you walk.
Guarding and Passing On: Letting Antiquities Age with Dignity
Here, guardianship and inheritance are not slogans, but daily work: structural conservation, heritage condition monitoring, historical documentation, and digital archiving. The team also uses AR/VR to make relics accessible, and collaborates with universities and cultural institutions for research, exhibitions, and public engagement. For visitors, the most touching element is not technical jargon, but an ethos—this mountain attends to the dust of history with careful craftsmanship, while using contemporary creative forms to carry traditional culture further.
The "timeless hue" is never one single shade. It is an unbroken relay, handed down generation after generation. Dunhuang's murals rest quietly through the ages in the desert; Niushoushan's pagoda shadows await the autumn breeze in Jiangnan. If you have wandered among pagodas and ancient murals, come to Niushoushan—to see how Dunhuang arrives in Jiangnan, to watch a conservator hold a quiet conversation with a painted wall, and to discover how one mountain turns guardianship into everyday life. Cultural travel need not rush toward a destination. Slow down, and the mountain will speak.
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