Li Yunhe stands in a cultural relic conservation laboratory in Guazhou county, Northwest China's Gansu Province on October 25, 2017. Photo: VCG

Li Yunhe places brown framed glasses snuggly upon his eyes. A white lens splits the lenses into two with one for recreational use and the other set for his profession, restoring murals in the Mogao Grottoes in Northwest China's Gansu Province. Li has been at it for 63 years, helping restore more than 4,000 square meters of murals.

The more than 1,000-year-old Mogao Grottoes of 735 caves is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. Each cave has Buddha statues and wall paintings illustrating the lives and religions of people from different dynasties, carrying historical and cultural value. 

In 1956, Li came to the Mogao Grottoes to become its first mural restorer. 

The 86-year-old man is as healthy and diligent as ever, often showing up to work dressed in denim uniform and donning a hat covering his gray hair. 

His tool kit is always equipped with what he needs, including his decades of experience acquiring techniques to restore murals. Li and his apprentices are invited to help restore murals in other regions in China every year. 

First love

When Li first came to Dunhuang, where the Mogao Grottoes located, he saw the No. 161 Mogao grotto dug in late Tang Dynasty. 

The mural was fast deteriorating. When the door opened and the wind blew, pieces of the mural fluttered down like snowflakes. Li has recalled this memory on different occasions throughout the years. "I felt heartbroken," Li told the Beijing News. 

Li had to collect every falling piece and passed them back to the wall. There was no other method he can use at the time. 

It took Li and his co-workers more than 700 days to restore the 60-square-meter mural. Whenever people mention the No. 161 grotto, it is through the acknowledgement of the relic being a starting point of domestic mural restoration work. The mural was the first grotto to be independently restored by Chinese people in the history of Dunhuang Academy China. 

The mural is susceptible to erosion, a process which can cause mildew and obscure of the pattern.. Some murals will unwrap like scales or experience a buildup of hoar-frost. Murals can also detach or fall off completely from the walls. The responsibility of mural restorers are to dedust, pad, bond and do anything it takes to ensure the survival of murals for as long as possible. 

Find own way

The Mogao Grottoes have experienced various natural and man-made disasters over the past centuries, including sand erosion, war and plunder by Western colonialism. Li hardly had any sufficient equipment to preserve the cultural relics in the Mogao Grottoes when he began to work. Faced with a large area of broken murals, Li started to innovate his own way of restoration.

What Li lacked in tools, he made up for in a kitchen. He baked the material on the stove to observe the properties of the material through temperature changes, and then study corresponding repair methods.

The Dunhuang Academy China invited Czech experts to help restore the mural, but the Czech experts kept the details of the restoration materials and techniques secret.

Li secretly observed the repair process on the side. After the experts left, Li gathered a brush, dropper, syringe and other tools to imitate the repair, and finally devised a process for repairing murals.

Li regards mural protection as an endless science. The 86-year-old elderly is still learning the use of new polymer repair materials on his own.

Tough environment

Li has lived in the staff dormitory, formally a horse stable in the grotto, for about 30 years. 

In the mud houses he and his colleagues live in, there were only beds, chairs, and some desks. When he woke up in the morning, Li felt dust piled on his face and dirt in his nose. 

The summer sun in the region can burn human skin. In the winter, people usually wear sheepskin coats to brave the bitter cold.

Noodles boiled in hot water are a regional delicacy. It is served with an added pinch of salt and vinegar, and eaten with chopsticks made from willow branches. 

Before the arrival of tap water to the region in the 1980s, Li drank water from a spring called Kukouquan, which has a high level of salt and bitter taste.

"When I came here at first, I suffered from diarrhea for about a month," Li told the Beijing News. 

In 1985, Li moved to an apartment, which is two kilometers away from where he had lived. 

In the 1990s, his institute arranged for him to live a house in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu, and offered Li to leave frontlines for more comfortable work. Li promptly declined.

"I have restored murals for my whole life. What should I do in Lanzhou? I would rather guard these staff at Dunhuang," Li noted to the Beijing News. 

Inheritance

Repairing ancient relics is a tedious job, but Li still encourages his grandson Li Xiaoyang to inherit the craft.

Their fates with the Mogao grottoes have a similar trajectory.

In 1956, Li, as a 24-year-old graduate, stopped by to visit his uncle, who was working at Dunhuang Academy China, on his way to Xinjiang in response to the national call for supporting the construction of border area. He never thought his "stopover" would last for 60 years.

His grandson, Li Xiaoyang, who was 22 in 2011 when graduated in interior design from a university in Melbourne, Australia, meant to stay abroad for another two years. He never anticipated he would stay home to follow his grandfather's footsteps.  

"I had planned to stay abroad, but my grandfather had a deep inspiration on me and he encouraged me to make mural restoration an enduring career in China," the grandson said to Southern People Weekly.

"Grandpa always stressed that we should be in awe of cultural relics, because we are here to treat them, like a doctor with a patient," Li Xiaoyang told the Southern People Weekly. "Exactly because cultural relics are like patients who cannot speak, we should be more responsible and careful. If you can't save it, at least don't destroy it. Our value is to keep it alive."

Global Times


Newspaper headline: ‘Buddha beautician’