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New Railway to World-renowned Buddhist Treasurehouse Proposed
Construction of a new railway line was proposed Wednesday by a Chinese legislator to connect the world-renowned Dunhuang Mogao Caves with a trunk line running across northwest China.
The proposed line will help tourists from around the world visit priceless Buddhist art in the Mogao Caves with a stunning array of Buddhist statutes and murals that are spread for about 1, 600 meters along a hill in Dunhuang in northwest China's Gansu province.
But the proposal is expected to meet opposition from experts on the caves, who have warned time and again of the harm a railroad and increased visitors would do to the caves, which date back to 366 A.D.
Dong Xihai, a deputy to the Ninth National People's Congress, China's top legislature, proposed that a railway be built linking the existing Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway and Dunhuang town, once an important cultural and trade center on the Silk Road linking Central Asia and China.
About one million Japanese and 600,000 Europeans plan visits to the caves every year, compared with only 600,000 arrivals in 2000 in the town by air and bus, said Dong, director of the Lanzhou Railway Administration.
He said the proposed line should be listed in a five-year railway construction plan.
Two routes have been proposed in a preliminary feasibility report by the No.1 Prospecting and Designing Institute under the Ministry of Railways: a 141.5 km line linking Dunhuang with the Niuyuan Stop on the Lanzhou-Xinjiang railway, and a 219.5 km line linking Dunhuang with the Junkeng Stop on the same railway.
The first cave in the Mogao Grottoes was made in 366 A.D., and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) listed the Mogao Grottoes on the World Heritage List in 1987.
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