Piercing the West · A Millennium of Caves · Digital Immortality
From 138 BCE, when Zhang Qian pierced the West, to 366 CE, when the Mogao Grottoes began, to today's millimeter-level digital capture — this course spans eight eras, thirty Silk Road cities, and forty digital relics, inviting you to gaze upon a civilizational dialogue that has lasted over two thousand years. The whole site is built on dark gold, azurite, and ochre, in homage to those natural mineral pigments that endure across a millennium.
Visit city by city on the interactive map. Below is an animated trace of the route.
A timeline links the eight chapters from Zhang Qian's Piercing to digital immortality — with exposition, voice narration, and mural details.
A Leaflet interactive Silk Road map marks thirty node cities — click any for a history card and representative relics.
A waterfall gallery of digital relics — flip a card to reveal its dating, material, find site, and the story behind it.
This is a digital portal built for a general university course. We wish not merely to impart knowledge, but to let you hear the camel bells of two thousand years ago, see the sleeves of the apsara plucking her pipa behind her back, and touch the still-unweathered characters in the Library Cave. The virtual guide Wuzhen, at the lower right, walks with you at all times — please, ask it anything.
All cover images, relic illustrations, background music, and short videos are AI-generated, intended as instructional illustration of the colors and atmosphere of Dunhuang art. For systematic reading, visit the Archive to download the lecture notes and teaching PPT.