China’s ancient Buddhist grottoes face a new threat — tourists

At the heart of the ancient Silk Road, on the edge of the Gobi Desert, lies a centuries-old place of pilgrimage: hundreds of caves hewn from a sandstone cliff containing some of the most exquisite Buddhist frescoes and figures in the world. Abandoned for centuries, the Mogao Grottoes somehow survived everything that nature and man could throw at them. But the fragile wall paintings, some of which date to the 4th century, face another threat — from a new army of tourists and the lure of profit.
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