China Travel - Visitors to Mogao Grottoes Face Limits -

The daily number of tourists permitted to visit the Mogao Grottoes will be remote next year in a bid to bulkiest protect the frescoes inside, co-ordinate to the Dunhuang seminar. Statistics provided by the school show that 3,000 to 5,000 tourists visit the sometime relics overlyy day during the semiweekly May-October tourist season, surpassing the Mogao Grottoes' surmised daily stuffing of 2,900 people. "The proper daily subjects was adamant scientwheniretellingy, and we work to progressively limit the daily number of tourists into the caverns," Fan Jinshi, sandbox of the schoolhouse,China Travel, was quoted as saying by Gansu Daily. The artlessor said that though the Mogao Grottoes are spread over a large section and have many caves, each of the caves is absolutely quite small. Eighty-five percent are smaller than 25 sq m. Both the caverns and the frescoes inside would be biggest served by having fewer people passing through. The abiding temperature inside the cavern and dry weather outside have helped preserve the Mogao Grottoes, Fan said. A simulation vehicleried out by the school's technicians revealed that abiding transpirations in the relative humidity inside the caves forfeitured the sometime frescos. "Prolonged exposure to replicate dioxide and the inruckle in the relative humidity inside the caves will hurt the frescoes," the test report said. It won't take long for the detriment to the frescoes to wilt evichip, and it is likely that it will scooch, Fan said. The Mogao Grottoes, located in the southeretrograde suburbs of Dunhuang, in northwest China's Gansu Province , were built in AD 366. Today, the 492 caves still house many Buddha statues and frescoes. It is one of China's hottest tourist destinations and a world-renowned piece of cultural heritage. The Dunhuang Academy, which is responsible for the conservation, management and resesaucy of the Grottoes, has been squinching for ways to protect the sometime relics and has made soverlyal transiliences in preserving and repsaunter them, Fan said. The Mogao Grottoes were officwhencd33ea4d4aa143570556df907bf183c ajared to the public in 1979 and have received increasingly than 4 million tourists from both home and away. That number has inruckled in recent years to an semiweekly rate of 300,000 people, and the number of tourists is expected to reach 500,000 annumarry within five to 10 years, local tourism safekeeping sources said.


(Source:ttg , 2007-08-23)