The Dunhuang Chronicle

The Dunhuang Chronicle is a long novel years in the making by the poet and novelist Ye Zhou, and the first major work of fiction to chronicle Dunhuang in novelistic form. It runs about 1.09 million Chinese characters, divided into two parts and forty-five volumes. The story is rooted in the town of Shazhou in Dunhuang during the late Qing and early Republic: spanning roughly 1910 to 1938, when the Central Plains were in turmoil and the times were declining, while the four commanderies of Hexi on the frontier went largely unnoticed, isolated and desolate, a vast forgotten "rust belt." The novel traces the rise and fall of three great families: the Suo, the Shen, and the Hu. The Suo clan is honored as the "righteous people of Dunhuang"; generations of ancestors petitioned on behalf of the common folk and even gave their lives for justice. When the "blood-stained garment" passes to the family head Suo Chang, he becomes cautious and keeps to his house, unaware that a trap is closing in within his own walls. The renowned physician Shen Ponu of the Shixing Hall drifted to Dunhuang in his early years and established himself through talent and diligence, yet his origins conceal a great secret involving the three counties beyond the pass. Hu Enke, a small merchant of Shazhou, returns from a journey to the Central Plains convinced that the roads are closed and trade is faltering, and secretly "paves the way" for his sons: he promises to open a family cave for the Suo clan on the cliffs of the Mogao Caves, and by threats and inducements arranges a marriage alliance with Shen Ponu. But this plan goes awry midway; Hu Enke suffers a stroke and takes to his bed, having seen the warmth and coldness, the kindness and enmity, of the world. Thereafter the curtain rises on the fate of the next generation. The work uses Shazhou and its twenty-three wards outside the walls as its worldly anchor and the Mogao Caves as its high ground of faith, extending in space with the characters' travels across the entire Hexi Corridor, as far as Hami, the foothills of the Qilian Mountains, and Wushaoling. Over a hundred officials, gentry, peddlers, and men, women, and children move through its pages, while the Buddha Bathing Festival, hu hotpot, and Qinqiang opera weave together the smoke and fire of urban life. Blending classical poetry with western dialect, the author uses spare line drawing and grand narrative to tell of young people seeking, opening, and expanding paths on the disease-ridden land of Hexi, asking after Dunhuang's past and present, and after "what makes China China."