(The picture is "The Painting of Dunhuang" painted by Dunhuang Painting Academy.) We have all learned such a history: in 1900, Taoist Wang Yuanlu accidentally found the Sutra Cave, and he ran everywhere, hoping that the government would pay attention to it and protect it. However, the Qing Dynasty and the Qing government had no time to take such "small things" into account when the wind and rain were shaking. Taoist Wang guarded the Sutra Cave for 7 years, and then the British Stein came. Under his clever words and orders, he cheated 24 boxes of manuscripts and 5 boxes of artworks with only four pieces of horseshoe silver. Since then, the great powers have pretended their identity as thieves and seized the treasures in the caves crazily... Today, there are few cultural relics and treasures in Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, except for the Dunhuang murals, which have survived by luck due to the difficulty of "stripping". For thousands of years, Dunhuang murals have been irreversibly peeled and destroyed due to time, sandstorms, climate or man-made destruction. There is still no technology that can prevent the Dunhuang murals from becoming "like doughnuts". Maybe one day, the Dunhuang murals will disappear from our sight forever. It is reassuring that, as the guardian of Dunhuang murals, a group of painters have been copying murals under difficult conditions for 30 years. They firmly believe that only when they are seen and their skills are passed on, can the Dunhuang murals continue to "live". (The picture is the inside page of Dunhuang Like Painting) The Dunhuang Academy of Painting has been deeply involved in the field of Dunhuang art. It has long explored the technique of copying clay copies to truly restore the true color of murals. It is the only institution in China that uses this technique to copy Dunhuang murals on a large scale. In order to arouse wider public recognition, promote the spread of Dunhuang culture and art, and let more people understand the story behind Dunhuang, and truly understand Dunhuang, Dunhuang Academy of Painting has published the book "Dunhuang is like a painting - a continuation of 1600 years of beautiful history" for the first time in 30 years, showing the carefully polished clay copy murals to readers at one time. Such is the painting of Dunhuang, that is, Dunhuang is painted like this. At the beginning of "Painting in Dunhuang", we interviewed six copyists. From their words, we can feel the sincere ingenuity of the copyists. (The picture is the inside page of Dunhuang Like Painting) Shen Yongping, vice president of Dunhuang Painting Academy, said when he introduced clay copy: it takes more than ten days to make a board just by copying the clay copy. So it takes seven or eight months to paint a large mural, and some even take more than a year to paint. According to the complexity of the content, the time and energy consumed are different. In addition to a long time, copying on the clay book must be as error free as possible. Copying on paper can be modified by copying, but not on the clay book. Painters need to draft on the clay wall with bare hands. If they modify it, the wall will be damaged, and the overall effect will be different. (The picture is the inside page of Dunhuang Like Painting) Song Ling, the current president of Dunhuang Academy of Painting, talked about the difficulties of copying clay copies and summarized the following points: the climate and soil characteristics of different regions need to be considered when making clay copies; The techniques of drawing lines and coloring in clay copy are very different from those in paper copy. He said that painting a clay copy and a paper copy of the same size would take two to three times as much time as copying a paper copy. Painters devote their lives to the desert, and communicate with painters in history by copying Dunhuang murals, so as to achieve mutual understanding