URUMQI, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) — About a century in the past, quite a few cultural relics from Turpan — an important hub alongside the traditional Silk Road — have been taken abroad by exploration and excavation. Today, the historic metropolis is fostering worldwide dialogue and cooperation by Turfan research, which bridge civilizations.
Located in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Turpan, also referred to as Turfan, has lengthy been a melting pot the place farming, nomadic and oasis cultures converged within the coronary heart of Eurasia. Its arid local weather has preserved a wealth of multilingual paperwork, cave murals and relics.
From Oct. 18 to twenty, almost 200 specialists and students from over 70 universities and analysis institutes throughout 16 nations and areas — together with Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States and Japan — gathered in Turpan for the Seventh International Symposium of Turfan Studies. The subjects ranged from heritage conservation to the evolution of Silk Road tradition.
“Turfan is a wonderful example of the meeting of different ethnic groups and religions in the past, and it remains so today,” mentioned Erica Hunter, a scholar from the University of Cambridge within the UK who makes a speciality of relics and Syriac manuscripts excavated from Turpan.
“It’s only through meeting and dialogue that we gain mutual understanding,” she added.
Turfan research emerged as a world tutorial area within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when explorers and archaeologists from Russia, Germany, Britain and Japan excavated, looted and studied the area’s historic tombs, ruins and artifacts.
Peter Zieme, a professor on the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany, performed a philological examine on a manuscript fragment from Turpan now stored in Berlin. The fragment comprises texts in each Old Uygur language and Chinese.
He demonstrated how Uygur monks, students, poets and writers made unbiased and vital contributions to Buddhist thought.
“Turfan has always been at the crossroads of civilizations,” he mentioned, underscoring that an in-depth examine of artifacts from Turpan is essential for understanding the historical past of human civilizational exchanges.
Over the previous century, specialists and students from world wide specializing in classical philology, archaeology, historical past, linguistics, paleontology and different fields have contributed to Turfan research.
In current years, new excavations and discoveries at relic websites — such because the Xipang Jingjiao Monastery (a Nestorian Christian web site) and the Tuyoq Buddhist Grottoes — have infused power into world analysis. Meanwhile, a rising variety of Chinese students are making their mark within the area, deciphering languages as soon as spoken by retailers and vacationers alongside the traditional Silk Road.
Drawing on manuscripts found in Turpan, Lin Lijuan, an affiliate professor within the Department of History at Peking University, shared insights into how Syriac Christian texts have been translated, circulated domestically, and probably unfold to Beijing and southern China.
“Through Turpan, a key hub for cultural exchange, Western culture and religion entered other parts of China,” she mentioned.
According to Zhang Yong, Party secretary of the Turpan cultural heritage administration, devoted analysis and collaboration between Chinese and worldwide students have reworked scattered fragments of proof into strong tutorial achievements.
“Turfan studies are not only a treasure of China but also of the world,” mentioned Zhang. “The civilizational exchanges in Turpan continue, as Turfan studies remain a shared language for global scholars.”