URUMQI, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) — Once a thriving crossroads on the Silk Road in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the traditional Kucha area has left traces of its wealthy historical past in museums and collections world wide.
Buddhist murals, sculptures and manuscripts from Kucha, often known as the traditional Qiuci State (“Qiuci” being its Chinese pinyin type), at the moment are held in Berlin, St. Petersburg, Tokyo and elsewhere.
Reconstructing its previous is subsequently requiring researchers to work throughout borders and pool their experience. Understanding Kucha’s previous has change into a world scholarly effort.
The shared pursuit introduced greater than 180 students from 15 nations and areas to Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, for a two-day symposium, titled Towards Anxi from Afar: Academic Symposium on Qiuci Studies, which concluded on Sunday.
Scholars from China, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Pakistan and elsewhere exchanged analysis findings on historical texts, faith, archaeology and cultural heritage conservation.
Located between the Tianshan Mountains and the Taklimakan Desert, the traditional Kucha area encompassed components of at present’s Kuqa, Baicheng, Xayar and Xinhe in Xinjiang.
For centuries, it was a gathering level of civilizations. Chinese silk and paper traveled westward alongside commerce routes, whereas Buddhism from India, Persian inventive influences and Sogdian retailers made their manner east.
At the symposium, Rong Xinjiang, a professor at Peking University and president of the Chinese Dunhuang-Turpan Society, offered new analysis on a tomb epitaph unearthed in Kuqa in 2025.
For abroad researchers, maintaining with archaeological discoveries in Xinjiang is a crucial motive to keep up shut ties with Chinese students.
“Continued contact with colleagues around the world, especially in China, is essential,” stated Caren Dreyer, a researcher on the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin. “It enables us to keep abreast of new findings and to participate actively in the international scholarly community.”
For Erica Hunter, a scholar from the University of Cambridge who makes a speciality of relics and Syriac manuscripts excavated from Turpan, the worth of such gatherings lies in bringing collectively proof that might in any other case stay separated by geography.
Russian students can share supplies from St. Petersburg, whereas German researchers can focus on these in Berlin, Hunter stated. Equally necessary are the totally different interpretations students convey to their analysis.
Hunter has visited Xinjiang a number of occasions over the previous 4 years to share her analysis on Syriac manuscripts found within the area. She stated such exchanges assist students overcome limitations and be taught from each other. “It’s a two-way process, and that’s very important.”
On his first go to to Xinjiang, Pakistani scholar Fawad Khan adopted the shows with eager curiosity. He stated the symposium supplied a precious studying alternative for students.
The exchanges additionally mirrored a rising emphasis on worldwide collaboration in Silk Road research, as Chinese establishments develop tutorial cooperation in fields starting from Turpan and Qiuci research, to analysis on the traditional metropolis of Beiting.
For Italian scholar Erica Forte, the symposium was additionally a reunion. Speaking Chinese with colleagues, she caught up with previous buddies and professors who had supported her throughout her research.
For her, the conversations mirrored what had lengthy given the Silk Road its significance, specifically connections between individuals and cultures, as students got here collectively to alternate findings, examine views and deepen their understanding of a area that when stood on the crossroads of civilizations.