Silk Road saga

Repair work

After training in Beijing, Han and his peers went to Xinjiang's Kizil Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage site that was built between the third and eighth centuries. It's also one of the earliest grotto complexes in China.

Han stayed in Kizil for about two months, producing two murals. The process of mural-copying has two main steps－to identify the shades of colors featured on them, with the help of a color chart, and find out how the murals were painted.

According to Han, a mural is like a sculpture and features layers of colors and traces of carving by knives. Murals in grottoes keep all the traces of time and crafts alive. Han tries to keep the copies alive, too. That's why one piece takes such a long time to create.

Han once spent four months on a 1.7-meter-high copy of a mural in Ah-ai Grotto on the top of a mountain in Tianshan Canyon in Xinjiang. The 16-square-meter grotto was found in 1999. It takes driving, walking and climbing to reach the cave.

"I failed to bring my painting board into the cave since it was too small," he says.

He says his friends thought he led a tough life in the past five years copying murals in deserts while they enjoyed a city life full of entertainment.

However, the young man says it was worth it. "To some extent, it helped me a lot. My concept of art totally changed."