The show is performed each evening in front of an audience of 1,000, in the heart of the Gobi Desert. For over 20 years, in the Thousand Buddha Caves of Dunhuang, a Chinese heritage site comprising over 400 cave temples and chapels carved out of the rock between the 4th and 14th centuries, a play has been staged to depict the "plundering" of its treasures, with local actors dressed as Westerners.
At the beginning of the 20th century, under the declining Qing dynasty, the virtually abandoned site of Dunhuang attracted the interest of Western archaeologists and explorers, as it was rumored to contain a wealth of treasures. It was against this backdrop that sinologist Paul Pelliot (1878-1945), a member of the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient, acquired some 10,000 manuscripts, paintings and prints for virtually nothing. He deposited his gains on his return to France at the Musée Guimet and the Bibliothèque Nationale, where they remain to this day.
As a small consolation, France has offered China microfilm copies of some of the manuscripts. French diplomats are reluctant to discuss the subject. "Our guiding principle is to plant our flag everywhere, except where we've been and haven't left good memories. Basically, we'd rather work on the Terracotta Army in Xian than in Dunhuang," summed up one of them.
"Be careful, this is a sensitive subject, we don't want the Chinese to wake up!" Yannick Lintz was told when she took over as president of the Musée Guimet in November 2022. The works from Dunhuang – the jewels of the collection – are exhibited there on a rotating basis. "Rather than misplaced guilt, I preferred to focus on transparency and dialogue," she recounted. At the end of March, Lintz went to the Dunhuang academy with an idea: "I offered that we work together to enhance this heritage by digitizing all the holdings to enable digital restitution, so as to one day have in Dunhuang the equivalent of the replica that has been made of the Lascaux cave," she announced, hailing the "relationship of trust" with the Chinese authorities.
To date, no official message has been sent from Beijing to ask for the return of the originals. Nor has the Chinese government demanded the return of the thousands of works and objects looted by French and British troops engaged in the Second Opium War, during the ransack of the Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) on October 7 and 8, 1860, objects which are now scattered abroad in private collections and museums. The vast complex of some 200 imperial residences (comparable in magnificence to Versailles) was burnt down and its treasures – calligraphy, silks, jewels, porcelain, furniture and more – taken away.
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