20 Yuan 100th Anniversary of finding Dun Huang Grottoes

The Dunhuang Grottoes — more precisely the Mogao Caves — were not "found" in any conventional archaeological sense. The site had been continuously known to local communities for centuries. What the 2000 centenary actually commemorates is the 1900 discovery by the Taoist monk Wang Yuanlu of the sealed Library Cave (Cave 17), which contained tens of thousands of manuscripts, silk paintings, and printed texts dating back to the 4th century. Within years, foreign expeditions — Stein, Pelliot, Oldenburg — had removed the bulk of the material, a dispersal that remains a sore point in Chinese cultural patrimony discussions to this day.