50 Yuan Mogao Grotto - Dun Huang Art

Issued as part of China's long-running commemorative gold program dedicated to UNESCO World Heritage Sites, this piece honors the Mogao cave complex near Dunhuang in Gansu Province — a site containing over 490 painted grottoes accumulated across roughly a thousand years of Buddhist patronage, from the 4th century through the Yuan dynasty. The caves were effectively sealed and forgotten by the outside world until a Daoist monk named Wang Yuanlu rediscovered a walled-off library chamber in 1900, containing an estimated 50,000 manuscripts and paintings.

The 2001 gold issue is one of several denominations in a multi-coin Dunhuang set from that year, paired with a larger 200 Yuan piece.