THE very best of the famed Mogao Grottoes are in town, and with it the fabled tale of Ruru the deer.

Popular folklore has it that a nine-colored deer saves a man from drowning, but rather than be grateful, he approaches the greedy king, who, not surprisingly, demands that the rare animal be found and captured.

The narrative, a localized version of the Indian Jataka tales, was extremely popular in the country after the discovery of the cave paintings at the Mogao Grottoes. The grottoes are known to have 735 caves with 45,000 square meters of murals and more than 2,400 sculptures created by artisans and monks since the 4th century.

The caves in the remote Gobi Desert in Dunhuang in northwest China’s Gansu Province is a protected site and restricts the number of daily visitors in an effort to preserve the murals and sculptures. Some of the caves are closed for renovation while others open in turns.

It was for these reasons that the Shanghai Himalayas Museum and Dunhuang Research Academy cooperated to create and bring down a giant replica of the famous grottoes, along with the popular story to the city — the first of such a massive scale in Shanghai.

At the exhibit, a young mother tells the story of the nine-colored deer to her preschool-going child. There is little chance that she would be able to take her daughter to see the real work at Cave No. 257 in Dunhuang.

The replica exhibit is a blessing in disguise — the hard work of Chang Shuhong, the legendary founder-director of Dunhuang Research Institute. Chang has devoted his entire life preserving and learning from the grottoes. The institute is now known as Dunhuang Research Academy.

The replicas, equally a masterpiece, are part of the ongoing exhibition “Dunhuang — Song of Living Beings.”

“The exhibition is titled ‘Song of Living Beings’ because Dunhuang represents different kinds of stories, those of the Buddhist arts and those of the local citizens at the time,” explains Yongwoo Lee, president of the Shanghai Himalayas Museum.

“In this exhibition, we try to represent the notion of living beings, not only of those in the Buddhist stories, but also the artists and the citizens of that time.

“We aim to build a platform to connect and represent the art form between the Dunhuang artists who lived a thousand years ago and contemporary artists.”

Dunhuang exhibitions have been held before in Shanghai but nothing in this scale. It has been consulted and co-curated by Dunhaung Research Academy and combined the spiritual and cultural themed works of contemporary artists, who seem to be in a sort of dialogue with the artisans of ancient times.

“It is difficult to find a venue to present the art of Dunhuang in its entirety, to reflect how grandeur, splendid and spiritual it is,” Wong Shun-Kit, the exhibition’s co-curator and the museum’s consultant told Shanghai Daily.

“We have tried our best with this exhibition to work closely with the Dunhuang Research Academy in order to reflect Dunhuang’s lifestyle, culture, history, archive, model of architecture, among others. Besides, we tried to put Dunhuang arts in the historical context of the Silk Road, and to present it in its own multi-layered, multi-cultured and multi-dynasty context.”

The venue has been re-designed into a large brown cave, embedded with eight replica caves including the famous Library Cave (Cave 17) where hundreds of manuscripts were discovered.

It contains 11 copies of painted stucco sculptures, 60 copies of cave murals produced by Dunhuang pioneers including Chang, 25 copies of silk paintings, 10 carved brick replicas and 51 cultural relics. Sixteen of such cultural relics on display are designated as “First-Class National Cultural Relics.”

Many of them are signature highlights of Mogao Grottoes that are seen in the promotion materials. The originals are not always open to the public even at the original site.

The eight caves, reconstructed exactly as they are in Dunhuang, span all the way from 4th century to 14th century. They not only represent different periods of time, but also arts of different cultures, as Dunhuang was a hub on the Silk Road that connected China to central Asia. Cave 275 of the Northern Liang period (397-439 AD) is well-known not only for being one of the earliest carved caves, but also as home to Maitreya, the future Buddha, whose statue sits cross-ankled. The Buddha’s soft round face wears a crown that contains three round jewels, while Buddhist stories are painted on the wall behind.

Chinese audio guides with background information are available on featured works by scanning the QR code next to the exhibited item.

To re-create the Dunhuang experience, the exhibition also has hourly tours by guides from Dunhuang Research Academy, special children’s tours and foreign language tours in English, Japanese, Korean, German and French.

There will be 12 lectures by top Dunhuang scholars, who will cover various topics from the repair works of Mogao Grottoes to implication of the costumes in the mural paintings and sculptures.

Often considered a pearl on the Silk Road, Dunhuang was the place for exchanges between different cultures and dynasties. Influences of diverse cultures can be seen in the grottoes.

The exhibition curators have included works of 21 contemporary artists.

“Again, it proves that aesthetics is universal, crossing time and space,” the academy’s president Fan Jinshi said.

For decades, Chinese artists have visited Dunhuang and copied its art. It was considered an act of pilgrimage.

“It is really too snobbish of us to say it’s a dialogue, but I feel honored to have this opportunity to express my own feelings inspired by the great works of Dunhuang in this exhibition,” said contemporary artist Li Lei.

“For me, Dunhuang art is a special realm, a special state of spirituality. To me, these stories told in the caves are real, they happened in a parallel world that we cannot see, and was perceived by generations of artisans who left this important pathway for us to understand life and university.”

Date: Through March 20, 2016, 10am-6pm (closed on Mondays)

Venue: Shanghai Himalayas Museum

Address: 869 Yinghua Rd

Tel: 5033-9801*2032