Documents and other cultural objects unearthed from China's Mogao Grottoes in northwest China's Gansu Province provide evidence that Dunhuang was a flourishing international trade city more than 1,000 years ago.

Professor Zheng Binglin, also a research fellow with the Dunhuang Studies Institute of the Lanzhou University, reached that conclusion based on his research on finds of late Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) and Five Dynasties period (AD 907-960).

Dunhuang located in the western part of Gansu now a famous tourism city because of its Mogao Grottoes and many other historical sites.

The area was made a county by the central authorities of the Han Dynasty (206 BC- AD 220) and it gradually became a commercial city along the ancient Silk Road that connected China and Central Asia over 2,000 years ago.

The Mogao Grottoes, popularly known as the Thousand Buddha Caves, were carved out of rocks that stretch about 1,600 meters along the eastern side of the Mingsha Hills, 25 kilometers southeast of Dunhuang.

From the "Cave for Preserving Scriptures," archaeologists found more than 50,000 sutras, documents and paintings covering a period from the 4th to the 11th centuries.

Related documents show that by the Tang Dynasty, and even earlier, more than 20 kinds of commodities such as cotton cloth, silk products, iron tools, silver, jade and bamboo utensils, animal husbandry products, medicines, cosmetics, foodstuffs, dyes and weapons had been traded on local markets.

These commodities came from the neighboring Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Tibet and central parts of China, and various products from East, West and South Asia and Europe.

Documents recorded that some of these goods were consumed by locals of Dunhuang, but most were transported and sold in other parts of China.

Apart from foreign missions engaged in official trading, there were business people who were engaged in long-distance transport of commodities and some of them had settled down in Dunhuang.

Among them, business people of the nomadic Sogd tribe from Central Asia operated hotels in Dunhuang.

It is estimated that Dunhuang had a population of more than 30,000 at that time.

Dunhuang documents also included many ethnic scripts from groups such as the Ouigour and Sogd people. Related documents show that some business people employed translators to help them trade commodities.

Professor Zheng said an international trade city was characterized by three features: commodities from different countries and regions; people of different nationalities, and currencies of various countries.

(China Daily March 22, 2004)