The nine-story tower, the tallest building in Mogao Caves, in Dunhuang, northwest China's Gansu Province. [Photo/VCG]

In May of 1987, a friend and I traveled across China to visit Dunhuang. I had heard about these mysterious Buddhist caves from books I had read. The book that influenced me the most was a very erudite translation of Dunhuang literature, Tunhuang Popular Narratives, by Professor Victor H. Mair at the University of Pennsylvania. The worlds his translation opened up were striking: here were vernacular stories, many originally from India, that created their own narrative worlds across vast distances of time and space. From his references and citations, I came to understand that there were also multiple worlds contained within the heritage site itself, from the hundreds of painted caves with their multicultural and cosmic references, to the Library Cave which held tens of thousands of manuscripts including every manner of the religious, historical, literary text, among others, and in multiple languages representing diverse cultures across Eurasia. All of this, and the greatest collection of Buddhist art in the world, were singularly integrated into one rather remote archaeological site, the Mogao Caves. So having made it to Dunhuang that day, my friend and I naively rented bicycles and, not knowing how far the caves were from the city proper, pedaled off into the desert to find this treasure house on that sunny spring day, which just happened to be my birthday.