The discovery, a century ago, of the Library Cave at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang astounded the entire world. Throughout Dunhuang's history over two thousand years, it has always served as a critical gateway to the west, because of its unique geographical location at the juncture of Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang. As a result, throughout the Chinese long history, several emperors have made improvements of these western fortifications. However, Dunhuang was also a regional cultural center. The Mogao Grottoes, also known as the Dunhuang Grottoes or the "Thousand Buddha Grottoes", is located on the western cliffs of the Singing Sands Mountains. It is one of the most complete collections of Buddhist frescoes and sculpture from a period range over ten dynasties.

China's Dunhuang relics are mainly kept in 29 museums and libraries, including the National Library of China, the Library of the Peking University, the Imperial Palace Museum, the National Museum of Chinese History, the Dunhuang Studies Academy, the Nanjing Library, the Shanghai Library, the Gansu Museum, the Tianjin Art Museum, the Tianjin History Museum. The 2000 Beijing Dunhuang Art Exhibition included four reproduced caves, 30 copies of murals, 10 painted sculptures, 14 pieces of authentic works of sutras and 10 replicas, six authentic works of silk paintings. Besides, there were over 80 valuable pictures reflecting the discovery, scattering and damage of these relics in the past century.

The Buddhist Grottoes of Dunhuang at Mogao are a great treasure house of Buddhist art. The art forms of architectures, sculptures and paintings are combined organically into the great expressions of Buddha worship that have begun from the Han Dynasty and continued through the Tang, for more than 1,000 years. After the discovery of approximately 50,000 Buddhist writings and Holy Scriptures at Dunhuang around 1900, Dunhuang gained a great fame for its Buddhist art relics. It was only natural that the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization have listed Dunhuang's Mogao Grottoes on its list of the world's cultural legacies worthy of special protection in December of 1987. The mural paintings of Dunhuang are especially famous and focus on presenting images of the Buddha and Buddhist legends, but also include examples of landscape paintings, historic architectures, portraits of the noble patrons, various auspicious animals, plants and other decorations. One of the main themes of the frescoes is the fiction; heavenly maidens painted into the frescoes act as frames on the murals or otherwise decorate the paintings.