For the past four months, we've been living at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, a small city located at the edge of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in Northwest China. The Grottoes were first carved around the 4th century CE, purportedly by the Buddhist monk Yuezun, who saw a vision of a thousand buddhas at a cliffside near the oasis in Dunhuang. For over 1,000 years, Buddhists, powerful local rulers, and wealthy patrons carved out and decorated nearly 500 different caves into the cliffside at Mogao. This ended around the 14th century, likely due to foreign armies encroaching into the area. In 1900 an Hungarian-born "archaeologist" discovered a hidden library at Mogao, which contained thousands of ancient texts and manuscripts, including the earliest printed book in history, the Diamond Sutra. Danny has been teaching English to
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