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

That assessment was made by Professor Zheng Binglin, a research fellow with the Dunhuang Studies Institute of the Lanzhou University.

Dunhuang City, located in the western part of Gansu, is a famous tourism city because of its Mogao Grottoes and other historical sites. It first became a county in the Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 220) and became a commercial city along the ancient Silk Road connecting China and Central Asia.

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

In 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 (618-907 AD) 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, dyestuff and weapons had been traded on local markets.

These commodities came from neighboring Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Tibet and central China, as well as from South Asia and Europe.

Documents show that some of these goods were consumed by Dunhuang residents, but most of them were sold to other places in China.

Dunhuang documents also included many composed by ethnic groups, such as the Ouigour and Sogd people.

(Xinhua News Agency March 22, 2004)