I stopped at my hotel foyer and enquired about a train ticket to Dunhuang in Gansu province -- the next stop on my itinerary -- as I knew tickets could sometimes be hard to obtain.

It all reminds me of the place where I am standing - Dunhuang.

Scientists have begun an experiment by installing lights in some caves of Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang to see if the ancient paintings and other cultural relics would suffer damage from lights.

The Silk Road starts with Chang’an(now Xi’an), travelling west to Wuwei, passing though Hexi Corridor to Dunhuang and it divides into north and south routes to avoid the Tibetan Plateau.

Dunhuang, meanwhile, is a repository of our historical civilization that preserves the past and signifies eras gone by.