If it had not been for Fan Jinshi and her team, the world cultural heritage of Dunhuang Mogao Caves in a remote Chinese desert might have long been destroyed by sand, weather or humans.

Born in Beijing and raised in Shanghai, Fan has spent half a century fighting an uphill battle to preserve the ancient Buddhist wall paintings at Dunhuang, in Northwest China’s Gansu Province. The 1,653­-year­-old Dunhuang Mogao Caves are a huge collection of Buddhist art—more than 2,000 buddha figures and 45,000 square metres of paintings spread among 735 caves. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Archaeologist Fan was sent to Dunhuang after graduating from Peking University in 1963. While in Dunhuang, a remote village in the desert then, Fan lived in an abandoned temple. At first, she did not even dare to go out to the toilet at night. To protect the treasures from sand and dampness, Fan and other workers put doors on the caves, planted trees and started monitoring temperature and humidity in the caves. They also controlled the number of visitors.

In the late 1990s, with tourism booming nationwide since national holidays were extended, the local government planned to go public with Dunhuang Mogao Caves, but found Fan firmly in_their_way.   “The heritage would have been destroyed if it had been listed，” she said.

Dunhuang Academy has now photographed and cataloged online all the sculptures and paintings. “Despite our efforts to minimise damage, we can’t completely stop them from being eroded. But the digital database will last.”

Fan was grateful when her husband joined her in Dunhuang in 1986 after 19 years of separation. Her two sons grew up seldom with her accompany. “I have not been a good mother or wife. With regard to my family, I’m full of guilt，” she said. Fan, 81, retired four years ago as the director of Dunhuang Academy but continues her efforts as a national political adviser.

A small group of brave and curious young Irish musicians have taken it upon themselves to save a tradition of songs. Their project aims to put the elders of a nearly-past generation in front of a microphone, to protect their songs and stories for musicians to hear and study for all time.

Some experts often pass warnings about how much oral tradition the human race loses to modernity every year. In Ireland, a country famous for its singers, the Song Collectors Collective (SCC) celebrates that history by honoring the people who have kept its roots alive. Most of them are from the reclusive (隐居的) traveler communities. Rather than simply collecting words, each song can be accessed only by exploring the life and story of the person who sang it for the SCC, or the so-called “Tradition Bearer”.

Take Freda Black, for example, a great-grandmother in her mid-eighties. She kept so many songs that she admitted she couldn’t possibly count them. She would go on to feature in the recently released album by a modern folk singer and SCC member, Sam Lee. “I love spending time at the knee of these elders,” Lee said. “I am very lucky. I catch an end of an era.”

“It is a common request for the songs and stories to be recorded and shared as the old ways are not being passed on and this huge store of knowledge of an ancient way of life is forgotten. In the current era of accessible recording technology, there is no excuse for not documenting and sharing this rich but fragile (脆弱的) tradition,” wrote the SCC．Having collected hundreds of recordings from dozens of singers, the SCC is beginning to host educational events, sharing the stories and singing voices for those interested in hearing them, as well as how people can become collectors in their own way.

A bronze horse head sculpture, a treasure of China’s Old Summer Palace that went missing 160 years ago, returned to its original palace home Tuesday. It is the first time that a priceless cultural artifact from the Old Summer Palace has been sent from abroad and then returned to be kept there.

Twelve animal head sculptures once formed a zodiac (生肖) water clock in Beijing’s Yuanmingyuan, built by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. The originals were looted (抢劫) from the royal garden by Anglo-French allied forces in 1860 during the second Opium War.

Macao billionaire Stanley Ho bought the bronze horse head and decided to donate it to the National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) and return it to its original home. The NCHA has spent one year refurbishing (刷新) the old Zhengjue Temple, the main place of worship for Qing Dynasty emperors in the garden, to an exhibition venue.

An exhibition in memory of the return of the horse head has kicked off at the temple, displaying about 100 items including relics and photographs. “The horse head sculpture was returned to its original palace home amid the challenges brought by COVID-19,” said an official. “It also led to an all-round upgrade of security at the Old Summer Palace, which allows for long-term exhibitions.”

“There is international consensus (共识) on returning lost cultural relics to their original homes, and China’s efforts to bring relics home in recent years have enhanced that consensus,” he added.