In 1900, a Daoist known as Wang took up residence at the site of the Cave of a Thousand Buddhas, at Dunhuang in Gansu, an important monastic centre along the Silk Road. In the course of Wang’s exploration he noticed a gap in the plaster of one of the caves and, when he tapped it, he found it was hollow behind. This was how he discovered the so-called Library Cave, which contained 13,500 paper scrolls, from which daily life in eighth-century Dunhuang has since been recreated. These scrolls show that, in a town of 15,000, there were thirteen monasteries and that one in ten of the population was
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