Land of Marvels: Twenty Poems about Dunhuang

ABSTRACT

The anonymous poetic sequence “Twenty Poems about Dunhuang” celebrates the landscapes, history, and lore of the area around Dunhuang. Lost to the tradition before the rediscovery of manuscripts bearing the sequence from Mogaoku, these lyrics preserve poetry as it was in China’s desert northwest during the ninth century. In this talk, Charles Sanft will introduce the sequence, translate example poems, and consider what the poems tell us about how their author conceived of the land of marvels that was Dunhuang.

BIO

Charles Sanft is Professor of History at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, USA. Professor Sanft has published two monographs and numerous articles about the history and culture of premodern China. During the 2025-2026 academic year he is Guest Professor in the Institute for Sinology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with financial support through a Carl Friedrich von Siemens Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.