Pengpai News reporter Duan Yanchao Intern Qiao Xiaoliang
After the overhaul of the Lushana Buddha
In the early morning of October 1, the mist had not yet dissipated, and the Longmen Grottoes located in the southern suburbs of Luoyang is more quiet and graceful.
Archaeological surveying and mapping expert He Zhijun rushed to the Guyang Cave archaeological site for surveying and mapping early in the morning. He Zhijun has been working on the boring archaeological surveying and mapping for 37 years, and his eyes are presbyopia and always cry.
Cultural Relics Protection Expert Li Jianhou has also been guarding Longmen Grottoes for more than ten years. He has to inspect Longmen Grottoes almost every working day to discover any possible hidden dangers.
It is these people who carefully protect this treasure house of cultural relics.
In September 2021, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage issued the "Medium- and Long-term Plan for Archaeology of Grotto Temples (2021-2035)", requiring that before 2025, the archaeological survey of the concentrated distribution area of grotto temples and the publication of archaeological reports of grotto temples has made phased progress.
Longmen Grottoes have been going on for more than 1,500 years, especially in the first half of the last century, and were subjected to crazy stolen and damaged, so that many exquisite statues were destroyed or scattered at home and abroad.
"In recent years, our institute has carried out various explorations in digital virtual restoration research and display based on different types of damaged cultural relics, explored new concepts of friendly cooperation, multi-track unity, data aggregation, and results sharing, and took the lead in using new technologies and new methods to create the ' Longmen model' of 'data aggregation' of scattered cultural relics at home and abroad." Shi Jiazhen, director of the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute, said.
Li Jianhou, who inspected the scaffolding, carefully protected: Let cultural relics be "immortal" in the grottoes
From December 2021 to July this year, Fengxian Temple of Longmen Grottoes completed protection projects on water leakage control, reinforcement of dangerous rocks, and investigation of disasters on the main body of cultural relics, so that Fengxian Temple will return to its more stable appearance. For the 2,345 cave statues and niches in Longmen Grottoes and more than 110,000 statues will be organized for a large-scale repair for decades. To ensure the safety of the cultural relics of the cave statues, it mainly relies on daily inspection and maintenance.
Li Jianhou, a cultural relics protection expert who came to work at the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute in 2004, has been inspecting Longmen Grottoes almost every working day for 18 years. Under normal circumstances, it takes more than two hours to inspect it.
To protect cultural relics scientifically and effectively, the first thing to do is to discover diseases. When leading the Pengpai News patrol, Li Jianhou saw fresh gravel on the ground and always picked it up and looked at it. Only then did he feel at ease to continue moving forward. He said that if it is limestone fragments, it means that the mountain is suffering from natural weathering, which is a warning signal and must be taken seriously, otherwise it may have a great impact on the safety of tourists and cultural relics.
The water guide trough built by Li Jianhou and his colleagues
Whenever he walks into a grotto group, Li Jianhou has to stop for more than ten minutes to carefully observe whether there are water leakage and dangerous rock diseases in each cave.
Grotto carvings have undergone natural weathering for thousands of years, and the protection of cave cultural relics must be based on science and technology and experimental research. Li Jianhou recalled that in 2004, when the " UNESCO free assistance to the Longmen Grottoes Protection and Restoration Project", experts conducted 20-meter-deep horizontal drilling sampling to investigate the development of cracks in the rock body around the grottoes based on the integrity of the core sample and the water seepage status of the fault. If the core removed is relatively complete, it means that the rock mass is relatively complete. If the core removed is broken into several sections, it means that there are different degrees of seepage cracks in the mountain.
In the daily maintenance work of the grottoes, when water leakage or dangerous rock damage is found in the cave niche, the dangerous rock body must be reinforced first - use a drill rig to penetrate the rock body, tightly combine the dangerous rock body with the mountain, and then high-pressure grouting of the rock body gaps to avoid the continuous development and evolution of leakage diseases.
Li Jianhou introduced that in recent years, anchor rods and grouting materials have been continuously optimized. The anchor rod is gradually replaced by metal material to glass fiber material, showing superior acid and alkali resistance and stronger shear resistance.Grouting materials, from epoxy resins in the 1970s, to aqueous epoxy resins in , to ultrafine cement and metakaolin used now, are getting closer and closer to the physical properties and chemical composition of mountain rocks.
The Paper saw that many Buddha niches are built by Li Jianhou and his colleagues above to prevent the niches from being eroded and weathered by the scorching sun and freezing and melting of the rain and snow. In addition to the stone eaves, Li Jianhou and his colleagues sometimes build some micro-water guides on the rock walls according to the terrain characteristics of the rock walls to change the direction of rainwater flowing from the rock walls to avoid the rainwater flowing down from the mountain directly eroding the cultural relics and cave niches.
37's archaeological surveying and mapping made him suffer from eye disease
In addition to daily inspection and maintenance, and protecting the Longmen Grottoes, archaeological surveying and mapping are also one of the most important tasks.
He Zhijun who works in Guyang Cave
In October 2021, He Zhijun and his colleagues began to compile the archaeological report of the Guyang Cave of Longmen Grottoes.
Guyang Cave has a height of more than 11 meters, a width of nearly 7.3 meters and a depth of nearly 12 meters. It is the oldest cave among the Longmen Grottoes. There are more than 1,000 Buddhist niches and more than 800 inscriptions in the cave. It is the cave with the most statues preserved in Chinese grottoes. Therefore, the archaeological work of Guyang Cave is particularly complicated, and the surveying and mapping part is the most difficult.
Archaeological surveying and mapping in the cave first requires the "moving" of the panoramic view of the cave to the computer, that is, three-dimensional modeling. The modeling of Guyang Cave is completed by a three-dimensional scan of the cooperative college. After the model is uploaded to the computer, you must first take a screenshot of the cave model. After the screenshot is completed, the surveyor will draw all the lines and outlines of the screenshot on the digital screen and draw a line drawing.
The Buddha niche in Guyang Cave
However, the grottoes with a long time have been weathered and damaged to varying degrees. Some of the statues floating on the rock walls have turned white or even almost flat. Moreover, the steles of the Buddha niche in Guyang Cave are dazzling, and the carving details are complicated and vivid. The high-precision scanning alone cannot accurately restore the entire contents of the grotto. Therefore, after drawing a line drawing, He Zhijun and his colleagues also need to adjust the line drawing details to eliminate the "dead corners" of the cave, and finally scan the final draft and upload it to the computer.
The Paper saw that the Guyang Cave was covered with scaffolding and wooden boards, with four layers from the bottom of the cave to the top of the cave, connected by a ladder up and down. The cave was wet, cold and dim. He Zhijun and his colleagues had to wear helmets, hold lights and drafts of the paintings when doing homework.
In order to figure out the details of the carving of the hole wall, He Zhijun often needs to light it from the side to make the worn relief appear more edges and corners, and then lie on it to observe the blurred shape, and then adjust it on the online manuscript one by one. Because some Buddha statues are tall and have many patterns, they span the upper and lower scaffolding layers, they need to go up and down and run back.
He Zhijun pointed to the eyebrow of a niche that was the size of a palm-sized Buddha niche, with a half-knuckle-sized and gourd-shaped image on it. He said, "This is the head of a small Buddha. The shape of a fleshy bun on it needs to be discussed with the recorder before deciding whether to draw it."
In the ancient Yang Cave, there are countless such irrecognizable details. He Zhijun and his colleagues not only need to observe on the spot, but also make inferences based on other similar carvings in the cave, and discuss with the recorders based on the reviewed information. Especially on the top floor of the scaffolding, people cannot stand upright, and they also have to look up their heads and observe the reliefs on the top of the cave.
Single from the first floor to the fourth floor of the scaffolding, a brief visit to the carvings of the cave walls, the reporter from The Paper was sweating profusely when he came out of the cave. He Zhijun, 60, was rehired after retirement last year. He basically came to the cave to do his homework after dinner at 8:30 in the morning and stayed for half a day.
Years of archaeological surveying and mapping have caused He Zhijun to suffer from eye disease. In addition to presbyopia, his eyes were always astringent and crying. The doctor told him to pay attention to using his eyes. He Zhijun could only draw for a while and rest for a while before continuing to draw his eyes. He Zhijun admitted that archaeological drawing is not like painting. It can only be realistic and based on research. It is actually boring. However, it was this boring job that he had worked for 37 years.
I once fell down on the air, but fortunately I was stopped by a branch
He Zhijun recalled that the most difficult day was the archaeology of the Dongshan Leigutai District of Longmen Grottoes in August 2004.
He said that at that time, he had to go down to the cave after dinner at 7:30 in the morning, and after lunch, he was also in the cave from 1 pm to 6:7 pm. The conditions were relatively poor at that time, with steep mountains and narrow roads and overgrown weeds. In the early stage of the project, archaeologists basically relied on supporting a cliff, grabbing a handful of trees, and climbing toward the cave, and they couldn't get up at all on rainy days.
He Zhijun said that archaeological equipment was not as advanced as it is now, and the surveying and mapping methods were relatively traditional. Without scanning equipment, the surveyors first pulled the baseline and then set up a grid net with a side length of 1 meter or 2 meters, observe the statues and Buddha niches through the grid net, and then draw hand-drawn on the drawings of the rice grid. This process is like projecting the observation object on a grid net and then projecting it on the artboard by the surveyor.
At that time, the bottom of the statue in Cave 1 of the Leigutai was not flat, low in front and high in the back, so He Zhijun needed to lie down and keep the bottom of the statue level, observe the slope, and then draw the front, side and back of the statue on MiG paper in a realistic and unified manner. After the main project of the archaeological work of the drum platform was basically completed, in 2014, He Zhijun received an arrangement from his superiors to start organizing archaeological work in Wanfogou District, Dongshan. With a team of 5 people and 24 numbered grottoes, He Zhijun went from organizing workers to setting up frames and directing the photo to shooting and lighting in the cave, to dividing labor and mapping for colleagues, using total station to scan the entire mountain, no matter how big or small it is. In order to take satisfactory photos, archaeologists must manually set lights from three directions when the sun is about to set to ensure clear presentation of the details in the cave.
At work, He Zhijun kept thinking about how to optimize surveying and mapping methods. After communicating with other expert teams, he and his colleagues began to introduce a modeling method of multi-perspective three-dimensional reconstruction. In short, it is to use software to build a model of the cave by taking a large number of photos for the cave and use software to build a picture of the cave through stacking of photos.
He Zhijun's work is trivial and complicated, and full of dangers. Cave No. 1 and 2 of 0 Fogou are roughly located at the northernmost end of the East Mountain of Longmen Grottoes. They are remote and have a steep terrain. In 2015, He Zhijun re-shooted Cave No. 1. He took a camera to re-shoot. When he walked to the entrance of the cave, which was the farthest from the plank road, the wooden board under his feet was not fixed well, and he fell down with one foot. Fortunately, a lush tree under the board was blocked by a lush tree on the hillside.
The cave is seven or eight meters high from the ground. Although it is a slope, the consequences of rolling down the mountain are unimaginable. In addition, He Zhijun has tied the security rope many times, starting from the mountainside, and entered the nearly vertical cliff with one foot deep and one foot shallow and drawing the picture. He actually has a fear of heights. Although it is not serious, he will feel weak legs and dizzy when standing at a high place.
He Zhijun said that although the work is hard, it also feels accomplished. "Our team, through communicating with other peers and working hard, began to use digital screens and solved the problem of three-dimensional modeling by itself, greatly improving the efficiency of archaeological surveying and mapping."
Source: The Paper
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-