Dramatic account
A new show weaves expert opinion with live-action storytelling to recount the compelling history of Dunhuang, Li Yingxue reports.
There are times when the destiny of a docudrama depends on one man. For Dunhuang — Edge of the World, that man is Irish director Ruan Magan.
When he first arrived in Dunhuang, in northwestern China’s Gansu province, in October 2019, he was impressed by the extraordinary landscape. He had long been obsessed with the history there. This was a passion project, and the docudrama’s future rested on his script — and the crew being able to bring it to life.
Now, two years on, and the first three episodes have aired online through Tencent Video, both in Chinese and English. Encouragingly for Magan, they have already been viewed more than 22 million times.
The first episode tells the story of Ban Chao, a diplomat from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) who opened up the ancient Silk Road for trade about 2,000 years ago.
Film director Feng Xiaogang is the Chinese narrator of the five-episode docudrama while Magan provides the English voice-over, his third contribution to the production beside his roles of general director and writer.
Magan has been filming in China for more than 20 years. “I have a real fascination for the country, its people and China’s long history,” he says.
When he was offered the opportunity to direct a docudrama about Dunhuang, Magan was excited. He saw it as chance to bring a new style of production to China by utilizing a format that he had been employing for years in other markets, such as 2012’s Emmy-winning series The Men Who Built America.
“It brings history alive in a very powerful way. Because of its factual basis, it’s like a historical documentary, but with these amazing, big drama scenes. So the characters of history seem closer to us,” Magan says.
Magan says he embarked on a lot of personal research before writing the story and so did the Chinese team. For him, one difficulty was to clarify the “ebb and flow of the borders” over time.
“I also did a lot of research on the caves, because the project wouldn’t exist if it were not for the discovery of the Library Cave 100 years ago,” Magan says, adding that the caves are really evocative and inspiring for a writer.
“Even if you look at the paintings on the walls, they give you an idea of how people lived, what their houses looked like, what their daily lives were like. That also inspires me as a writer,” he adds.
Magan says one thing that interests him about Chinese history is that it was written not once, but twice, as local rulers would have their own historians to keep records and, later, they would be reinterpreted and reinforced by future historians.
“We studied them in great detail, and the drama scenes are based on those historical records,” he says.
Chang Yu, historical consultant on the docudrama’s production team, says the series focuses more on the stories of the people in history, unlike most works which simply present the manuscripts and murals of Dunhuang.
“The fact is, it is people who are the protagonists on the historical stage,” he says.
Speaking about the relationship between historical facts and records, and the imaginative interpretation of them, Chang, a lecturer of history at Shenzhen University, says records of people are always fragments, so both the study of history, and artworks created on that basis, should be backed by enough evidence to provide an accurate depiction.
“Take Ban Chao’s story as an example. All of his stories in the show are based on historical records and much of his dialogue is transcribed from such sources. I think Ban Chao’s life story could be more legendary and dramatic than our docudrama portrays,” Chang says.
As well as Chang, many international scholars who are also passionate about Dunhuang studies are interviewed on the show to offer the audience their perspective.
According to Lyu Bo, co-producer of the show, the original intention of the project was to make a documentary telling the public how Dunhuang became what it is today.
“We were wondering who, 2,000 years ago without the aid of modern transportation or technology, would cross the desert and come to this place? And how were the Mogao Caves created from scratch?” Lyu says.
He says the actors and actresses for each character were specifically chosen to match the features of each historical figure. But how were those figures chosen themselves?
That was another difficulty Magan faced. Selecting just five main characters from Chinese history — one for each episode — was a challenge, because there are more stories, of more historical figures, to be told.
He adds that he hopes the docudrama will connect with a younger audience.
“When we look at history, we are really looking in a mirror,” Magan says. “It’s history that reveals to us who we are and where we came from.”
Magan directed the show, together with Colm Whelan, who also doubled-up as the director of photography. The duo worked closely with the Chinese crew, who were together for around two months while shooting in Dunhuang.
It was a symbiotic partnership that paid off, because, as Magan says: “Chinese people, like their history, are complex, brilliant, brave and ambitious.”