Key Research Groups

1. Complete Works of Dunhuang Bianwen research group.In 2014, the project Complete Works of Dunhuang Bianwen was approved as the key project of National Social Science Fund (No. 14ZDB095). The distinguished Professor Xiang Chu was the chief expert of the project and other participants include Professor Zhang Yongquan and Dr. Qin Hualin from Humanities College of Zhejiang University, Professor Zhang Xiaoyan from unearthed literature and ancient writing research center of Fudan University, Professor He Jianping and Dr. Luo Lu from Chinese folk culture research institute of Sichuan University and lecturer Zhang Yu from Zhejiang Normal University. Bianwen is the vernacular literary genre, a genre of popular entertainment consisting mainly of talking and singing that had wide popularity among people during Tang and the Five Dynasties of ancient China. Works under this genre have been largely lost since the Tang Dynasty and have been rediscovered in at the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang since the beginning of twentieth Century. They have been highly valued by academic circles at home and abroad. Based on the full investigation of the already published Dunhuang literature chart, this project aims to compile all the Bianwen Manuscripts into one series and collect the research fruits for this regard in the past one hundred years so as to edit and add notes thereon while incorporating the latest research by the group. The final outcome would be the Complete Works of Dunhuang Bianwen of high quality and level that could provide a reliable collation text for research in Bianwen and ancient and modern Chinese narrative literature and history.

2. The study of Buddhist temple annals research group in China.This project is the key project of the national social science fund in 2016. Professor Zhang Yong leads this project and other members include Dr. Zhang Qi of Sichuan University, Dr. Hua Haiyan of Chongqing Normal University, etc. This project on the one hand aims to collect and introduce the Buddhist temple annals in ancient and modern China, and on the other hand, by comparing these annals to Theravada Buddhist temple gazetteers and Tibetan Buddhism temple records, strives to clean-up and reveal the origin of China Buddhism temple records, revealing the multi-faceted value of temple annals in the temple history, philology, archaeology, Buddhism, folklore and other aspects also from the stylistic angle. The final results will be reflected in the two high-level monographs of Problem Solving in Chinese Buddhism Temple and The Study of Chinese Buddhist Temple Annals.