Located along the northern silk route between central asia and metropolitan china proper , and serving as a meeting ground of " western regions " ( xiyu ) and indigenous cultural influences , dunhuang provides a continuous record of datable monuments , from the fifth century onward , showing the importation of the indian chiaroscuro style , known in chinese as aotu hua , " concave - and - convex painting , " and its eventual transformation into the indigenous chinese pictorial idiom 摘要作為絲綢之路上一個西域和本土文化的匯合地點,敦煌藝術提供了5世紀以來西域“明暗法”風格即文獻上所謂“凹凸畫”以及這種畫法最后變成中國本土繪畫筆墨風格的一個可確定時代的連續(xù)記錄。