04-17-2009, 01:53 PM
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Administrator
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Atlanta
Posts: 2,695
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FreddyMusic
Bryan,
Some photos above seems green? That is mud or sand.
How can it be green without any plants there? Or it's camera color?
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The area is known as "red pass".
Read this quote by Cheng Dalin.
Quote:
The Lost City of Yangguan
Yangguan was an important fortress and strategic stronghold in the western section of the Han dynasty's Great Wall. It has been a key pass on the Silk Road since the Han and Tang dynasties. West from Yangguan the road passed through Xitougou, Cuimutugou and Annanba, and led to Ruoqiang and Qemo in southern Xinjiang, from where it turned west en route to western and southern Asia. Another path went southfrom Yangguan to Qinghai via Jinshankou.
Known as one of the eight finest scenic spots around Dunhuang, the ancient fortressof Yangguan attracted generations of men of letters, who composed verses in its praise. Most widely popular of these was Song to Weicheng by Wang Wei, a noted poet of the Tang dynasty:
A morning shower has washed down
Weicheng's light dust,
While willows by the inn
Are a lush fresh green.
Another cup Of wine
I hope you will empty:
No old acquaintance will you find
From yangguan further west.
Curiously enough, the famous Yangguan, so often referred to in the annals of Han and Tang, disappeared not only from post-Tangliterature but also from actual geographic existence. Its exact location is a point some 70 kilometres southwest of the county seat of Dunhuang, now a boundless stretch of drifting sand. Dozens of long mounds of sand lie parallel from east to west, the spaces between them covered by gravel and sparsely dotted with groves of camel thorns. To its north stands Dundun Mountain, with Longshou Mountain in the northeast, both covered with sand and gravel of variegated colour, but mainly red, so that the hills are ablaze with a violet hue in the faint light of dawn and dusk. A gorge separates the two mountains, known locally as the Red Pass (HongShan Kou). On the hill west of the gorge is perched a large beacon tower built in theHan dynasty. Known as "the eye of Yangguan", it looms formidable and mighty even from a distance of dozens of li.
Anyone brave enough to walk over thesand dunes to the gravel-covered strips and observe carefully underfoot will find among the rubble a variety of ancient relics: bronze buttons, bronze belt-buckles, grinding stonesand iron tools, glass and amber beads manufactured in the Western Region, besides coins of the dynasties of Han and Tang. The lucky searcher may pick up a specimen of the famous Yangguan brick, greyish-blackin colour and so hard that it gives a metallic clink when you tap it. It is said it can be made into ink slabs of great value. At times bronze arrow heads are found. Because of such hidden treasures the place is known locally as the "relic terrain" or "ancient coin terrain". The local inhabitants customarily visit it in the festive season, pick up ancient coins or arrow heads and put them on their fires to produce coloured flames for good luck. This carefree foraging has been going on for many generations without any apparent exhaustion of the scattered riches. One can only imagine in what abundance they once existed.
A team of archaeologists in 1982 discovered in this area the ruins of some largewooden structures beneath the sand dunes. When excavated, they appeared to be a row of houses with a total floor space exceeding 10,000 square metres. Also found were remnants of ancient kilns, and the ruins of embankments and irrigation channels for crop fields spreading over an area of more than five square kilometres. This points to Yangguan having once been a well-populated place with irrigated fertile land and a developed economy.
Yangguan did not simply vanish overnight. Careful observation and analysis of the distribution of the ancient traces of lifeshow that they thin out gradually from west to east, indicating a process of eastward movement of the population in the face of the all-devouring sand dunes that crept infrom the southwest. By the 9th century the Yangguan area was devoid of all population, and Yangguan was swallowed by the drifting sand along with Shouchang, a Tang dynasty town three kilometres away.
Such a tragic turn of events most probably was brought about by ecological devastation resulting from years of warfare and large scale cultivation of land which destroyed natural vegetation and water sources. Unable to resist the oncoming sand, the inhabitants were forced to abandon their once prosperous home towns and emigrate to the east. Now the landscape is being transformed again as tree belts and fruit gardens have been planted on the Gobi around the long vanished Yangguan. It is hoped that, with the sands brought under control, the place will return to life in the foreseeable future.
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