Lop Nur — Sea of Death

Formed in the late Eocene Age 2 million years ago, Lop Nur once comprised a group of beautiful but savage-looking lakes and the Gobi desert, covering a land of about 20,000 sq km. It began to shrink about 700 years ago tillits total disappearance 40 years ago.

 

We are informed before departure that the conditions are most windy and scorching between April and August. When the wind blows strongly, sand flies everywhere in the air. The temperature at night is much colder than in the daytime, 40°C and above in the day and0°C and below at night. It is necessary to wear bright colours which are easily identifiable…Everything sounds very challenging.

 

Since early days, Lop Nur, notorious for its harsh weather which causes frequent accidents, has been known as Asia’s Bermuda Triangle and Sea of Death.

 

Faxian, a Buddhist monk in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), who when passing Lop Nur on his journey to India along the ancient Silk Road, wrote, ‘There are many evil spirits and burning winds in the river of sand; whoever is caught in It is doomed to die…’

 

In 1949, when a plane was on its way from Chongqing to Urumqi, it strangely altered its route and then disappeared. It was not until 10 years later that it was found in the east of Lop Nur with no one alive on board.

 

The body of a PLA soldier, who went missing in 1950, was found about 100 km to the south of Lop Nur 30 years later.

 

On 17 June 1980, a carpet search by helicopter, soldiers and military-working dogs was conducted, but to no avail, to find the missing scientist Peng Jiamu who disappeared on an expedition to Lop Nur.

 

In the summer of 1995, three people went on a treasure-hunting trip to Lop Nur and got lost. Two of the bodies were later discovered near Loulan ancient city, along with their cars in perfect condition and sufficient water and gas supply.

 

In June 1996, the explorer Yu Chunshun attempted to walk through Lop Nur but ending up dying in the desert when he was caught in sand storm.

 

Windy Toksun

 

After a simple ceremony, our motorcade departed from Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. We drove into Toksun at noon and stopped to taste the local specialty ‘Ganban Noodles’ for lunch at one of the restaurants on the roadside. The host joked that there was another specialty in Toksun, which was, the wind. Look at the old men’s long beards, fluttering about in the air!

 

We steered off the highway at 4 pm and went on a gravel road to cut right into the Gobi desert. The sign of the West-East Gas Transmission Project was very clear along the road with pumping stations erected every few miles.

 

A sign reading ‘Wild Camel Nature Reserve’ came into our view at an intersection. The further we went, the more desolate it became. Desert plants like poplar trees, rose willow, camel thorn and saxaul clung to the bare land, looking desperate and thirsty for water. And another type called ephedra grew along the banks of the dry rivers. This sturdy plant has a bad reputation for being used to extract meth.

 

There were few signs of life in the desert, so whenever someone saw a lizard, everyone else would gather around to take photos. And sometimes we caught sight of an eagle, which would provoke a new round of excitement. Severe environmental damage had destroyed the entire food chain in Lop Nur. It was quite possible that the eagle, like us, was also a passer-by.

 

Our guide reminded us that we had better make phone calls before we entered the dry valley because there would be no signal for many days.

 

False Alarm

 

I sat in the lead car with the driver Xiao Long, the leader of our team, who had visited this area numerous times.

 

Car tracks were marked everywhere on this vast land of the Gobi desert. It is impossible to find one’s direction if you are not an expert. Of all the people on this trip, he was the most experienced.

 

Around noon the next day, when we were getting close to Jianshan Iron Mine, we were told that there were signals ahead. Perhaps because of the need to make phone calls, the five cars in the rear did not follow us. Xiao Long tried to reach them on the car radio, which worked within 30 km, albeit unsuccessfully. In the end, we connected with them through the cell phone and learned that they had taken the wrong route. Xiao Long asked them to return to the former spot so that he could fetch them there whist the rest of us just waited where we were.

 

In about 40 minutes, we saw a trail of dust rise from the distance and were relieved to know they were fine. That night we had to camp on the flat desert 10 km away from the 60SpringsCamp Site, where we would have found shelter from the wind, all because something was wrong with the brake system of our supply car.

 

Upon getting off, our drivers beganto unload food from the cars and we started to put up tents behind the ‘the trunks of the rose willow’, the only shelter in the wilderness. Then, some of us collected firewood while others prepared a barbeque for the night, and still other shelped ‘in the kitchen’. Thanks to our chef, we enjoyed wonderful meals throughout the journey.

 

Water-Eroded Yardan Land form in Longcheng

 

Yardan is a Uygur word meaning‘steep dunes’.

 

In the late 19th century, when scientists conducted an expedition to Lop Nur, the special landform of alternate dunes and valleys, which covers 3,000 sq km of Lop Nur, was named Yardan.

 

The Dragon City, or Longcheng, has the appearance of a winding dragon, stretching from west to east to as long as 160 km. Once you were in it, it felt like being in some medieval castle; and behind the deserted dunes there seemed to be a whole army hiding and waiting. On the mounds, all you could see were undulating brown dunes without a single trace of greenness, and the glittering white saline land on the horizon.

 

It had been recognised that the Yardan landform has been shaped by wind erosion, but a late expedition in Longcheng produced a new explanation. The Yardan landform here runs from north to south against the west-east winds. Obviously, it was the floods that shaped the valleys and created the landform in the Dragon City.

 

Moving Lop Nur

 

The name of Sven Hedin, a Sweden explorer, is closely related to Lop Nur due to his stunning archeological discovery of the Loulan Kingdom and his hypothesis that Lop Nur is a ‘moving lake’. The large amount of silt was flushed into the lake and deposited at the bottom, which consequently lifted the floor and drove the water to lower down. 1,500 years later when the raised floor was again reduced to a lower level by wind erosion, the water moved back to its former position.

 

Later expeditions by Chinese scientists have overridden his hypothesis. They discovered that the lake did not move because of overall wind erosion and furthermore, the dried bottom was covered by a hard, saline crust which was very unlikely to be reduced by wind erosion. In addition, drilling samples showed that in 10,000 years, a great deal of sediment flowed into Lop Nur with the water.

 

Tuyin Abandoned

 

Tuyin Site near the Dragon City was a time-honored port and courier station.

 

It was named Tuyin by archeologist Huang Wenbi who in 1930 unearthed this ancient town of the Western Han Dynasty(206BC-25AD) on the north bank of Lop Nur. The site, comprising a storage area, residential area and administrative area, is in trapezoidal shape with a gate opening in the northwest direction.

 

In the old days, Tuyin was embraced by water in three directions. The land in the north, once the most important hub for water transport, granary and a supply centre, had received numerous ambassadors and businessmen. The site of the port was still visible but the bygone glory was nowhere to be seen any longer. Seen from without, the remains looked like caves and trenches, with pale poplar trees which withstood sand and dust to endure and reminded us of the changing history that they had witnessed.

 

I tried my best to imagine what it had been like 2,000 years ago when the motor cars had not yet been invented, and land transportation was unbearably tough and slow, and water transportation was very crucial: On the river, boats passed by and streets were crowded. Granaries, inns and restaurants were lined up along the streets. Proprietors were busy greeting customers who stopped after a tiresome journey for some rest, or for some wine, or simply for a good meal, or perhaps, for some charming exotic girls with enchanting eyes…But now, this place is totally deserted without any trace of life. What had happened with nature? Why was this area reduced to such dereliction, from a heaven to a hell?

 

The tour guide told us that many inscribed wood slips had been unearthed there and local people often picked up some ancient coins, beads and porcelain fragments. Almost as soon as he finished his sentence, a few of us went ahead to try our luck regardless of the scorching sun above.

 

A Sand Storm Comes without Warning

 

It had been sunny for the first two days at Lop Nur. Our tour guide said that we were very lucky, but I wished that the weather would change. She asked me why and I answered, ‘for the sake of my article’.

 

Therefore, I began to pray repeatedly in the car, murmuring to myself ‘sand storm please come…’

 

Surprisingly, it seemed to work almost immediately that night.

 

The sand storm came so fast without a bit of forewarning. We were then camping in a lower spot at the Dragon City when one of the drivers said ‘it’s coming’. I raised my eyes and watched the sky darkening very quickly. But it was too quiet to believe what he predicted. Who would have known that in a minute heavy winds would fill the air and all would be in chaos, tents and mattresses blown away.

 

This was a critical situation. We adjusted the formation of cars, pulled all the tents back in to the centre one after the other, putting as much luggage as possible in the tents so that they would not be blown away again, and then we all crawled into the tents to avoid the storm.

 

Having eaten something, I got into the tent and lay down fully-clothed without unrolling my sleeping bag in case things got worse. It did get worse at midnight with the wind blowing much stronger. I felt my body, together with the tent, moving slightly and the tent which fluttered in the wind kept patting my face as if someone was slapping me on both sides of my face. What was worse, the rain-proof window could not keep sand out and the wind blew sand in covering my body and mouth. It was impossible to fall asleep in such a situation, so with my mouth and nose covered, I tried to listen to what was happening outside.

 

Suddenly, the two girls in the next tents asked me if we would be blown away too. I told them to get out so that we could pack two tents and put our entire luggage into one tent to prevent it from being swept away by wind. Then, we ran to our cars.

 

Being safe in the car, a sense of exhilaration took hold of me, so I decided to stay awake for the rare experience of listening to the whistling wind as if appreciating a great symphony. All of a sudden, the ‘music’ halted, as if had been led by a conductor in the orchestra. I checked my watch: 1:26 am. This was unbelievable, starting and ceasing without any warning.

 

After more than two hours’ silence, another round of the symphony was played at 4 am sharp, which again ceased abruptly after 35 minutes, and then, a 10 minute wind-up. What followed was pouring rain. In the end, the rain and the wind both ended simultaneously.

 

At dawn, the stars retreated while rosy clouds appeared in the horizon. We got out of the cars, all exhilarated, and shared eagerly with each other the feelings about this precarious experience. Some lifted their tents to shake out sand; some crawled out of their tents still wrapped in sleeping bags to watch the beautiful sky; while others were busy drying their mattresses.

 

The Mysterious Disappearance of Loulan Kingdom

 

We had to stop by a guard station to go to the centre of the lake. There were three staff in charge of guarding this huge region of Loulan Kingdom. One has to go through the necessary procedures to enter or exit.

 

This plain bungalow was divided into an office, kitchen and bedroom, plus an empty room to hold several motorbikes, which were used for their daily patrols.

 

Life in the wilderness was tedious and hard. I talked for a while with one of them called Xiao Cui. He had worked there for 8 years and last October he got married at this small guard station. His wedding even attracted TV reporters.

 

Loulan Kingdom, one of the 36 kingdoms in the Western Regions, was established in 176 BC and vanished after its heyday in the 4th century. In 1901, Sven Hedin stunned the world with his discovery of the 1,500-year-old ancient city of Loulan with the help of local guides.

 

But no one knows exactly the reason for its mysterious perishing.

 

The most authoritative view holds two joint reasons for this mystery: It was thought on the one hand that in the Western Han Dynasty, the route to Loulan had been replaced by a new one from the southern foot of Tianshan Mountain, thus the deserted transport network emptied the city. On the other hand, the dwindling water supply in the lower reaches of Peacock River forced the residents to move.

 

We did not go to Loulan since the admission ticket was said to be as costly as 3,000 yuan, and there was also the issue of military security and protection of cultural relics. What was even scarier was that nails were rumored to be laid around the site to prevent any invading cars…

 

The Largest Eco-Warning Sign

 

In late 1997, an engineer measured out the precise location of the centre of Lop Nur according to the longitude and latitude on the map and had a sign erected there; this became a must-see tourist attraction. Later, many other tablets and inscriptions were put up, forming a special scene in the desert.

 

We walked on foot for 7 km to the centre of the dry lake. The walk in burning sunshine on a flat piece of wilderness… It’s impossible to imagine that this ecological disaster was once the major water source of Tarim Basin, where animals gathered about in thriving forests and life was vibrant everywhere.

 

Environmental troubles in Lop Nur had begun long ago in the past. It only deteriorated in modern times: large-scale reclamation in the 1950s attracted many immigrants to Tarim River, which meant a huge demand of water for domestic use, irrigation and mining leading to 130 reservoirs, 138 channels and 400 pumping stations being built…The result was a water shortage crisis and the 300-km-long dried-up river. Lop Nur vanished completely in the 1970s.

 

From then on, the deterioration of the eco-environment has continued till all the plants withered and died, even the most vigorous poplar trees were dying in large areas. Desert has invaded at the speed of 5 m each year…

 

Of all the dry lakes in China, Lop Nur, the biggest and most tragic example with such an unfortunate ending, is a warning to all human beings.

 

One Man’s Desert

 

On our way back from the centre of the lake, we took a detour to the right and soon saw a series of stone tablets, which was the tomb of Yu Chunshun.

 

Yu Chunshun had walked all over China on foot since 1988, covering more than 40,000 km in 23 provinces and cities. He has written more than 400,000 words and gave numerous lectures.

 

In 1996, he decided to walk by himself through Lop Nur, as his most challenging task.

 

My driver Xiao Long knew a lot about this event because one of his friends used to be Yu’s local guide. He told me that before his departure, cars were sent ahead of him on the major routes to place water and food supplies every 7 km.

 

In the interview before he set out, he was asked about his aspirations.

 

‘I wish that god won’t summon me now because I still have so much to do’, he responded.

 

‘Are you afraid of death?’

 

‘I didn’t bring my keys with me when I left home’, he said.

 

His adventure began on 13 June,1996. Unfortunately, death tracked him closely. That afternoon, a sand storm assailed the area. He was lost in the dark and tumultuous region. Helicopters were sent to rescue him, albeit in vain. It was only a few days later that the body of this brave man who had moved the entire country was found on the mound at the mouth of the dry Tieban River. He died of thirst. The next water and food stock was only 2 km away.

 

We found his tombstone with his statue among the tablets. His life ended in a place nearby, where a ring of stones was placed around a 20-cm-high clay figurine, just as if in a kind of religious tribute.

 

At that moment, in the scorching sunshine, various mirage-like images appeared in the horizon because of the differing density of the air. Light rays were refracted to form shapes of water and diverse reflections which resembled both buildings and mountains.

 

I think that in the last moments of his life, Yu Chunshun, tortured by thirst, must have seen such splendid scenes too and was bewitched by the hallucinations. In a certain sense, I do believe that his life is continuing in this world of mirage.

 

The Riddle of the Sun Tomb

 

The Sun Tomb is the one and only in China.

 

Located on the north bank of the ancient Peacock River, the tomb ruins were discovered by two archeologists, Hou Can and Wang Binghua.

 

Its structure resembles a radiating sun and thus it was named ‘the Sun Tomb’. The innermost 2-m-diametre ring was the centre of the tomb, around which 7 concentric rings were arranged as the radiating light of the sun. The rings comprise stakes of poplar tree fixed into the ground with only a small part exposed over the ground.

 

There were six Sun Tombs in total, all belonging to men. There were also more than 30 ordinary tombs nearby. The unearthed vessel-shaped coffin was even more puzzling. It is thought that the ancient people subsisted on fishing, so when they died they believed it would be the same in the other world.

 

According to the result of Carbon-14 dating, the tomb cluster was as old as 3,800 years, about 2,000 years earlier than the Loulan Kingdom. So far, we know nothing about this long history. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Is the Sun Tomb a real burial ground or simply a sacrificial altar? Is the sun a symbol or does it carry any other implications?

 

According to anthropologists, the ancient people may have come from Europe, and had a certain kind of kinship with nomadic people in Southern Siberia, Kazakhstan and on the plains of the Volga River.

 

Judging by the excavated items, wheat, animal bones, fabric, felt and leather products, the experts surmise that 4,000 years ago people migrating from ancient Europe settled in Lop Nur, and they had advanced skills in raising livestock, hunting, cultivating wheat, weaving and making leather items.

 

Straying in Yardan

 

Early the next morning, I went ahead to shoot the Sun Tomb at sunrise.

 

On my way back to the camp, I took another road into an area of the Yardan landform. I tried to figure out the best way back while continuing to take pictures: first I faced the sun, then proceeded to the left to go out of the Yardan. The camp should have been nearby.

 

I could hear someone yelling ‘Lunch Time!’ from my left at first. Then I kept walking for about 10 minutes before I turned left and turned again…

 

When I reached the place where I thought the camp should be, I saw nothing there. Had they left already? But there were no signs of camping or car tracks.

 

After calming down, I realised that this was not where we camped last night, so I turned back to find the right way only to discover that each direction seemed to be identical. It is very scary to get lost in Lop Nur. Just think about what happened to Peng Jiamu and Yu Chunshun.

 

I tried to think calmly and soon decided to walk towards the west, hoping to see the dry river and the Sun Tomb and try to find an open ground or a higher place.

 

Thanks to a photo of a fish-shaped Yardan mound in my camera which I used as a reference, I was able to find my way out of Yardan and back into the desert. After an hour’s walk in this manner, I finally saw our camp on the emerging Gobi in the distance.

 

Again, I learned the lesson that to survive a precarious situation one has to remain calm in the first place.

 

Deserted Nuclear Weapons Test Base

 

I did not expect to be able to visit the military restricted zone this time.

 

Xiao Long knew every camp site in this wilderness like the back of his hand. He told us in advance that we were going to see signs such as ‘Serve the People’ and ‘Forever Loyalty to Chairman Mao’ successively. We did see them, formed with white stones on the entire hill.

 

We passed the sites of barracks, posts, radioactive dust decontamination station, and the large vestige of a former military camp which might have held at least a hundred people. The site still reflected the solemn and highly-secretive past, just like the ruins of the Summer Palace.

 

We all entered to take photos and stayed there for a long time.

 

In the 1960s, atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb weapon tests that were carried out at Lop Nur greatly enhanced the military power of China. For that reason, this land is of historical significance.

 

Xiao Long said that the veterans were in their 70s now. However many of them suffered health problems.

 

The recent Fukushima nuclear disaster alerted everyone to a deeper understanding of nuclear power. In the past, we often saw people cheering in the desert at the success of a nuclear weapons test. No one knew that the radiation would last for so long and that radioactive materials like Cesium and Iodine-131 would cause such great damage to health.

 

We were not equipped with radiation detectors and did not want to overreact to it. Of course caution is the mother of safety. At one point, Xiao Long informed everyone via the radio, ‘we’re about to pass a nuclear-contaminated area so please roll up all the car windows and drive fast.’ Soon we saw the warning signs by the road.

 

You could see nothing but stones on the dry Lop Nur, many of which in peculiar shapes could be of artistic value. Each of us picked one or two as a souvenir. Later in the contaminated zone where warning signs are everywhere, we were told not to pick any stones for fear of nuclear contamination.

 

In the end, I had to give up many beautiful stones.

 

Yingpan and Tuohulake Beacon Tower

 

Yingpan, the capital of Shanguo, one of the 36 kingdoms in the Western Regions, was both a military base and a courier station on the main route of the Silk Road.

 

On entering the ancient town, we saw a round castle with a diametre of more than 350 m, built with rammed earth. There was a huge 10-m-high Buddhist pagoda on the hill at the west gate.

 

The reputation of Yingpan spread because of the unrestrained tomb raiders.

 

In 1989 when archeologists arrived for the first time, they found that many tombs had been robbed and a large amount of cultural relics were missing. When they returned in 1995, they discovered that more than 120 tombs had been raided again. However, over 400 pieces of precious cultural relics were unearthed from the looted tombs, including artistic works of different styles, of the Central China, Central Asia, as well as Greek and Roman.

 

After leaving Yingpan and continuing on for about 30 km, we entered into a vast saline marshland. We turned left and saw a conspicuous beacon tower of the Western Han Dynasty, exposed in the scorching sunshine.

 

It is named Tuohulake, meaning ‘high mound’ in Uygur language. The twin towers, resembling a camel’s humps, are joined by trees in the middle which support and reinforce them. There is an access through a slope in the centre. It is the best preserved beacon tower in the middle section of the ancient Silk Road.

 

Epilogue

 

Our trip ended in drizzling weather.

 

Now sitting on the plane back home, I could see the snow mountains, rivers, buildings…so many different scenes, beautiful, splendid, or desolate, but nothing like the soul-stirring harsh and wild desert which surrounded us a few days ago.

 

I recalled the days on the road, happy, dangerous and tough…and Lop Nur where no water, no plants, no birds, and even no insects were to be seen. Suddenly, my thoughts stopped at the moment of a sand storm: the wind crying out desperately and nature exposing its most harsh and reckless face, just like an eccentric and isolated old man cursing the unintentional intrusion of a stranger.

 

That is the ever-lasting music of Lop Nur.