Yumen Pass Xiaofangpan City Gateway Site
Standing for centuries in the open Gobi, this earthen fort was a key Han dynasty checkpoint on the Silk Road toward the Western Regions.
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Spatial Framework & Civilizational Geography · County-level
Dun Huang City
World Heritage Mogao Caves house extraordinary millennia-old Buddhist murals in Dunhuang, complemented by Crescent Lake and the ancient Yumen Pass.
Regional story
A place shaped through time
World Heritage Mogao Caves house extraordinary millennia-old Buddhist murals in Dunhuang, complemented by Crescent Lake and the ancient Yumen Pass.
Dun Huang City
7 entries
Atlas Attractions
Dunhuang Han Great Wall & Beacon Ruins
Layered from local reeds, red willow branches, sand and gravel, these Han ramparts survive in the desert as a living fossil of frontier building.
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Mogao Cave 96 (Nine-Story Building)
Cave 96's nine-storey timber facade rises against the cliff of Mingsha Mountain, sheltering a 35.5-metre clay Maitreya, one of the largest indoor clay statues in the world.
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Mogao Cave 17 (Library Cave Historic Chamber)
Originally a memorial chamber for the late-Tang monk Hongbian, the cave was found by Taoist Wang Yuanlu in 1900, sealed for centuries and holding over fifty thousand manuscripts and silk paintings.
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Mogao Cave 148 (Tang Reclining Buddha)
A fifteen-metre painted reclining Buddha from the High Tang depicts Shakyamuni entering nirvana, while the rear wall shows seventy-two disciples and foreign princes in mourning.
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Digital Dunhuang Exhibition Center
Using dome-screen films and high-definition 3D scanning, this pioneering heritage digitization project preserves the desert cave art for future generations.
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Yangguan Pass in Dunhuang
About 60 km southwest of Dunhuang, the Han frontier pass south of Yumen guarded the southern Silk Road; its fort fell around 900, and Wang Wei's farewell poem made it a byword for parting.
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Related Literature
3Mentions3
- Seeing Off Yuan the Second on a Mission to AnxiClassical PoetryWang Wei
I urge you to drain one more cup of wine: west of Yang Pass you will have no old friends.
- Book of Han: Account of the Xiongnu: Wang ZhaojunClassical ProseBan Gu
Emperor Yuan gave him Wang Qiang, styled Zhaojun, a daughter of a good family from the rear palace.
- Biography of the Tripitaka Master of the Great Ci'en Monastery of the Great Tang: Crossing the Moheyan DesertClassical ProseHuili
Better to die going west than to live returning east!