Black Gobi

Author: Yang Lian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: The vast Black Gobi Desert, located between Xinjiang, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia, is a desert of wind, a desert of sunshine, and a desert covered in black gravel. This uninhabited area stretching across the Silk Road is awe-inspiring. Through decades of relentless pursuit, the author combines field research with literary studies to recreate the role of the Black Gobi Desert in the geopolitical landscape of Central Asia in the early 20th century, attempting to solve the historical mysteries left behind in the Black Gobi and once again drawing the world's attention. The Black Gobi refers to a region of approximately 200,000 square kilometers in eastern Gansu and western Xinjiang, stretching from the Ejin River in the east to the China-Mongolia border in the north, bordering the Hexi Corridor in the south, and nestled against the eastern section of the Tian Shan Mountains. It is primarily an uninhabited area, larger in area than provinces like Jiangsu today. Regarding this desolate and desolate Black Gobi on the ancient Silk Road, the most fascinating legend is the story of the "Black Lama." In the early 20th century, a bandit named the "Black Lama" suddenly appeared in the Black Gobi. He ruled over the mountain and had more than 400 nomadic encampments following him, while the entire Ejin Banner at the time only had 98 nomadic encampments. It was said that he cut off transportation routes, specifically robbing large merchant caravans and government officials, giving this sensitive area an "international" impact. At the time, the Republic of China government had lost Outer Mongolia, the Junggar, and the Tarim regions due to Russian interference, and any instability in the Black Gobi could have destabilized the newly liberated northwest of China. As a result, the Republic of China government paid a high price to gather intelligence on the "Black Lama" in places like Ulaanbaatar (Kulun) and Khovd. Mongolia and the Soviet Union also sent agents multiple times to the Black Gobi. Meanwhile, many famous Silk Road explorers and researchers, such as the American Owen Lattimore, the Russian Obolensky, the Swede Sven Hedin, and the Dane Halfdan, paid attention to this figure and described the "Black Lama" in their writings multiple times. For a time, there were many conflicting accounts, leaving behind a wealth of contradictory documents. However, by the 1920s, the "Black Lama" had suddenly vanished, raising doubts about whether he had ever truly existed. Since then, his fate has been one of the topics of inquiry for Western historians. It was not until the early 21st century, with the gradual declassification of Soviet secret archives, that people learned that the "Black Lama" had been secretly assassinated by a Soviet KGB agent in 1924. After successfully carrying out the assassination in China's Black Gobi, the agent brought the "Black Lama's" head back to the KGB headquarters in Leningrad, where it was preserved in formaldehyde for eternity. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the "Black Lama's" head was transferred to the Saint Petersburg Ethnological Museum, where it currently bears the catalog number "3394." In fact, the true story of the "Black Lama" is more、 than any detective novel, without any need for fiction.