Seeking Loulan - A Century of Discovery

Author: Mu Shunying / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: On December 26, 2003, the photography team of CCTV's New Silk Road and the Xinjiang Archaeological Team entered the Lop Desert, known as the "Land of No Return," eastward from Alagang on the Kuerle to Ruqiang section, to excavate the mysterious Xiaohe Ruins—15 kilometers west of Loulan. It is said that there are a thousand tombs there, preserving some of the earliest memories of the Lop Desert. Their journey reminded me of my own Loulan exploration and research trip over two decades ago. In the late 1970s, CCTV and Japan's NHK collaborated to produce a major television documentary titled The Silk Road. They planned to film from the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, Chang'an (now Xi'an, Shaanxi Province), all the way to the overseas endpoint. This was a grand and adventurous plan. Many important towns along the Silk Road had long been buried under endless sand dunes, with few people visiting them in nearly a century. Filming in such remote areas was no easy task. And to enter the Lop Desert, known as the "desert where no birds fly in the sky and no beasts walk on the ground," to film the ruins of the ancient Loulan city, was particularly challenging. Yet, this was also the most dazzling highlight of the entire production. The production team refused to give up and resolved to venture into the "no-man's land."
In June 1979, the Silk Road production team and the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute decided to jointly form a joint exploration team to study the ancient Silk Road in the Lop Nur area and search for the mysterious kingdom of Loulan, which had vanished into the vast desert. From the time when Sven Hedin's expedition discovered the Loulan ruins in the Lop Desert (note: this was in 1979—the author's note), nearly eighty years had passed. If calculated from the time when the Chinese archaeologist Huang Wenbi first visited the Lop Nur area for research, it had been half a century. Whether the Loulan ruins still existed, and whether they could be found, were all unknown. At that time, the Lop Nur was not only a "no-man's land" but also a military restricted area. To start the investigation and filming as soon as possible, the joint exploration team divided the work: CCTV was responsible for submitting an application to the National Defense Science Commission and the Central Military Commission in Beijing, requesting approval to enter the Lop Nur and asking for support and assistance from local troops; the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute was responsible for providing historical materials on the Kingdom of Loulan, records of foreign explorers' activities in the area over the past century, and the geographical coordinates of the ancient Loulan city.
Step 1: Locate the specific position of Loulan and determine whether its ruins still exist.
Step 2: Organize an on-site investigation and filming.
Soon after, word came from Beijing that CCTV had obtained the approval to allow the production team to enter the Lop Nur Loulan area for investigation and filming. Moreover, the Central Military Commission agreed that the Malan Base would use helicopters to take us first into the airspace above the Lop Nur Loulan area for reconnaissance.
On the morning of June 22, I, along with Wang Mingzhe and Xing Kaijing from the Archaeological Institute and Guo Baoxiang from CCTV, formed the advance team. We took military helicopters from Urumqi to the Heshuo Malan Airport and then drove in military jeeps to the guesthouse at the Malan military base. Once a desert wasteland, Malan has now developed into a small town with housing, markets, shops, hospitals, restaurants, and cinemas.
Since the helicopter had to make some preparations before flying over the vast desert, we discussed with the military and decided to take off-road vehicles to the Qiqi River ferry to wait. This way, we could also conduct some preliminary research along the way. The next morning, we set off from Malan in two jeeps.
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