Mingsha Shan & Yueya Quan (Singing Sand Mountains & Crescent Moon Spring)
Located at the northern foot of the SingingSandMountains in the southern suburbs of DunhuangCity, the Crescent Moon Spring and SingingSandMountains scenic spots are 7 kilometers away from downtown Dunhuang and cover a total area of around 200 square kilometers.
Surrounded by the SingingSandMountains, Crescent Moon Spring gets its name due to its shape like a new crescent moon. In ancient times, it was called as Sand Well and also named as Medicine Spring. However, it was once also called by mistake as a low-lying pond. But it was renamed as the Crescent Moon Spring in the Qing Dynasty. Covering an area of 13.2 Chinese mu and with an average water depth of 4.2 meters, the Crescent Moon Spring is famous for its pure and sweet-taste water and looks like a beautiful mirror against the background of surrounding sand mountains. The distance between drifting sand and the spring is only several dozen meters. However, the spring has never been submerged by drifting sands even in strong winds, and the spring remains pure and clear and never dries up. The special geomorphology feature that a spring co-exists with sand mountains is really a miracle considering the Crescent Moon Spring is in the harsh conditions of the wild GobiDesert.
The so-called singing sand does not sing by itself, but creates singing sound when people tread or slide on the surface of the sand, which is a kind of miracle of the nature. Some describe this phenomenon as "an astonishing sound of the nature". When sliding on the steep slopes of sand dunes from the top, the drifting sands look like beautiful brocades hung up on the sand dunes or dancing golden dragons, accompanied with beautiful singing sound. The singing sounds like the sound from traditional Chinese music instruments. Hence, the mountain gets its name because of the singing sound of the sand. The sand mountains are formed by drifting dunes and the sands have five different colors of red, yellow, green, white and black. In the Han Dynasty, it was named as ShajiaoMountain or MagicSandMountain. In the Jin Dynasty, it was named SingingSandMountains. The SingingSandMountains is 40 kilometers long from west to east and more than 20 kilometers wide from north to south, with its peak as high as 1,715 meters above the sea level. With zigzagging sand ridges, the sand dunes are said to be able to regain their original form overnight when treaded upon the day before, which is really a miracle in the world.
The SingingSandMountains and Crescent Moon Spring are twin sisters of natural beauty in the wild GobiDesert. The sand mountain sings because it is divine while the spring is beautiful because it is miracle. Tourists get thrilled and distracted no matter when they have a bird's-eye-view of the beautiful sand dunes from the top of the mountain or wander beside the clear spring. It's no surprise to have the saying that SingingSandMountains helps people free from all worries and Crescent Moon Spring purifies people's minds.