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Yadan National Geologic Park in Dunhuang

Yadan National Geologic Park in Dunhuang

Write: Davis [2011-05-23]

Yadan National Geologic Park in Dunhuang

It is located on a dried up riverbed, stretches 25km in length and 1-2km in breadth t, 185km away from Dunhuang city, 85km west of Yumenguan pass. It is composed of group of wind-eroded barren grotesque hillocks. It is imposing and broad in scale whether individual or the whole. It is rare and seldom to see elsewhere in the world. It has the local name of devils town.
It takes about an hour to ride to the well-known pass of Yumenguan passing through a vast land of the Gobi desert, then you continue to ride for 85km westwards along the ancient silk road on Sule riverbed. During your journey they can sight ruins of watch towers doted along the Great Wang of the Han Dynasty and see marshland and grassy marshland joining together.
Reads grow thickly on lakeside and waterfowls are sporting on lakes. Wild ducks or geese or swans flap wings are flying to the sky. What people see is as beautiful as a picture. Gradually marshland in front of you dried up and grassy marshland disappeared, the riverbed is covered with sand and there is again the boundless and indistinct Gobi. Then you ll surprisingly find there are row upon row of mounds towering aloft, scattered here and there. Some of them look like high buildings; some of them look like churches, mosques, yurts (tent), as well as lions, camels and tortoises. Even people could find the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, the Palace in Tibet, the Pyramid and Sphinx in miniatures.
They look like sculptural works, remarkable true to the real. Placing yourself among them , you feel as if you were in a museum of architectural works. The eye cannot take it all in.
Looking from afar in a fine ray, mirage is in wide expanse of misty, the whole Town of Devils looks like floating on it. In the evening, mirage vanished, it is mysteriously shrouded in afterglow. When night has fallen, the wind howls and it is enveloped atmosphere full of terror in a curtain of darkness, which makes people s hairs stand on end.