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The Yümen Guan (Jade Gate) |
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Stein writes at some length about the care with which strategic locations were chosen for the watch towers and walls defending Dunhuang. An excellent example can be seen in the area around the Jade Gate and beyond it to the West. To reach the Jade Gate today requires driving for several hours northwest of Dunhuang across the gravel surface of the desert, where on a clear day mountains can be seen in the distance both north and south, but the monotony of the immediate surroundings is broken only by the occasional tuft of brushy vegetation. |
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The watch-tower, built entirely of regular courses of hard clay about four inches thick, with thin layers of tamarisk branches laid between them, still rose to over twenty-two feet. In order to give additional cohesion to the solid base measuring about twenty feet square, numerous wooden posts had been set in it vertically, and their ends were sticking out on the top. The wall once guarded by the tower had passed to the north of it, with a bastion-like projection at about six yards' distance.... (Stein, II, p. 50) |
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While the fortifications took advantage of the twists and turns of the terrain, on the high ground beginning at the Jade Gate the wall itself can be seen extending eastward (parallel to the valley and mountains) in an absolutely straight line. It is very unlike what we normally see in the familiar pictures of the Great Wall in eastern China--instead of masonry and crenellated towers, that in the west is constructed of the familiar local materials. Stein observed intact sections of it as long as 250 yards and seven feet high. Here the particular method of construction could be studied with ease. Layers of fascines, six inched thick, made up of mixed tamarisk twigs and reeds, alternated with strata three to four inches thick of coarse clay and gravel...I counted eight double layers of fascines and stamped clay. I noticed that the reeds generally prevailed in a thin streak on the top of the tamarisk brushwood. this suggested that they had been specially inserted there in order to prepare a more level surface for the succeeding stratum of clay and gravel. It seemed to me highly probable that these latter layers had been regularly stamped, the water for the purpose being brought probably from the nearest lagoon. |
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Stein was also very curious about stacks of the same brushwood, layered with some gravel and dirt, which were spaced somewhat apart from some of the watch towers. He finally concluded that these may have been pre-prepared signalling pyres, judging from the fact that some of them had burned and left only fragments.
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Another few kilometers to the east, just below a watch tower on a promontory, is an even more impressive Han-era building. Here is some of Stein's description: ...I moved camp to the large ruin, which when we first passed it...had struck me by its palace-like dimensions...My reconnaissances has since shown that htis huge structure...with a much-decayed watch-tower rising on the plateau edge immediately south of it, lay actually on the line of the Limes as well as on the old caravan route. An expanse of lakelets and impassable marsh land , some four miles long and two across, stretched on its north side and rendered defence by a wall quite unnecessary... |
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Stein puzzled some over the purpose of the building, which seems to have lacked windows and had watch towers at the four corners. The evidence of the wooden strips he discovered, with their Chinese inscriptions dating from as early as 52 BCE, led him to the the conclusion it was a "supply-store" for this area of the fortifications: One among [the documents] is an issue order for grain signed by three officiallys specifically named as in charge of the granary. Another is still more significant, because it is an acknowledgement for a large consignment of corn [read: grain] delivered from a specified area of cultivation in the Tun-huang oasis, evidently as its contribution towards commissariat requirements of the border. Elsewhere, again, we find an order for twenty suits of a particular sort of clothing such as a military magazine might store. |
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To learn about the soldiers' life along the military frontier, click here. © 1999 Daniel C. Waugh |