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29-504: The sixth century Dandan Oilik oasis town archaeological site where Buddhist shrines and texts were discovered is located in the desert of northern Qira (Chira) County. Qira town (Chira), the town that is the current county seat of Qira County, has been forced to change locations on three occasions due to encroachment by the sands of the Taklamakan Desert. In his 1900-01 expedition in the region, Aurel Stein travelled across

58-480: A small 1,500 year-old Buddhist temple was discovered 7 km (4.3 mi) from Damiku (Damagou). On October 20, 2014, Damiku (Damagou) was changed from a township to a town. On January 7, 2016, areas near Nur, Bostan and Ulughsay townships in Qira County were made part of the newly created Kunyu . On February 28, 2017, it was announced by the county government that those who reported others for stitching

87-559: A straight line drawn in the Taklamakan Desert that forms part of the boundary between Hotan Prefecture and Aksu Prefecture . The area is between 1,500 m (4,900 ft) and 1,800 m (5,900 ft) above sea level. Oasis areas occupy 2.9% of the total area of the county. The oasis areas along China National Highway 315 include the Qira County county seat area, Gulahma and Damiku. Qaka, Ulughsay, Nur, Bostan and Kunyu 's small exclaves in Qira County are located close to

116-606: A strategically placed vine leaf. Among the documents discovered, written in a variety of scripts on paper, wooden tablets, and sticks, were Buddhist texts ; a petition for the recovery of a donkey after the failure of its two purchasers to pay even ten months later; a petition for exemption from requisitions of grain and forced labour after visitation by bandits; a request for the military of skins for drums and quail feathers for arrows; records of loans; and an important early Judeo-Persian document edited and dated to 718 by David Samuel Margoliouth seemingly concerned predominantly with

145-440: A team of thirty labourers, to begin excavations. He uncovered a series of structures (labelled by Stein D. I to D. XVII), including dwellings and a number of Buddhist shrines. D. II has a central rectangular platform surmounted by a moulded lotus statue base, on which only the foot of the image survives; the surrounding passage Stein identified as serving for parikrama ( ritual circumambulation ). In an adjoining smaller building

174-466: Is an abandoned historic oasis town and Buddhist site in the Taklamakan Desert of China , located to the northeast of Khotan in what is now the autonomous region of Xinjiang , between the Khotan and Keriya rivers. The central site covers an area of 4.5 km ; the greater oasis extends over an area of 22 km . The site flourished from the sixth century as a site along the southern branch of

203-543: Is currently off-limits to the public. After over a millennium of abandonment to the shifting sands, Dandan Oilik was rediscovered in 1896 by Swedish explorer Sven Hedin . Leaving his baggage in Khotan, Hedin set out on 14 January 1896 with a retinue of four men, three camels, and two donkeys, along with enough provisions to last fifty days. After five days the party left the White Jade River , heading east between

232-460: The Keriya-daria ". Who could have imagined, that in the interior of the dread Desert of Gobi ... actual cities slumbered under the sand ... and yet there stood I amid the wreck and devastation of an ancient people, within whose dwellings none had ever entered save the sandstorm in its days of maddest revelry; there stood I like the prince in the enchanted wood , having awakened to new life

261-525: The Silk Road until its abandonment before the Tibetan advance at the end of the eighth century. Dandan Oilik was rediscovered and partially excavated by a succession of foreign explorers starting in 1896, and has yielded rich finds including manuscripts, stucco reliefs, painted wooden panels, and murals. A detailed survey was conducted in 2006 although much of the site remains unexcavated. Dandan Oilik

290-481: The ' star and crescent moon ' insignia on their clothing or personal items or having the words ' East Turkestan ' on their mobile phone case, purse or other jewelry, would be eligible for cash payments. In March 2017, Salamet Memetimin, the Communist Party secretary for Chaka township's Bekchan village and ethnic Uyghur, was relieved of her duties for taking her nikah marriage vows at her home. According to

319-540: The 166,735 residents of the county were Uyghur , 2,921 were Han Chinese and 109 were from other ethnic groups. As of the 2010s, the population of Qira County was more than 98% Uyghur . As of 1999, 98.45% of the population of Qira (Cele) County was Uyghur and 1.51% of the population was Han Chinese. Dandan Oilik Dandan Oilik ( simplified Chinese : 丹 丹 乌 里 克 ; traditional Chinese : 丹丹烏里克 ; pinyin : Dāndānwūlǐkè ; Uyghur: دەندان ئۆيلىك ), also Dandān-Uiliq, lit. "the houses with ivory",

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348-609: The Hotan Daily, 97 officials were charged with disciplinary violations at this time. In 2018, local government authorities in the county expected to have almost 12,000 detainees in vocational camps and detention centres and some projects related to the centres outstripped budgetary limits. According to the Chinese Government, by the end of 2018, construction of Jinnan New Village ( 津南 新村 ) in Qira Town (Cele)

377-555: The Kunlun Mountains. The southern part of Qira County is mountainous with an average elevation of 3,200 m (10,500 ft) above sea level. The upper reaches of the White Jade River (Yurung Kash), which provide water for Hotan (Khotan) , are found in the Kunlun Mountains of southern Qira County. Mountain passes in the area include Mandar Kol Dawan, Shalgon Dawan, Kuchkash Bulak Dawan, and Art Dawan. One of

406-751: The Xinjiang Archaeological Institute. In 1998 Christoph Baumer led an expedition to the site, making further discoveries. In 2002 a joint expedition by teams from the Xinjiang Cultural Relics Bureau, the Xinjiang Archaeological Research Institute, and Niya Research Institute of Bukkyo University in Japan discovered a new Buddhist temple with wall paintings. This was subsequently excavated and thirty sections of

435-418: The camels and donkeys still "consumed with relish" the reeds once used in construction. Although unable to recover the overall plan of the city, Hedin found traces of gardens, rows of poplars indicating ancient avenues, and remains of ancient apricot and plum trees, concluding that "the walls of this God-accursed city, this second Sodom in the desert, had thus in ancient times been washed by a powerful stream –

464-414: The city which had slumbered for a thousand years, or at any rate rescued the memory of its existence from oblivion. In December 1900, alerted in Khotan by a "reliable 'treasure-seeker'" who brought fragments of wall painting with Brahmi script , stucco reliefs, and paper documents from a site known locally as Dandān-Uiliq, Aurel Stein set off in the footsteps of Hedin, accompanied by two of his guides and

493-485: The county included Chotma, Yangi kan, Zaiuk, Yaskako Tagh, Mandar Chap, and Chumik. Qira County includes two towns and six townships  : Agricultural products of the county include wheat, corn, cotton, petroleum products, melons, pomegranates, walnuts, peaches, and apricots. Livestock raised in the county include horses, cows and sheep. Industry in the country includes electronics, construction, cotton ginning and food processing (fruits). As of 2015, 163,705 of

522-535: The door because of the weight of sand that had accumulated overnight. My crops were buried too, so I had no choice but to move" -Memet Simay, area resident In 1983, the Qira research station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was founded to combat drift sand. A transitional zone was established with help from the scientists at the station, and the sands were pushed back over 5 kilometres (3.1 mi). In 2005,

551-624: The dunes, which gradually increased to a height of fifty feet. Steering through the davans or "passes" between the dunes, with live tamarisk or poplar indicating sources of water, ten days after departing Khotan Hedin rode his camel bareback to the "Buried City of Taklamakan". There he found traces of hundreds of wooden houses; a "Temple of Buddha", with walls constructed of bundles of reeds fixed to stakes, and covered in earthen plaster and wall paintings – of kneeling females, moustachioed males in Persian clothing , animals, and boats rocking in

580-415: The founding of Xinjiang Autonomous Region in 1955, Qira County has been part of Hotan Prefecture. In the 1980s, 446 households living in the county seat were forced to relocate due to the effects of desertification which had brought the Taklamakan Desert within 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) km of their homes, sometimes burying homes in sand overnight. "When I woke up one morning, I found I couldn't open

609-647: The native names Baiyu or Yurungkash , is a river in the southern Xinjiang region of China . The head waters of the river rise in the Kunlun Mountains , in the area of Aksai Chin in Kashmir in the Togatax area ( 35°36′N 81°24′E  /  35.6°N 81.4°E  / 35.6; 81.4 ). The river flows east for some 200 km and then north for another 200 km before passing through Khotan , China ( 37°07′N 79°58′E  /  37.11°N 79.97°E  / 37.11; 79.97 ). In Khotan ,

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638-464: The northern section of today's Qira County, a section of the Taklamakan Desert between today's Lop County and the Keriya River . There were several wells along the course he took. Qira County was divided from Yutian / Keriya County in 1928/9. In the thirty years between the 1950s and 1980s, a significant area of farmland near the county seat was taken into the desert by blown sand. Since

667-675: The paintings were detached and removed to Ürümqi . They include seated Buddhas, serial figures in the Thousand Buddha tradition, bodhisattvas , horsemen on dappled mounts and an inscription in the Iranian Saka language . In 2006, in recognition of its significance, Dandan Oilik was listed by State Administration of Cultural Heritage as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level . White Jade River The White Jade River , also known by

696-485: The prominent mountains in the county is Muztag (K5, Wu-lu-ko Ho Shan, Mo-shih Shan, Mu-shih Shan, Muztagh Jilga; 慕士山 , 木斯山 ) which is 7,282 m (23,891 ft) above sea level. The meltwater from this mountain creates the Qira River (Cele River, Ts'e-lo Ho; 策勒河 ) which flows through Qaka into the Qira county seat. In the mid-20th century, camping grounds in the sparsely populated southern mountainous area of

725-467: The river has yielded white river rocks which are also known as nephrite jade. North of Khotan, it eventually dries up in the Taklamakan Desert , its seasonal bed joined by that of the Black Jade River ( Karakash River ) near Koxlax (some 200 km north of Khotan, 38°05′N 80°34′E  /  38.08°N 80.56°E  / 38.08; 80.56 ), from where it continues north as

754-437: The sale of sheep, complaints of unfair treatment, and the teaching of a girl. Aurel Stein translated the document into English. In 1905 geographer Ellsworth Huntington visited Dandan Oilik, observing that it was once watered by a river that no longer flows through the area. From 1928 and the visit of Emil Trinkler and Walter Bosshard , the site lay untouched for nearly seventy years until an initial inspection in 1996 by

783-414: The waves; fragments of paper with indecipherable characters; a life-size gypsum foot; and a series of Buddha images. Most of the ruins, extending over an area two to two and a half miles across, were buried under high dunes. Hedin found that excavation was "desperate work", with the sand immediately filling whatever was dug, necessitating the removal of entire dunes; furthermore, and despite their antiquity,

812-508: Was a headless Buddha which Stein carted off on a mule and is now in the British Museum ; another headless figure, clad in mail , wearing wide boots similar to the soft leather chāruks of contemporary Turkestan , trampling another figure, and thought to represent Kubera ; and wall paintings of a seated monastic, a Buddha, horsemen, and a nude dancing girl in a pool of water against a backdrop of flowering lotus, adorned with jewels and

841-563: Was completed. To increase aid delivery to Xinjiang, places in Xinjiang are paired with other areas of China which can provide aid. Tianjin and Hotan are paired in this program. Through assistance from the Tianjin government, a standard football field and training center was constructed at the No. 1 Primary School in the county. The northern part of Qira County is made up of sand dunes and ends in

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