Suoyang City Ruins 锁阳城遗址

About Suoyang City Ruins

Suoyang City Ruins (锁阳城遗址) are the remains of a walled Silk Road city in the Gobi Desert southeast of Suoyangcheng Town (锁阳城镇), Guazhou County (瓜州县), at the western end of the Hexi Corridor (河西走廊) in Gansu.

The city occupied an old oasis 1,358 m above sea level, on the road between Dunhuang (敦煌) to the west and Jiuquan (酒泉) to the east. Outside the city lie the ruins of an irrigation canal system that drew on the Shule River (疏勒河); about 90 km of channels once watered some 60 square km of land around it.

Its story begins in 111 BC, when Emperor Wu of Han set up Ming'an County (冥安县), whose seat stood 4.5 km northeast of the present ruins. In 295 a new city was built on the current site as the seat of the newly created Jinchang Commandery (晋昌郡); in 621 the Tang renamed the commandery Guazhou. Tibetan forces held the city from 776 until the general Zhang Yichao (张议潮) recovered it in 849, and the Western Xia took Guazhou in 1036. Under the Ming it was called Kuyu (苦峪), and its walls were repaired in 1494. The Ming later withdrew east to the Jiayu Pass (嘉峪关), and the city was abandoned in 1524 after the pass was closed. The name Suoyang comes from a Qing novel in which the Tang general Xue Rengui (薛仁贵) and his besieged troops survive by eating suoyang (锁阳, Cynomorium songaricum), a plant that grows wild here.

The walled city has an inner city, an outer city and, between them, several yangmacheng (羊马城, 'sheep-and-horse city'), a common feature of Tang cities, used as animal enclosures in peacetime and as forts in war; those here show no sign of repair or use after the Tang. The inner city's rammed-earth walls still stand 9 to 12.5 m high, a partition wall splits it into a larger western and a smaller eastern section, and an adobe watchtower 18 m tall rises at its northwest corner. Floods from the southern mountains broke through the outer city's south wall, and the outer city was never rebuilt. About 1 km east is the Ta'er Temple (塔尔寺), where the main pagoda and eleven smaller ones date mostly from the Western Xia; the Tang monk Xuanzang is said to have preached there for a month before leaving for India. More than 2,100 tombs lie mainly to the south and southeast.

The State Council listed the site among China's nationally protected heritage sites (全国重点文物保护单位) in 1996. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 2014, one of 33 sites in the Silk Roads listing for the Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor. The scenic area is rated 4A.

What to look for

• The inner city's rammed-earth walls, still 9 to 12.5 m high
• An 18 m adobe watchtower at the inner city's northwest corner
• Yangmacheng (羊马城), livestock enclosures that doubled as forts, between the inner and outer walls
• The outer city, wrecked by floods that breached its south wall and never rebuilt
• Ta'er Temple (塔尔寺), 1 km east, with a Western Xia main pagoda and eleven smaller pagodas
• Ruins of the irrigation canals that drew water from the Shule River

Location & getting there

Getting to Suoyang City Ruins

• Search for 锁阳城遗址 with 酒泉市 and 瓜州县.