PHOTED BY ZHANGLIANG
The site of Niya ruins
The Niya Ruins lie in the Taklamakhan Desert south to Minfeng County, about 150 kilometers from the county. And according to archaeologists, the city used to be the Jingjue Kingdom in the time of Han---Jing times. Now it is a key cultural relic site under the National government protection. The ruins is 22 kilometers long from the north to the south, and six kilometers wide from the west to the east. In the dunes, more than 20 square kilometers in area, about 50 ancient sites were discovered ,including the ruins of stupas, temples, city walls, courtyards ,houses, ponds sheepfolds, fruit gardens and fences. In the center the ruins lies the ruins of a stupa, 6—7 meters high, built with clay bricks, and buried in the sand. Around the stupa were buildings of a temple ,from which many relics were unearthed and those buildings which were in lines were official houses or houses of the rich. In the residential area in the east were houses ,half of them were cells, and near them were threshing ground, potter making shops and a iron-making site and graveyard. Two types of coffins were found here, the rectangular shape and the groove –shape. A tomb of the husband and the wife was unearthed, which has been regarded as one of the great archaeological finding in China. The unearthed items are wooden s of Kharoshthi, Chinese, and seals, coins, pottery ware, iron items, woolen and silk and cotton products, and tools. At the beginning the 20th century, many foreign explorers came to Niya ruins and their discoveries shocked the international academic world. Since 1959, the Chinese archaeologists have done more surveys and excavations here and have made more findings. And in the late 1990 a Sino-Japan archaeologist team worked here and more discoveries were made, of the discoveries, a brocade arm protector with the Chinese characters meaning “five stars rising from the east that benefit the central country” again shocked the world.
