Lop Nor, a peculiar town in the desert
2 min readLop Nor is located at the lowest point in the Tarim Basin, and was once called “The Sea of Death”.
Lop Nor was once an oasis of life in history with green water, abundant natural resources, and attractive scenery, breeding Kroraina civilization, Milan civilization, Xiaohe Civilization and many other civilizations. It was the important area of the civilization exchanges between China and Western, and of the blending of multiple nationalities in ancient time. Kroraina Kingdom, one of the 36 kingdoms in the Western Regions then, was quite big with large population. However, it disappeared mysteriously and the reasons are at present not clear.
Before 1970s, Lop Nor was surrounded with green forest; was still the second largest inland lake in China with clear water. However, Lop Nor retrograded rapidly and completely dried up at the late 1970s due to the reduced flow of the Tarim River and severe desertification.
Lop Nor is a barren Gobi desert now; the highest temperature may be up to 71’C in summer, and no bird dare to cross this solitude desert. The vast dried lake basin, the uneven salt crust, and sediments convey the retrospection of the prosperity in former days.
On January 23, 2002, the town of Lop Nor was established, attaching to Ruoqiang County.
Lop Nor is the largest town in Xinjiang and also the first unusual town. Why the “largest”? The area of the town is52,000 square kilometers, exceeding the area of Zhejiang province. Why “unusual”? In fact, there are only a row of small houses with the length of no more than 100 meters in the so called town. The town government is two-story building, surrounded with two small restaurants, two small supermarkets, two or three garages, and a small gas station.
