Lop Lake
( 2005-09-13 )

The Lop Lake, reputed as the "lake of death" and located to the northeast of Rouqiang County in Northwest China'sXinjiangUygur Autonomous Region, attracts historians and geographers from home and abroad by its mystery.

The Lop Lake, also called Lop Nur, was named Youze in theClassic of Mountains and Seas(Shan Hai Jingin Chinese), a famous Chinese geographical book written in the pre-Qin (221-206BC) years. The Lop Lake is the Mongolian transliteration, which means a lake where waters gather.

TheHistory of the Han Dynasty(Han Shu in Chinese) mentions that the lake covered a large area of 300 square lis (1 li equals 500 meters), with the water level never rising in summer or dropping in winter.

As shown in pictures taken by satellites, the Lop Lake today is just a desolate land with rings and rings of salt shells, surrounded by salt marshes and a salt-encrusted plain.

But according to some historical documents, the Lop Lake was once a huge lake in the northeast of the Western Regions, where six or seven rivers gathered, such as theTarim River, the Peacock River, and the Milan River. The lake once covered an area of 2,400-3,000 square kilometers, making it the second largest inland lake in China, with all the nearby rivers streaming into it.

Just west of the Lop Lake once stood the important caravan trading city ofLoulan, also an ancient garrison town built to guard China's western frontier and theSilk Roadtraffic that passed through it.