Secrets of the Silk Road – Teacher Packet - Bowers Museum

elinquish, abandon" + makan, "place." Popular accounts define it as an area that means "go in and
you will never come out".
Tarim Basin
The Tarim Basin is a large is enclosed drainage depression that retains water. It occupies an area of
more than 150,000 square miles. It is located in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China's
far west. Its northern boundary is the Tian Shan mountain range and its southern is the Kunlun
Mountains on the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The Taklamakan Desert dominates much of
the basin. The people living in the area include the Uyghurs, the Tajiks, as well as other Turkic
peoples. Early on, this area was occupied by the Xiongnu peoples, the Huns, the Wusun who lived
in the pasturelands to the northwest of the Tarim, and the Yuexhi who eventually migrated from the
corridors of frontier China into the Persian Empire.
The mummies of the Tarim Basin are one of the great finds of the 20 th century. They are not the byproducts
of mummification methods practiced in Egypt, rather they were buried in an arid
environment and preserved by salty soil and cold winters.
Early explorers and archaeologists of the area include:
Sven Hedin (1865-1952)
Aurel Stein (1862-1943)
Albert von Le Coq (1860-1930)
Paul Pelliot (1878-1945)
Ǖrümchi [pronounced ewe-rum-shi] – also seen as Ürümqi
Ürümchi is the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of
China, in the northwest of the country. Its name means “beautiful pasture” in the Mongolian
language of the Dzungar people. With an urban population of over 2.3 million people, it is by far the
largest city on China's vast Western interior. Since the 1990s Ürümqi has become gradually
developed economically and now serves as a regional transport and commercial center.
Although Ǖrümchi, situated near the northern route of the Silk Road, is a relatively young city, in AD
648, Emperor Taizong (Tang Dynasty), established the town of Luntai, just a few miles away as a seat
of local government to collect taxes from the caravans along the northern route of the Silk Road.
Little was heard of the region following the Tang Dynasty until the conquest of Dzungaria area in
1755 under the Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. The Dzungar people were deliberately
exterminated in a brutal campaign of ethnic genocide. One writer, Wei Yuan, described the resulting
desolation in what is now northern Xinjiang as: "an empty plain for a thousand li, with no trace of
man." After 1759, state farms were established, "especially in the vicinity of Urumchi, where there
was fertile, well-watered land and few people.".
In 1763, during the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor named the expanded town of Luntai
"Dihua," meaning "to enlighten." In 1884, the Guangxu Emperor established Xinjiang as a Province,
with Dihua as its capital.
The city was the site of major rioting in July 2009 due to conflicts between Han and Uyghur ethnic
groups in which nearly 200 people were left dead; most of the victims were Han-Chinese. Reports of
extensive police retaliation against the Uyghur minority have circulated ever since, despite the
Chinese government having shut down access to emails and overseas phone calls.
Bowers Museum Education Department
March 2010
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