The Ruins of Dandanwulike

About 100 kilometers of the Chele county in the desert, the ruins of Dandanwulike was located by Aurel Stein in 1900 and the documents and papers, paintings and the precious relics made the outside learn more about the secret site.

Groups of the old houses are under or half covered by the sand, rows of the pillars and the frames of the rooms still stand in the sand.

The ruin was a Buddhist city at that time. A lot of frescoes of Buddha, Bodhisattva, some of the pictures are even bigger than the real people, a plenty of relief sculpture of figurines, a large quantity of the documents, they are in different languages, not only the Chinese, but Brahmi, Sanskrit, ancient Turkic, but the most unique objects are the engravings. Four of these engravings told the same stories as they were recorded in Journey to the West by the famous monk of the Tang Dynasty, Xuanzang. Take the"Siik Princess’’ for example. It is said that there was no silk in Yutian, in order to obtain the way to raise the cocoon, the king of Yutian asked the Han Emperor to marry one princess. What he wanted the princess to do was to take some cocoon to Yutian. The princess successfully arrived at Yutian with the cocoon hiding in her hair, where was the only safe place to keep the cocoon.

Second piece is"Persian Bodhisattva", this engraving was one Ming King of the Lamasery.

The third piece is "the Picture of Dragon Princess’’. There are two stories about the dragon princess, the first is she came down to the lotus pond to seek her love. the second is, because the dragon has been the totem for thousands years, the local people needed her for guarding the peace and keeping them strong and prosperous forever.

The fourth is"the Wonder Mice". In his book. Xuanzang said, once upon a time, the kingdom of Yutian was invaded by the strong Hun's troop, they set the army at a hill about 80 kilometers away from the kingdom, but the beneath the hill was the territory of a group of the mice. It is said that these mice were as big as the hedgehogs and were led by a silver mouse; he was guarded and followed by the cowers. The whole kingdoms was so frightened by the dreadful news, the kings army was too weak to his enemy, but no body could got any idea to defeat the invasion, in order to guard his land and his people, the king and his offices, his people began to set the sacred altar and burnt incense to the wonder mice for worshiping for their help and escaping from the coming disaster. In the evening, the king mouse sent a dream to the king told the Yutian king that his army needed to be well trained and well organized, both the human beings and the mice would fight the enemy together and would win this fight. Next morning, the king led his readjusted troop towards the enemy's settlement and put the enemy to rout. The enemy had no way to resist the Yutian troop, because the mice broke all the armors, saddles, arrows, clothes and the belts the last night.

After this, the king built a temple to thank the great deeds of the wonder mice and people came here to pray for the good fortune.