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Loulan – A Lost Kingdom in Taklamakan. In the south of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China lies the country’s largest inland basin, the Tarim Basin. It has been the home of 36 independent city states. However, as the Taklamakan Desert inexorably expanded, all the kingdoms were gradually swallowed by the shifting sand dunes, which can reach a height of 250 meters. Loulan was one of the kingdoms that lost this battle with nature. 
Founded in the second century BC, Loulan was a sprawling kingdom of 360 thousand square kilometers whose domain bordered Dunhuang in the east and Niya city in the west. It had a population of over 14,000 people，and as a key traffic hub on the ancient Silk Road, it served as an important trading center between China and the West. Loulan’s prosperity lasted for some 500 years, then, in the 5th century, it suddenly vanished from all recorded history without a trace. 
Loulan was rediscovered by Swedish explorer Sven Hedin in 1899, who excavated some houses and found a wooden Kharosthi tablet and many Chinese manuscripts from the later Han dynasty (third century A.D.).

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