Mingsha Shan :: Dunhuang :: Gansu Province :: People's Republic of China

In 1998 I bicycled across China, from Shanghai to Beijing then Xian and continued Westward on the Silk Road to Kashgar on the Pakistan border. Nearly half the total distance was spent in the Western Deserts and nearly all of it was "gobi" - the Chinese word for the arid 'wasteland' that is a mixture of sand and rock and scrub vegetation. I saw very few sand dunes.

This photograph is of a massive dune at Dunhuang, a few hundred feet tall. The Chinese call the dunes here Mingsha Shan, The Mountains of Singing Sand. The scale is difficult to discern but the dune curls to the right perhaps 200 meters away from where I stood to take the photograph.

This photograph is also available through my Grey Matter Media Gallery as framed prints & posters and on greeting cards & postcards, calendars, t-shirts and other gifts & novelties.