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Role play and discussion on the land and sea trade routes of the Orient. |
The Silk Road
(- threads, 12 posts)
 Dunhuang
Social Thread
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For any and all discussion about this portion of the Silk Road, which split here into the northern and southern forks.
From Xi'an, the road wended north-westward until it came to Dunhuang (of Singing Sands fame) at the furthest western end of the Great Wall and the beginning the the vast deserts that comprise most of modern China.
China is roughly oblong with lush farming along the Eastern seaboard and an enormous wasteland to the west of that. This desert is ringed with huge mountains: to the North, the Tien Shan or Heavenly Mountains; to the south by the Kun Lun Shan that comprise the northern end of the Tibetan plateau; and to the West by the Pamirs which are on Afghanistan's eastern border.
At Dunhuang, the Silk Road forked and took two routes, one north and one south along the inner edge of the Tien Shan and Kun Lun Shan. Both trails first skirted the the Gobi Desert and then the dreaded Taklimakan.
