Ancient Andier City

　　Introduction          Ancient Andier City is located on the eastern bank of the old Andier Riverbed, about 40–50 kilometers north of today’s Andier Pasture. Locals refer to the ancient city as Kaiximukule.

　　      The ancient city is a ruin of a town from the Tang Dynasty. It is circular in shape, with a ground plan resembling a collar, and has a diameter of about 130 meters. The city walls were built with mud bricks. The southern part is relatively well-preserved, reaching a height of over 6 meters, with the base of the wall being more than 9 meters thick. The gate is located on the south side—it is an opening where the earthen wall extends outward, with a roughly 1.65-meter-high adobe room on the left side of the gateway passage, likely used as a guardhouse.

　　      Near the ancient city, there is a towering stupa that is round on top and square at the base, with a diameter of about 5 meters and a height roughly equal to its diameter. Within the city, paper documents inscribed in Brahmi script, Chinese, and Tibetan, as well as some Chinese inscriptions, have been unearthed, along with fragments of murals, woodblock paintings, silk fabrics, cotton cloth, coins, and a number of Buddhist artworks.

　　 Hotan, Xinjiang