PASSAGE TO HISTORY

Hexi Corridor connected China to the world and provided a route for culture and commerce, Zhao Xu and Ma Jingna report.

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This is a passageway that has connected China to the world for more than two millennia — a corridor where the wind howls and sand dances year-round, where travelers and their camels once trudged, laden with bundles of silk and sacred scrolls. It was an artery of coveted treasures and the teachings of Buddhism, a crossroads for dreamers, adventurers and believers — souls drawn by an innate yearning for the unknown. Today, it remains a path of wonder, traversed by those who stand in awe of nature's power to sculpt the land and humanity's indomitable desire to shape history.

This passageway is known as the Hexi Corridor — a corridor in name and essence, flanked by the towering Qilian Mountains to the south and the unyielding deserts to the north. Falling entirely within the borders of modern-day Gansu province in northwestern China, it winds through a chain of oases, fragile yet vital, their very existence owing to the mountains whose name, Qilian, means "heaven" and whose soaring peaks produce the life-giving meltwater that sustains this arid land.