Shapotou 沙坡头

Overview

Chinese Name: 沙坡头
English Name: Shapotou; Shapotou National Nature Reserve
Location: Ningxia
Type: Ancient culture and art
Rating Level: AAAAA (5A)

Brief Introduction

Shapotou National Nature Reserve in Ningxia is located on the southeast edge of Tengger Desert 腾格里沙漠 in the west of Zhongwei City中卫市, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region 宁夏回族自治区. Starting from Erdaoshagou 二道沙沟 south forest protection house in the East, Toudaodun头道墩 in the west, Tengger Desert in the north, and Yellow River in the south, it is about 38 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide, with an altitude of 1300-1500 meters, with a total area of 4599.3 hectares, accounting for 3% of the total land area of Zhongwei city.

Shapotou is now a national AAAAA tourist attraction, a national desert ecological nature reserve, one of the top 500 units of global environmental protection, 20 famous landscapes for national fitness, and a special award for scientific and technological progress.

Shapotou combines the desert, the Yellow River, the mountains, and the oasis. It has magnificent scenery in the northwest and beautiful scenery in the south of the Yangtze River. There is the largest natural sand sliding ground in China, the “first rope of the Yellow River in the world” across the Yellow River, the ancient waterwheel represented by the Yellow River culture, the sheepskin raft, the oldest transport vehicle on the Yellow River, and the mirage rarely seen in the desert. You can ride camels across the Tengger Desert and surf in the sand sea by off-road vehicles.

The main protected objects of Shapotou are the natural desert landscape, natural sandy vegetation, scientific research achievements in sand control, wild animals, the ancient Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty, Shapotou bell, and other cultural landscapes and natural complexes. At the 2018 Northwest China Tourism Marketing Conference and tourism equipment exhibition, it was shortlisted in the list of “100 wonders of Northwest China”. It was rated as “50 scenic spots of the Yellow River in China” at the 2018 China Yellow River Tourism Conference.

What are worth visiting and seeing？

Geography

The terrain of the reserve is high in the northwest and low in the southeast, which slopes from northwest to Southeast. The sand dunes are vertical and horizontal, with ups and downs, covering the red sandstone of the second or third period, high flood plain terrace, and alluvial-proluvial plain. The desert in the reserve is formed by the Tengger Desert moving forward. The thickness of the sand layer is generally 20-30m, and the maximum is 50m. Most of them are ridge-shaped dunes, crescent-shaped dune chains, crescent-shaped dunes, and lattice-shaped crescent-shaped dunes, which constitute a typical aeolian sand landform.

Pingyao XianYa 县衙 is located in the center of Pingyao Ancient City, was built in the Northern Wei Dynasty, fixed in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the earliest preserved building was built in the sixth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1346), with a history of more than 600 years. As one of the four ancient Xianya that have been preserved in China, Pingyao Xianya is also the largest Xianya in China. The entire building complex of the county is orderly, staggered, rationally structured, and an organic whole.

The Pingyao city wall was built in the western King Xuan of Zhou (827 BC ~ 782 BC) as a rammed earth city wall. Ming Hongwu rebuilt it in the third year (1370) and changed the rammed earth city wall into a brick and stone city wall.

The quadrangle 四合院 is a kind of traditional Chinese courtyard building, its pattern is a courtyard built on four sides of the house, usually composed of the main room, the east and west wing rooms, and the inverted seat room, from the four sides of the courtyard enclosed in the middle, so the name of the courtyard.

Shanxi is one of the “nine frontier provinces” and has had frequent wars since ancient times. Large merchants pay special attention to the safety of their homes. Defensiveness is emphasized in Shanxi residences: the closed appearance of the courtyard shows the vigilance of the outside world, and the outer walls of the Courtyard of Shanxi Residential Buildings are all gray clear-water brick walls, with simple and single colors, and the appearance is high and closed. But the interior is beautifully gorgeous. Although the houses are unified but not monotonous, rich but not messy, and delicate but not trivial.

Folklore activities

The dry boat 旱船 is made of bamboo strips, wooden strips, and colored silk woven into a colorful boat, surrounded by satin, and the surface is covered with wooden strips and satin. The performance is accompanied by drumming music, and one person plays a woman in a boat, using a ribbon to tie the boat on the shoulder, and the false foot is coiled in the “boat” as if walking in a boat. The other man, dressed as a boatman, paddled in front of him with an oar.

The Taige 抬阁 is to fix the iron rod to the upper end of the lifting pole, decorate the surrounding of the pole with various props such as lotus flowers and colorful clouds, and then fix three or four male and female children who play various dramatic characters and mythological stories on the iron pole, carried by adult men, and perform in the march.