"If current situation continues, people of the younger generation won't be able to see the Loulan ruins 20 years later."

The statement was made by Yang Lian, a research fellow from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. As one of the scientists who discovered the Loulan ruins, Yang is worried about the future of the ancient Loulan Kingdom site in a recent interview given to the China Business News.

He says that apart from environmental deterioration, human activities mostly done by tourists have caused much of the damage to the ruins.

The expert expresses his greatest concern about the environmental deterioration in the grassland in Lop Nor, where many ancient relics have vanished at a fast speed. At the same time, tourists visiting Lop Nor continue to damage the relics mercilessly.

According to Yang, natural environment change is one of the destructive factors to Loulan.

"There used to be a small Buddhist house in Loulan. However, last August when I visited the site again, the house was nowhere to be seen because rain had pulled it down," he said.

Human activities should also be attributed to the damage of the ruins.

In the 1980s, some Chinese scholars re-discovered a site in the northern bank of the Kongque River and scientists later named the site Sun Graveyard. When Professor Yang visited the site again in a recent visit to Xinjiang, he couldn't believe his eyes. He saw that tourists had pulled the pillars so that few pillars are left there now.
 
(Xinhua News Agency November 9, 2006)