Хятадын анхны эзэн хааны байгуулсан эртний замын дагуу хааны ордны үлдэгдэл илэрлээ

At the edge of a sea of dunes in northern China, a low earthen mound had been hiding something for centuries. Archaeologists knew the mound was there. It had been entered into official heritage records, assigned to the Han Dynasty and largely left alone.

But the dynasty was wrong.

Buried beneath the sand, researchers now suspect, are the remains of an imperial palace built for travelers using one of ancient China’s most ambitious roads. The road was commissioned by the country’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang.

A Forgotten Mound in the Mu Us Desert

The site, known as Huangtuliang, takes its name from a small village in Balasu township, Yuyang district, Yulin, in Shaanxi province. It lies on the southeastern fringe of the Mu Us Desert, where farmland gives way to rolling dunes, close to the headwaters of a tributary of the Wuding River.

During a national cultural heritage survey, Huangtuliang was recorded as a Han Dynasty site. There was little on the surface to suggest anything grander. Sand covers much of the area, and a small temple and courtyard occupy most of the mound’s summit, obscuring the outlines of whatever once stood there.

The investigation took a different turn in August 2026.

Archaeologists from the Yulin Institute of Archaeology were searching for a missing section of an ancient road across the desert. Drawing on earlier survey work in neighboring Hengshan district, they worked out where the route was likely to pass and began examining sites along that corridor. Huangtuliang happened to stand directly in its path.

On November 9 and 10, the institute announced that the mound was probably the remains of a Qin-era detached palace, an imperial stopping place built beside the road.

Roof Tiles Fit for an Emperor

The main site occupies nearly 10,000 square meters (about 2.5 acres), though the spread of construction debris is much larger, covering approximately 150,000 square meters (37 acres). Bricks and roof tiles are scattered across the ground. Ordinary pottery, however, is strikingly scarce, according to China News Service.

Much of the material collected by the archaeologists belongs unmistakably to the Qin period.

Among the finds are hollow bricks, square bricks bearing geometric and studded designs, cord-marked roofing tiles and circular eave tiles decorated with cloud patterns. Three roughly worked column bases remain at the site, some circular, others square. The fragments offer a picture of a substantial building, though much of its original layout is still concealed beneath the sand.

One type of roof ornament stood out.

The team recovered fragments of large eave tiles bearing kui dragons, a stylized dragon motif traditionally depicted with one leg. Such tiles have so far been identified only at Qin palaces, imperial rest palaces and buildings associated with the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. Their presence at Huangtuliang suggests that the structure occupied an exceptionally high position in the Qin architectural hierarchy.

Drilling supplied another piece of evidence: a buried rammed-earth platform, formed from layers of tightly compacted soil, a construction method used for major buildings. Residents also recalled finding drainage channels and a well when digging soil at the site in earlier years.

Not a Fort, Not a Town

An elevated foundation, drainage facilities and expensive roofing materials point toward a prestigious structure. What the archaeologists did not find matters almost as much. The scarcity of everyday pottery suggests that Huangtuliang was not continuously occupied by a large resident population, making a military garrison, county administrative center or ordinary settlement less likely.

Instead, the evidence favors a building used intermittently, for a particular purpose.

From the architectural materials and historical accounts, researchers place its construction sometime between 215 BC, the 32nd year of Qin Shi Huang’s reign, and the fall of the Qin Dynasty only a few years afterward. The palace appears to have had a relatively brief working life.

Its modest footprint is also revealing. The researchers believe the size reflects both the building’s position within the imperial hierarchy and the sheer difficulty of constructing anything substantial in this landscape.

Building materials were not conveniently at hand.

The nearest exposed deposits of loess, the fine yellowish soil used to create rammed-earth foundations, lie roughly 3 kilometers (2 miles) southwest of Huangtuliang. Soil needed for construction would have had to be brought from that distance, across sandy ground.

Hunting for the Road Itself

The palace’s likely purpose brings the investigation back to the Qin Straight Road, or Zhidao, one of the great infrastructure projects of China’s first imperial dynasty. The Han historian Sima Qian wrote that construction began in 212 BC, when Qin Shi Huang ordered General Meng Tian to create a direct road linking Yunyang, near the Qin heartland in present-day Shaanxi, with Jiuyuan, near modern Baotou in Inner Mongolia.

Running for more than 700 kilometers (about 435 miles), the route was intended to speed the movement of troops toward the northern frontier and the Great Wall.

Finding its course today is another matter. Centuries of landscape change have erased much of the road from view, particularly where it crosses the shifting sands of the Mu Us Desert. In December 2025, archaeologists working in Yulin identified a 13-kilometer stretch beyond the desert, but following the route into the dunes has proved considerably harder.

At Huangtuliang, the team may finally have found something to follow.

Roughly 80 meters (260 feet) north of the palace mound, an exposed cut through a dune reveals a section almost 60 meters (nearly 200 feet) wide. Along its base lies a level deposit of brown clay fill that appears to have been deliberately laid down. The same material extends across the area northwest of the site.

Another possible section emerged near Baichengtai village, 7.5 kilometers (4.7 miles) southwest of Huangtuliang. Archaeologists followed a broken line of substantial loess and red-clay fill for nearly 800 meters (half a mile), finding several Qin and Han pottery fragments scattered over the surface and a small Qin-Han site at the northern end.

Both deposits fall along the predicted course of the Straight Road. Their dimensions and construction characteristics are similar enough that the researchers suspect they could represent the road bed itself.

Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to our free newsletter for engaging stories, exclusive content, and the latest news.