Xuanquan was an official relay station near Tianshui Jing in Mogao Town, east of Dunhuang’s urban center. A 2025 provincial heritage account describes its use from around the first century BCE into the second century CE, for postal transport and receiving envoys, officials and foreign visitors. The station served movement through the corridor: messages, people and supplies passed through a system of stops rather than an unbroken road. Its earthen compounds and service spaces belonged to that practical network.
From the journal
An official relay station in the corridor
At Xuanquan, an excavated Han-period posthouse preserves the remains of official travel, lodging and administration along the Hexi route.
In the same city · Jiuquan ↗A station for journeys and dispatches
Documents from an excavated site
Archaeological work at Xuanquan recovered a large body of Han slips and other objects. These records make the station unusually vivid: administration and travel can be studied through written traces alongside the layout of the compound. The site is recognized as a component of the Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an–Tianshan Corridor, inscribed in 2014. Its significance rests in evidence for how long-distance movement was organized and recorded, not simply in the survival of walls.
The spring behind the name
The name Xuanquan refers to a spring associated with water emerging from the nearby cliffs. Local explanatory material links the place name with the sweet-water well in the area. That water helps make sense of a station placed in a dry corridor: people and animals needed reliable stopping points. At Xuanquan, the archaeological remains are low earthen structures and document-rich deposits, while the surrounding terrain includes the ravine and water source that gave the station its name. The setting connects administrative history to the basic geography of travel.