The first decade of this century can be called the "Age of Exploration". In 1909, American explorer Peary conquered the North Pole, and in 1911, the Norwegian Amundsen expedition and British explorer Scott competed for the Antarctic. When the 20th century Two major events with the most distinctive characteristics of the times in the early days. At the same time, the inaccessible Central Asian desert and the remote and mysterious Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have become another battlefield for explorers, geographers and archaeologists to compete.

In September 1899, Sven Hedin made his second expedition to Taklimakan. This time he was determined to open a road from Central Asia to Tibet. In late March 1900, Hedin and his party entered the Lobu Wasteland in the lower reaches of the Kongque River. While crossing a desert, they discovered that the Uighur guide Yu Deke had accidentally lost his shovel. Shovels were their only tool for digging water in the desert, and water was vital to the lives of Sven Hedin's expedition. He had to ask the guide to go back along the original path to find a shovel. Soon Yu Deke retrieved the shovel from last night's camp. Not only that, he accidentally discovered an ancient ruins near the camp and brought back several fragments of wood carvings in the Hellenistic art style of Central Asia. Sven Hedin was extremely excited after watching it, because he will be the first person to uncover the mystery of the ancient civilization in the Taklimakan Desert.

In March 1901, Sven Hedin returned to Robe Heath. They not only investigated the ancient ruins where Yu Deke discovered Greek wood carvings last year, but also discovered many ancient beacon towers in the southeastern line of this ancient site. This beacon tunnel line extends to an ancient city that was half submerged by wind and sand on the west bank of Lop Nur. This is the famous Loulan City.

Sven Hedin conducted extensive excavations in Loulan City and unearthed hundreds of fragments of Chinese wooden slips from the Wei and Jin Dynasties, scattered Loulan local Hu language documents, a large number of coins from the Han, Wei, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and Oriental silk fragments, fragments of Western woolen fabrics, and fragments of wood carvings in the style of Central Asian Hellenistic art (or "Gandhara art"). In the 1970s, the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute also found several fragments of Chinese wooden slips here, which were leftovers from Western expeditions.