Another few kilometers to the east, just below a watch tower on a promontory, is an even more impressive Han-era building. Here is some of Stein's description:

...I moved camp to the large ruin, which when we first passed it...had struck me by its palace-like dimensions...My reconnaissances has since shown that htis huge structure...with a much-decayed watch-tower rising on the plateau edge immediately south of it, lay actually on the line of the Limes as well as on the old caravan route. An expanse of lakelets and impassable marsh land , some four miles long and two across, stretched on its north side and rendered defence by a wall quite unnecessary...

The building with its enclosing walls presented the imposing length of over 550 feet...It consisted mainly of three big halls, each 139 feet long and 48.5 feet wide...Their walls, five and a half feet thick and constructed of solid layers of stamped clay about three inches in thickness, rose on a terrace of hard clay which had been cut away to within ten feet or so of the outer wall faces to form a natural base. As the latter stood fully fifteen feet above the low-lying ground occupied by the enclosure, and as the walls of the halls...still rose in parts to twenty-five feet or more, the height of the whole ruin was impressive... (Stein, II, pp. 127-128)

Stein puzzled some over the purpose of the building, which seems to have lacked windows and had watch towers at the four corners. The evidence of the wooden strips he discovered, with their Chinese inscriptions dating from as early as 52 BCE, led him to the the conclusion it was a "supply-store" for this area of the fortifications:

One among [the documents] is an issue order for grain signed by three officiallys specifically named as in charge of the granary. Another is still more significant, because it is an acknowledgement for a large consignment of corn [read: grain] delivered from a specified area of cultivation in the Tun-huang oasis, evidently as its contribution towards commissariat requirements of the border. Elsewhere, again, we find an order for twenty suits of a particular sort of clothing such as a military magazine might store.

The advantages of an advanced base of supply on this desert border, both for the troops which guarded it and for the expeditions, missions, and caravans which passed along it, must be obvious to any one familiar with the difficulties of moving large bodies of men over such ground...In those days [of the Han] the great magazine must have seen busy scenes, and quarters for guards and administrative personnel, no doubt, existed near it.... (Stein, II, p. 130)

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