Visitors climb the steps to take a close look at the rock art. [Photo by Cui Jia/China Daily]

Tourism puts ancient drawings in public eye but leaves them exposed to danger

No, sexually explicit pictures did not begin with Marilyn Monroe in Playboy magazine in Chicago in 1953. Three thousand years ago, in the far northwestern reaches of China, men and women were getting their rocks off in what you can call either fertility rituals or sex orgies. Graphic depictions of their deeds, carved in stone, can be seen even today.

The rock art, in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, includes engravings showing as many as 300 men and women in mass flagrante delicto more than 1,000 years before that expression was even conceived.

Such images that old are rare not only in China but in the world, and these ones are far off the beaten track, so anyone who wants to see them needs to be willing to travel about three hours on a winding mountain road from the county seat of Hutubi.

The site, which has been known to the outside world for less than 30 years, is in Kangjia Shimenzi, in Tianshan Mountains in Hutubi county, west of the regional capital, Urumqi. The message of the depictions is clear, says Wang Binghua, former head of Xinjiang Institute of Relics and Archaeology and among the first experts to study the art: It is an expression of the desire for life and a form of religious worship aimed at securing prosperity for future generations, he says.

Wang says he first heard about the carvings from a local resident in 1987. The name Shimenzi means stone doors, referring to mountains on two sides of a long valley that, from a distance, seem to serve as its towering entrance.

To reach the rock art on one side of the valley entails reaching the foot of a red mountain and then climbing 15 meters. Once there, the hardy trekker will be rewarded with the sight of human figures in many sizes that bear clear facial features.

The tallest figure is about two meters and the smallest 20 centimeters. They were all carved on a flat surface of the mountain and a few meters above a natural platform which can be used as a viewing deck. This platform is also believed to be where a ceremony to pray for fertility took place.

Many of the male figures have exaggerated penises, as long as half their body height, and some are shown copulating with the female figures, with others dancing around them.

Wang says that judging by the facial features of the people shown, there are two distinct groups. Those with relatively wide faces resemble Mongolians today and the others, with deep eye sockets and high nasal bridges, resemble Europeans.

The 300 figures covering an area 14 meters by 9 meters were carved onto the cliff at various times, so the rock art site may have been a regular gathering point where the ancient tribes held religious ceremonies.

Rock art can give an insight into the way ancient people thought, says Wang Jianping, founder and president of the China Rock Art Academy in Inner Mongolia, but to be able to gain that insight you obviously need to know how to decode the messages.