Dunhuang

See also: Dūnhuáng

English

Alternative forms

• (historical, obsolete): Tunhwang
• Tun-huang, Tunhuang (Wade–Giles)

Etymology

From the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin 敦煌 (Dūnhuáng).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dʊnˈhwæŋ/, /dʊnˈhwɑŋ/

Proper noun

Dunhuang

1. A county-level city in Jiuquan, Gansu, China.
   • 2015, Michael Welland, “Barriers and Corridors, Imports and Exports”, in The Desert: Lands of Lost Borders‎^[2], Reaktion Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 317:

     On the edge of the dunes lies the oasis town of Dunhuang, a key strategic crossroads on the Silk Road as the routes divided to the west to skirt the Taklamakan to the north and south.

   • 2020 May 11, Anna Sherman, “A Poetic Journey Through Western China”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 May 2020‎^[4]:

     “DO YOU BELIEVE the voices are real?”
     My Chinese guide and I were standing in the Yardang National Geopark, on the border between Gansu Province and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in China’s extreme northwest. The nearest town was Dunhuang, 110 miles to the southeast. Enormous yardangs — curving sandstone and mudstone strata carved by winds — towered over us. Others floated on the far horizon.
     “You mean the singing sands?” I asked. On my map, an asterisk marked this strange feature of the Kumtag Desert, three miles from Dunhuang. If you throw yourself down the dunes in that place, the air resonates — sometimes like the lowest note on a cello; sometimes like a crack of thunder.

Derived terms

• Dunhuangology, Dunhuang studies

Translations

county-level city in western China

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 敦煌 (deon¹ wong⁴)

  Mandarin: 敦煌 (zh) (Dūnhuáng)

• French: Dunhuang, Touen-houang
• Indonesian: Dunhuang
• Japanese: 敦煌 (とんこう, tonkō)
• Kazakh: Дұнхуаң (Dūnxuañ)
• Korean: 둔황 (dunhwang)
• Thai: please add this translation if you can
• Vietnamese: Đôn Hoàng

Further reading

• “Dunhuang, pn.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “Dunhuang”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Saul B. Cohen, editor (2008), “Dunhuang”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎^[5], 2nd edition, volume 1, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 1074, columns 1, 2