Haixi 海西Hǎixī

About Haixi

Haixi, 'west of the lake', is mostly the Qaidam Basin, a hyperarid basin of salt lakes, deserts and mining towns, home to Han, Hui, Tibetan and Mongol communities. Chaka Salt Lake, whose still water is nicknamed the 'Mirror of the Sky', draws the crowds, while the railway and a highway to Lhasa cross the salt crust of Qarhan Salt Lake. Golmud, founded in 1954 on the Qinghai–Tibet Highway, has the General's Building museum, with Emerald Lake, Wusute Water Yadan and the Reshui Tombs farther out.

Featured places in Haixi

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  Chaka Salt Lake 茶卡盐湖

  A salt flat so still it turns into a mirror for the sky

  Best time: May–Oct · Time needed: Half a day · 4A scenic area

Listed sites in Haixi

7 sites in Haixi are on the official lists. Those with a page of their own link to it; the rest open as cards on the map.

• Chaka Yihao Salt Lake 茶卡壹号·盐湖 4A scenic area · on the map
  Chaka Yihao, formerly Tiankong Yihao ('Sky Number One') until its renaming in July 2022, is the second tourist area of Chaka Salt Lake, on the eastern part of the lake; it opened in July 2019 after nearly a year of trial operation.
• Emerald Lake, Da Qaidam 翡翠湖 4A scenic area · on the map
  Emerald Lake is a group of former mining pools in the Da Qaidam salt lake, an industrial legacy of the area's mineral extraction, where brine of differing mineral content shows colours from pale blue to deep green.
• General's Building (Qinghai–Tibet Highway Headquarters), Golmud 将军楼 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
  The General's Building is a two-storey brick building from 1956 that served as the office and home of Mu Shengzhong, who commanded construction of the Qinghai–Tibet Highway (completed to Lhasa in December 1954); it was the first two-storey building in Golmud.
• Kunlun Mountain Tourist Area, Golmud 格尔木昆仑旅游区 4A scenic area · on the map
  The Kunlun tourist area is Golmud's name for a string of Kunlun Mountains sights south of the city along the Qinghai–Tibet road rather than a single gated park; Golmud's promotion lists Kunlun Spring and Wuji Longfeng Palace among them.
• Qarhan Salt Lake 察尔汗盐湖 4A scenic area
  Qarhan is a vast salt flat in the southern Qaidam Basin, much of it worked for potash and other salts; the Golmud government gives its area as 5,856 km².
• Wusute Water Yadan 乌素特水上雅丹 4A scenic area · on the map
  Wusute is a shallow saline lake in the Taijinar basin of the western Qaidam Basin, where eroded clay ridges (yardangs) rise out of the water among salt flats and desert.
• Reshui Tombs 热水墓群 National heritage site · on the map
  Reshui is a large cemetery of the Tuyuhun kingdom under Tibetan Empire rule (7th–8th centuries) on both banks of the Chahanwusu River, with hundreds of earth-covered mounds on the grassland.

On the map

Open Haixi on the illustrated map to see its outline, its places and listed sites together, and to add them to a trip.

Learn more

• Wikipedia
• Official website
• Wikipedia (Chinese)