Marco Polo made it his final stop and Samuel Taylor Coleridge immortalised it in Western minds as the ultimate pleasure palace. Today Xanadu, or Shàng-Dū , is little more than a vast prairie with vague remnants of once mighty walls, but in days of yore it was indeed one of the most wonderful places on Earth. Conceived by Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis and the first Yuan emperor, Shàngdū’s lifespan as the summer capital was relatively brief.
Construction of the city started in 1252 and lasted four years. Yet its lifespan was relatively brief, being overrun by Ming forces in 1369.
Listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site in June 2012, Shàngdū actually consisted of three distinct cities: the outer city, the imperial city and the palace city. All that is visible now are the outer and inner walls. From the ticket yurt, it’s about 1.5km to the outer walls (a golf buggy will take you for ¥10 or rent a bicycle for ¥10). From there, you can walk another 500m to the inner ramparts. Paths through the wildflower-covered grassland that has swallowed up the city offer the chance for pleasant strolls and reflective musings on the vagaries of history.
Although Shàngdū signifies distant wonders in the Western imagination, in truth it’s not that isolated (275km northwest of Běijīng). But it does feel remote, partly because of the huge empty prairie it sits in, and also because getting here requires some effort. Hohhot's bus station has buses to Lánqí (蓝旗, ¥132, six to seven hours, 7am and 2pm). From Lánqí it’s about a 20km taxi ride (¥150 return) to Shàngdū. Buses return to Hohhot at 7am and 12.30pm.
