Biandukou () is a pass with an elevation of over 3,500 m in the

Altyn-Tagh Altyn-Tagh (also Altun Mountains, Altun Shan; , Pinyin: ''A'erjin Shan'', Wade–Giles: ''A-erh-chin Shan;'' Uyghur'':ئالتۇن تاغ'') is a mountain range in Northwestern China that separates the Eastern Tarim Basin from the Tibetan Plate ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It links

Minle County Minle County () is a county in Gansu province of the People's Republic of China, bordering Qinghai province to the south. It is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Zhangye. Its postal code is 734500, and in 1999 its populatio ...

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

in the north and

Qilian County Qilian County () is a county of Qinghai, Qinghai Province, China. The Haibei Qilian Airport is located in the county. Climate Geographical Qilian County covers an area of 15,700 square kilometers, accounting for 2.05% of the total area of ...

Qinghai Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest po ...

in the south. Biandukou has been an important pass in history. It could have been through here that the Chinese Buddhist traveler

Faxian Faxian (法顯 ; 337 CE – c. 422 CE), also referred to as Fa-Hien, Fa-hsien and Sehi, was a Chinese Buddhist monk and translator who traveled by foot from China to India to acquire Buddhist texts. Starting his arduous journey about age 60, h ...

arrived in

Zhangye Zhangye (), formerly romanized as Changyeh or known as Kanchow, is a prefecture-level city in central Gansu Province in the People's Republic of China. It borders Inner Mongolia on the north and Qinghai on the south. Its central district is Ga ...

, Gansu in the end of the 4th century AD. During the

Sui dynasty The Sui dynasty (, ) was a short-lived imperial dynasty of China that lasted from 581 to 618. The Sui unified the Northern and Southern dynasties, thus ending the long period of division following the fall of the Western Jin dynasty, and layi ...

, it was known as Dadoubagu ().

Emperor Yang of Sui Emperor Yang of Sui (隋煬帝, 569 – 11 April 618), personal name Yang Guang (), alternative name Ying (), Xianbei name Amo (), also known as Emperor Ming of Sui () during the brief reign of his grandson Yang Tong, was the second emperor of ...

went to Zhangye in 609 AD through Dadoubagu, where many people died from cold weather.

References

Mountain passes of China Landforms of Gansu Landforms of Qinghai {{Gansu-geo-stub