Black Water City is located in the depths of Badain Jaran Desert and is inaccessible. There are many strange and mysterious legends about the Black Water City, and few people know its exact location. Until the beginning of the 20th century, a Russian explorer, kozlov, discovered the ruins of the Black Water City and led the expedition team to explore it for three times.
The first time was at 1908. Kozlov led a team into the ruins of the ancient city, digging and planing, and excavated a large number of Buddhist cultural relics, including various classics, coins, statues, etc., all weighing 100 kilograms. Kozlov sent all unearthed cultural relics back to Russia for study by the Royal Geographical Society of Russia.
The second time, a year later, the Royal Russian Geographical Society discovered that these cultural relics were the remains of the ancient Xixia Dynasty in China, and they were valuable, so kozlov was once again sent back to the Black Water City. This time, kozlov made a bigger discovery. The expedition found a stupa in the west of Heishui City. There are all kinds of precious Buddha statues and hundreds of Buddhist paintings and scrolls in the stupa. These cultural relics are of great value to the study of the ancient Xixia dynasty and have been transported to Russia.
The third time in 1926, kozlov and his expedition discovered many cultural relics such as decorations, porcelain and pottery, coins and murals, which were also stolen.
Kozlov's great success in the west caused a great sensation. After kozlov, multinational expeditions went to Black Water City one after another, but most of them returned empty-handed, because basically valuable cultural relics were taken away by Russia. This is a great regret of archaeological research in China.