Xinjiang's Rawak Temple ruins offer window into Silk Road Buddhist heritage

She said the Rawak Temple ruins feature a monastery complex centered around a stupa, a dome-shaped Buddhist shrine or monument. The square monastery has adobe enclosure walls, with the main gate located in the middle of the southern wall. The inverted-bowl stupa is round on top and square at the bottom, built with highly adhesive adobe bricks on a cross-shaped base.

On the inner and outer sides of the enclosure walls are painted clay sculptures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, as well as reliefs and murals. Artifacts such as pottery shards, bronze coins, and fragments of Buddha statues have been discovered in the surrounding area.