Besides the walls, little remains today, save the occasional shepherd with his flock, framed by a range of undulating hills, with stone piles on the high spots. After the Yuan dynasty collapsed in 1368, Xanadu dropped off the map. The next recorded visit by a foreigner occurred in 1691 when a French Jesuit accompanying an imperial hunting trip passed through the ruins. The physician to the British legation in Beijing chanced on the site in 1872 during a botanical expedition. He described a state of complete ruin and desolation, apart from a 20-foot stone arch over the southern gate that has since disappeared.
Local knowledge is even scarcer.
But the isolation may not last for long. In Beijing, Yang Lin, director of the Aerial Surveying and Remote Sensing Team at the National Museum, carried out detailed aerial surveys in 1997. Along with a group of Mongolian archaeologists and historians, he is now pushing efforts to open up Xanadu to tourists in order to provide funding for excavations on the site. In addition, local authorities have finally cottoned on to the potential revenues to be had from Xanadu, and a road leading from the dirt highway to the pleasure-dome site is under construction. The biggest hotel in Zhenglan has built a dozen concrete yurts near Xanadu, and the Western Inner Mongolia Tourist Authority is cranking up its publicity machine for the site.