Vladimir Nabokov The Gift: "On occasion we would pass the day in isolated settlements consisting of two or three homesteads and a ruined temple..." (p.120)

Grigorii Grum-Grzhimailo (1899), on the way from Hami to Anxi: „Kufi is a small oasis, half covered with drift sands that have come from the northeast; the soil is predominantly salt… The homesteads, of which there are three, are quite miserable, small and dirty… In addition to these pitiful buildings,… there is a small picket with a few soldiers and a ruined [lamaist] temple with three giant idols lacking heads and members as these have been knocked off by the [Muslim] insurgents. In Kufi we spent a day to take the bearings of this important point in the desert” (p.130)