Advertisement
Published: August 24th 2011
Edit Blog Post
To continue with my dramatic week in Xinjiang Province -
Once the hostel in Urumqi was sorted I hopped in a taxi to go across town to the bus station. I had heard that Urumqi is just another big Chinese city, so it’s best to get out of it asap. I wanted the next bus to the Uyghur town of Turpan. One had just left and the bus station staff were trying to advise me as to my options. The next thing the bus station manager arrived on the scene. He is obviously not Chinese, so I presumed that he is Uyghur. He demonstrated that he had very good English and said that it was his responsibility to sort out Western visitors. I asked him where he learned his good English and he said that last year the company management realised the need for someone to speak English and deal with tourists. He volunteered to study and for nine months he studied under Canadian TEFL teachers. I thought he was really good for such a novice. I was to learn in the next few days that Uyghur people find it much easier to learn English than the Han Chinese do.
The bus ride from Urumqi to Turpan was very nice, even if the scenery was generally the T…desert rimmed by rocky hills. The bulk of the Uyghur population lives in strings of oases, including Turpan and Kashgar, scattered along the old routes of the Silk Road. Turpan is an oasis town in a deep depression well below sea level (the second biggest depression in the world) and is a welcome relief from the intensity of the surrounding desert. It has a long history as a significant centre of trade and civilisation along the northern Silk Road. After driving for a few hours across barren desert it’s nice to see the tree-lined streets and gardens cultivated beside homes.
At the bus station in Turpan I was approached by local drivers so I asked one of them if he knew the driver, Ahmed, whose name I’d been given by the Australian woman I met on Lake Baikal, Siberia. I was amazed that he rang Ahmed the said to me, “He’ll be here soon.” He could so easily have said, “He’s not available today” and been hired by me. Sure enough, Ahmed arrived soon after. His name indicated that he is Uyghur and
the first thing he did was take me to a large Uyghur restaurant where we had “polo”, which must be a version of “pilau”. It is the traditional food of rice and mutton pieces with some vegetables and coloured with saffron. I was fascinated to see the restaurant staff dressed in the traditional costume and the décor which was so different from anything I’ve seen in China.
Ahmed then took me for a drive outside Turpan to a small Uyghur village at the foot of a mountain where I could see their style of housing, farming, etc. The main crop for the region is grapes and the local wine is supposed to be of good quality. Or at least it was, until the Muslim Uyghur farmers decided it was not right to produce wine when they themselves think alcohol is bad. Now they use the grapes for sultanas which are a rich harvest for them. There were fields of cotton and potatoes interspersed with long rows of the other major cash crop, melons, which were covered in paper to screen them from the baking sun. This is one of the hottest regions in China and it was HOT out there!
karez-irrigated fields
potatoes and cotton are dominant crops I could see some small Buddha caves like in Datong, in the mountainside. They have been closed off to the public, pending restoration of the area with a view to tourism. There’s also a lagoon by the village and they are building a large traditional outdoor structure where the people of the village can meet and pray.
The main tourist attraction outside Turpan is Flaming Mountain that glows red when the sun is high at midday. Tuyu Gully is supposed to be a magical place at the foot of the mountain. With great geographical and ecological contrasts, it is home to several ancient cultures, including Buddhism and Islam. I guess we were there at the wrong time because ti wasn’t very exciting, but as we drove by there were a number of tourists admiring it.
What I really enjoyed was the Karez Well centre devoted to karez¸ the ancient Uyghur irrigation and water conservation works that made this part of the desert region fertile for grapes, melons and cotton. The system is 2,000 years old and this area was famous for its cotton harvests in Roman times. The gist of karez is that they drilled holes in slopes so that
melting snow water and rainwater would flow down the holes. These were vertical 10-meter ¬deep, man-sized holes and the 100-meter-long collecting tunnel for the rainwater was man-sized too. Some of these holes went as deep as the groundwater table flowing with water from the glacier at the foot of the mountain. All the water flowed into underground channels that could be 5 – 20km long. The construction process was incredibly labour-intensive. It must have taken a team of men ages to drill one hole, even with the assistance of an ox, and there were many holes dotted over each hillside. The largest karez consisted of 1784 lines. The tunnels ran down to where it was collected in a reservoir. The reservoir led to channels throughout the fields where they spread the rainwater out onto the crops. Of course they could block the exit from the reservoir so the water didn’t flow until it was needed. This led to the creation of oases. In some villages karez still serves as the main source of drinking water and irrigation. I was fascinated and stayed at the centre for ages, going down into the tunnels and all.
It was late in the afternoon
Bezeklik caves
undergoing restoration to preserve Buddha statues when we went to a desert valley 8km west of Turpan to see the ancient ruins of the town of Jiaohe. They sit on a 30-metre high plateau, surrounded by deep, fertile valleys. It used to be the state capital in the Han Dynasty 206BC – 220AD. It later came under Uyghur rule in the 9thCen. with the gradual dominance of the Uyghurs and their conversion to Islam. Jiaohe was later abandoned during the Yuan dynasty. There are still high clay city walls inside of which the streets are clearly delineated. The mud-brick walls of many buildings are still standing. I wish I had more time to explore the ruins – the watchtowers, temples, and wells - but it was getting late and I didn’t want to miss the last bus back to Urumqi.
Ahmed was great throughout my visit to Turpan and, since there wasn’t enough time for dinner in a restaurant, he stopped at a roadside stall with a traditional Uyghur clay oven, like a live furnace, where they were cooking chicken quarters and whole fish. They wrapped up some fresh-baked chicken for me so I could eat it on the bus. At the station Ahmed bought
lagoon beside Bezeklik Caves
supplies water to the nearby Uyghur village my bus ticket and made sure I was on the last bus before he left. The bus had a time and temperature screen and at 8:00pm it was 40C! Remember, I said that I hadn’t slept the night before, so I dozed on and off during the 3-hour bus ride back to Urumqi. You may have just eaten so I won’t nauseate you with a description of some of the “toilet” pit-stops we visited en route. By the time I got to the Youth Hostel it was midnight. I was exhausted. Luckily my flight to Kashgar the next day was at noon so I didn’t have an early start.
Ever onward!
Sheila
Advertisement
Tot: 0.102s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 67; dbt: 0.0608s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
chelin miller
non-member comment
Fascinating!
Looking forward to the next chapter, I can't wait.