The small and economically insignificant town of TURPAN ( Tulufan to the Chinese) has in recent years turned itself into one of the major tourist destinations of Xinjiang. Credit for this must go largely to the local residents, who have not only covered all the main streets and walkways of the town with vine trellises, converting them into delightful shady green tunnels (partly for the benefit of tourists), but have also managed to retain a relatively easy-going manner even in the heady economic climate of modern China. In summer the weather is reputedly the hottest in China - the dry heat is so soporific that there is little call to do anything but sleep or sip cool drinks in outdoor cafés with other tourists. This may not be what you came to China for, but quite a lot of people appreciate it by the time they reach Turpan. To ease the consciences of the indolents, there are in addition a number of ruined cities and Buddhist caves in the countryside around the city, testimony to its past role as an important oasis on the Silk Road. Bear in mind that Turpan is very much a summer resort, however; if you come out of season (Nov-March), you will find it chilly and rather miserable.

 

Turpan is also an agricultural oasis, famed above all for grapes . Today, virtually every household in the town has a hand in the grape business, both in cultivating the vines, and in drying the grapes at the end of the season. Every house has its own ventilated brick barn, usually on the roof, the best spot for catching the hot desiccating winds that sweep through the area. Turpan is located in a depression eighty metres below sea level, which accounts for its extreme climate - well above 40°C in summer, well below freezing in winter.

Today, Turpan is a largely Uigur-populated area, and, in Chinese terms, an obscure backwater, but it has not always been so. At the time of the Han dynasty, the Turpan oasis was a crucial point along the northern Silk Road, and the cities of Jiaohe , and later Gaochang (both of whose ruins can be visited from Turpan), were important and wealthy centres of power. From the ninth to the thirteenth century, a rich intellectual and artistic culture developed in Gaochang, resulting from a fusion between the original Indo-European inhabitants and the (pre-Islamic) Uigurs. It was not until the fourteenth century that the Uigurs of Turpan converted to Islam.