Now we enter the real desert. But before we start the trip we need to buy a new memory card for Stephan's camera. Nobody could expect that many motives here in Xinjiang. Ürümqi is the capital of the province, so it shouldn't be a big act to buy the memory card. Unfortunately the shops open at 11 am Beijing time, so we had to wait some time, strolling around and found some nice drain covers. With penguins on it????
Not only drain covers, also other people we saw which were waiting like us, chatting. Never alone but always well protected....
In the big shopping mall we found some memory cards but the price was really ridiculous expensive. So we went to the next electronic market and 5 minutes later we got it.
First stop on the trip was the wind power station outside of Ürümqi. It's the biggest one in whole Asia and provides enough power for whole Ürümqi with 3.5 Million inhabitants and industry. Some of the wind mills are made in Europe, the rest is original imitation made in China.
The ride down to Turpan goes through more and more paltry mountains. By the way, it's really going down, the lowest point in Turpan is 150m under sea level. That's the reason that it's really dry and hot there. But the AC of our car was working properly and we had plenty of water with us.
We went directly to one of the highlights of this trip: the Emin Minaret with the mosque. It's located some Kilometers out of Turpan in a small oasis. The Minaret and the mosque were build in 1770 a.d. by Sultan Suleiman as memorial to his father Emin.
With a height of 44 meters and a diameter of 14 meters it's not exactly the typical uygurian architecture. It's also not covered with tiles, the surface are simple clay bricks. This kind of architecture is usually typical for the afghan architecture and quite unique in China.
For sure there is also a grave yard.
Typically for Turpan there are also grape houses for drying the grapes, a lot of wine yards and some gardens.
In the mosque it feels really quite and cool. The darkness is a very welcome contrast to the bright light outside. Inside the mosque looks like many others we visited in the last days.
The Emin Minaret was the reason why we ended up in Xinjiang province. Stephan once saw a picture of it and decided, we need to go there. But there are some more reasons to visit her, e.g. the Karez.
A Karez is a underground water system, build around 2000 years ago, digged by hand in the ground. It delivers the water from the mountains in the desert where it can be ladled from dwells. 2000 years is the age the chinese government officially announced. There are hints that some of the Karez are already 5000 years old, but this is older than the chinese dynasties.....
The overall length of the 1784 Karez is 5.272 km. 172.367 dwells are digged to the canals to get the water out - in sum 848.000.000 liters per year. Really impressive if you keep in mind that the Karez are hand digged with very simple tools. Nest to the Karez is, surprise surprise, another dry house for grapes.
Next stop: ancient city of Jiaohe. This city is located on top of a 30m rock in the west of Turpan. Again there are only chinese time tables what means that the first occurrence of the city is dated to the time of the sixteen kingdoms, so to say 300 b.c. as you know. This was the time when the town was occupied by the chinese.
The city was home for around 20.000 people which is pretty much for that time for a city in the middle of the desert. It's still big nowadays without a car, walking through it.
Around the city were a lot of fights and war but it was only once occupied from a quite famous guy also known in Europe: Genghis Khan.After that the city never came back to it's normal life and with a big fire in the 13th century it was abandoned completely.
Through the city is a valley which is used by some farmers for farming. Just so i the middle of the nowhere. This is really surreal. Also some Buddhas we found in the old temple, Buddhas without heads. They were removed some when ago from Muslims, because there is no picture of Allah. Hmm, I don't think Buddha is Allah, but who knows.
We were waiting for the sunset to get some nice pictures, but sadly the clouds messed it up.
The town center of Turpan is really a big contrast to the rest of the city. There are not many than chinese people living here but somehow the usual chinese light littering arrived. It's a pity but it looks like Turpan will be one of the tourist cities in the near future.
The next day we'll have a busy schedule: flaming mountains, Buddha caves, Disney Land, dunes and so on, but this is as always a completely different story........
street lights...
...in all colors. China arrived at Turpan......
