Alan and I have an unenviable reputation of being people of extremes. It is probably true. For this trip it was extremes in terms of altitude. We had travelled from our sea level home village of Crowdy Head on the mid north coast of New South Wales, Australia to the dizzy high altitudes of Tibet and now we were heading down to Turpan, the second lowest depression (next to the Dead Sea in Israel) in the world at 154m below sea level. It must have been quite a challenge for our poor red blood corpuscles to cope with such a descent after trying their hardest to scavenge oxygen at heights well over 5,000m in Tibet and Qinghai.

The oasis city of Turpan (known also by the Chinese name of Tulufan) lies some 150 kilometers south-east of Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang Province. It suffers a harsh, desert climate with long and very hot summers (one of the hottest places on earth with temperatures recorded at 49.6 degrees C) and long and moderately cold winters. However, it is the arid dry climate together with its extensive ancient system of irrigation which are its secrets to a flourishing fruit producing region, famous for its grapes and large variety of fresh and dried fruits.

We arrived at Daheyan, the nearest railway station to Turpan, in the early hours of the morning tired from our overnight sleeper trip from Dunhuang. In the pitch darkness of a pre-dawn morning, we clamored amongst the crowds for a taxi to Turpan city some 58 kilometers south. We always seem to be lost and totally out of control at transport hubs in China, and this one was no different. Like Liuyuan Station, it was a confused and frenetic frenzy of travellers all trying to find taxis to Turpan. We were obvious targets and out of the darkness a taxi driver grabbed our bags and ran toward his taxi. We ran after him, hopped in his car and were relieved to be soon racing along the highway to Turpan.  
 
We shared our taxi with a very friendly young Chinese couple who along with our obliging driver thoroughly enjoyed a seemingly hilarious Chinese movie which was viewed on a small screen mounted on the taxi’s sun visor. Travelling along the freeway at some 140 kilometers an hour with our driver's eyes glued to the DVD screen and roaring with laughter (our co-passengers didn't seem to be at all perturbed) - was somewhat disconcerting.  

But perhaps not quite as disconcerting as our introduction to our hotel location in Turpan.

We dropped off our Chinese couple in the most squalid looking area and our taxi then wove around woeful, poverty stricken housing and rubbish filled back lanes to the rear entrance of our hotel. Our hearts were beginning to sink. But like so often during our travels in China, we could not take too much notice of the outskirts of any township or city. On our arrival we were greatly relieved to see that the Oasis Hotel looked fine. Our relief however was short lived. We found that there was no record of our booking and being so early, it was some three hours before we could contact our agent in Beijing. We were directed to a miserable, dark, dank windowless room with stained carpet and no facilities. We were more than disappointed. Apart from the continual "stuff ups" on this trip, we had paid for the best quality accommodation we could. Let down once again by our agent, we decided to fill in time by having breakfast.

Breakfast could have been even more depressing if it were not so (for us) so mildly humourous. The hotel - apart from our room - appeared to be very pleasant and our breakfast was fine. As what happens when you travel, things were looking not so grim and we were beginning to feel positive again.

A loudly spoken and very unhappy looking tourist with a strong American accent sat near us in the dining area, her whole arm sheathed in a huge lump of crudely wrapped plaster. She was quite a character and immediately poured out her tale of woe. A Chinese born American citizen, she had finally returned to China after some forty years. Unfortunately, on her first day she had fallen on black ice during a tour to the nearby Flaming Mountain and had badly broken her right arm. She was furious with herself and furious with a China she no longer knew. She had spent the night in a sub-standard hospital and for the time hated China, hated the hotel, hated the food and was desperate to return to Houston where she said she ran a large chain of restaurants - "With GOOD food, not this Chinese rubbish".

In fact, she was very entertaining and told a great story. We admired her strength of spirit as even in her anger and disappointment she could see the more humourous side of her predicament. We felt sorry for her and suddenly our own situation didn't seem quite so bad after all. But it was not a good introduction to Turpan...

It was our time to be angry and a curt call to our agent in Beijing prompted a response that we were delighted with. We were quickly escorted by hotel management to a lovely two-room suite with double doors opening onto a small balcony that overlooked the city of Turpan. It was bizarre to be gazing at Islamic styled buildings and mosques and reminding ourselves that we were indeed still in China. Travelling is certainly is a roller coaster ride and we were once again on the UP!

We found Turpan to be a fascinating and delightful city - a true melting pot of east and west. There were so many multi-ethnic faces - Uighur (70% of the population are Uighur), Turkic, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Tajik and numerous other ethnic minorities, as well as Han Chinese. Turpan like Dunhuang, is essentially a multi-cultural city with a very strong Muslim influence, and is dominated by mosques, markets and numerous street stalls. The streets are wide and many are now pedestrian zones lined with attractive grape covered trellises - no doubt to provide shade and shelter from the scorching desert summers. We found the city lay back and relaxed, with a real feeling of pride. 

Our tiredness and disappointment evaporated and we decided to walk the 3 kilometers to the Emin Minaret on the south-eastern side of Turpan city. Lonely Planet guide says that half the pleasure of visiting the mosque is the fun in getting there. And this is quite right. The city streets soon gave way to dusty lanes with ubiquitous donkey carts and numerous rattling dried grape threshing machines. We were amused to see the dried fruit pouring directly onto the street gutters, dangerously close to plops of donkey manure.

It was autumn and the buff coloured trees and mud brick houses mirrored their dusty surrounds, contrasting brightly against a brilliant azure sky. Most houses had small courtyards surrounded by trees with open bench type beds covered with brightly patterned rugs. House doors were all ajar and although it was cool when we visited, it was plainly obvious that Turpan could be an oven in the hot season. 

We did not see any tourists at all on our walk and at first this was a bit disconcerting. After a few kilometers we were well into the farming areas with fewer and fewer local people around. On your own a tourist's mind can conjure up the many unfortunate traveller stories resulting from wandering off down back lanes of unfamiliar places. But like all other places we had travelled through in China, we had never found ourselves in an uncomfortable situation. In fact quite the reverse. The local farming people were inquisitive, polite and outwardly friendly. One donkey cart driver and his wife stopped to offer us a lift and laughed good humouredly when we declined.  
 
Emin Minaret is an Afghan-style mosque that was founded in the year 1777 by Emin Hoja, a Turpan general. It is definitely worth seeing with its buff stone conical minaret rising spectacularly from an attractive grape farm setting and a clear azure sky. We did not enter the mosque. We were just happy to take in the sights and wander back through the relaxed rural lanes weaving their way around tall mud brick grape drying towers. 
 
On returning to Turpan, we of course had to replenish our food and drink supplies. This is quite an enjoyable ritual for us and our shopping experiences in Turpan were a lot of fun. Alan befriended a lovely homely Uighur woman at a street bread stall and she went to no end of trouble to show us she was finding us the very best bread she had. And it was memorably delicious. And most importantly, at a local store we found some fresh butter - a pleasant change that it came from cows and not yaks. In all honesty we thought we were buying cheese. No wonder the shop attendant looked at us curiously when we purchased a kilo of butter. But we were delighted. Fresh bread with whacks of butter, some precious strawberry jam (which I would very rarely eat back home) and some local Turpan red wine was a welcome change for us.

Despite our initial disappointment, our Oasis Hotel turned out to be a very pleasant experience. We were enthralled with the hotel shop silk and wool carpets, and especially delighted to be shown a tiny silk rug with a staggering 12,000 count weave. A collector's item, this magnificent piece of work felt so luxurious you would think it was velum. We were told that it took a team of ten women some twelve years to complete. This they had to do in shifts as the intense fine work is highly detrimental to vision. The sadness of such a beautiful piece of work is that many of the skilled women and girls working on such fine rugs suffer tragically from visual and hand disorders associated with the thousands of hours spent often in poorly lit rooms weaving the finest of these artworks.

The Oasis Hotel restaurant food was good and we enjoyed our stay. Like many occasions when we were enjoying eating on our own, we watched with interest a tour group of around twenty people. It was typical of so many groups we had seen on our travels. They were all horded onto a single long table and no one looked very happy. A particularly attractive woman probably in her late forties was pursued all evening by a leather jacketed greasy haired guy who just would not give up on trying to gain her attention. Another stringy haired fellow did the same. It didn't work. A lonely looking fellow was obviously on the outer with the rest of the tour group and ate miserably on his own. How fortunate were we to be on our own. We may have had some stressful moments with no interpreter or organised transport - but we were pleased not to be part of a tour.

The next day we enjoyed wandering around the city and trying to find the bus station where we had to catch our bus the next day to Urumqi. We were most impressed with a young English backpacker who had to leave her sick boyfriend in Turpan as she needed to travel to Urumqi to extend her visa. She was completely self possessed and was very helpful. We remembered her advice to us following her boyfriend's dire stomach problem "Don't drink the fresh pomegranate juice".

That afternoon we caught a taxi to the famous Jiaohe Ruins, some ten kilometers west of Turpan. The ruins are located on a leaf shaped loess islet plateau, some 300 meters wide and 1.6 kilometers in length, and is situated between two huge canyons of around 20 to 30 meters deep. The name Jiaohe means "rivers meeting" which is entirely appropriate given the complete lack of access the two rivers would have given this islet fortress city. No wonder it is one of the best preserved ancient city ruins in China. In fact Jiaohe is one of the largest (6,500 people once lived here), oldest and best preserved ancient cities in the world. It is thought that the earliest settlers of this area were the Indo-European speaking Tocharians who had populated the Tarim and Turpan Basins no later than 1,800 BC. After a long and fascinating history the site was finally abandoned, possibly because of the lack of available water and the drier and colder climate associated with the Little Ice Age.

Climate change has been with us a very, very long time.....

The visit to Jiaohe was very worthwhile and understandably a major tourist attraction for Turpan.

Note: Photo of "Grape Picker, Xinjiang" was scanned from China Today, Vol. 53, No. 10, October 2004