The next stop is Turpan 吐鲁番.
It rarely rains in Turpan. We were told it rains about 1 or 2 times a year here. By a stroke of luck, it was raining when we arrived at Turpan.
The dry weather here is great for grapes, and there are grapevines all over the city.
And what do the people do for water? After all, there isn't much rain here, and people need water to survive. Grapes need water to grow too. Well, they have a series of underground wells, a qanat system know as karez in the Uyghur language. It is called 坎儿井 (kan'er jing) in Chinese. You can read more about the Turpan water system at Wikipedia.
Turpan has a large Uyghur (维吾尔族 Weiwu'er in Chinese) population, who are Muslims. So it is no surprise that there are mosques in the city.
The most famous one will probably be the Emin Minaret and Mosque.
Near Turpan, there are many historical sites as well. We visited the site of the Jiaohe ruins, which used to be an important city along the Silk Road.
Another historical site is the ancient city of Gaochang 高昌, an oasis city along the Silk Road near Turpan similarly in ruins now. Some of the buildings are very well preserved, as you can see from the photo below.
We also visited the Flaming Mountains, a place made famous by the Chinese novel "A Journey to the West" aka 《西游记》.
While you won't see the Monkey King here, there is a statue to mark its link to the novel.
And while at the Flaming Mountains, we took the opportunity to visit the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves 柏孜克里千佛洞.
Next stop, Urumqi 乌鲁木齐.
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