MAY 1st HOLIDAY, Part SIX: Around Turpan/Tulufan /吐鲁番

Debarking our 19-hour train from Lanzhou at approximately 5:30am, we (and by "we" I mean Dan) haggled with some drivers at the station to arrange for a car to drive us around for the day to see the sights in and around Turpan/Tulufan (Turpan is the Uighur name of the city, Tulufan is the Roman spelling of its Chinese equivalent).

It was still early in the morning when we got to the ruins of Jiaohe (交河故城), but it was already scorching hot.

The remarkably well preserved city was inhabited from the 1st century BC until it was sacked by the Mongols in the 13th century AD.

Jiaohe was built on what used to be an island between two rivers. The cliffs on either side provided a natural defense. Except against Mongols.

The old riverbeds are now prime agricultural land. Above, you can see the mud brick structures where grapes, Tulufan's most famous crop, become sweet delicious raisins.

Driving around Tulufan. We were pleased to see beautiful Arabic script popping up everywhere all of a sudden...

But there were still reminders that we were still in China.

I didn't really get any good shots of the Flaming Mountains from the road, but here's a little taste:

The mountains continue below, rising above the little grape-producing town of Tuyoq/Tuyugou/吐峪沟.

Tuyoq has been an important pilgrimage site for Muslims for centuries. The tomb of the first Uighur Muslim is located in the hillside above the village (though closed to non-muslims), but there didn't seem to be much happening in the mosque at the center of the town (you can see the minarets and dome on the left of the picture below).

It was a very picturesque town, though hardly anyone spoke Chinese so we had a hard time asking questions about the area and its history. I was ok with not harassing the locals for once, but Dan was very frustrated.

Outside of the village proper we came across a cemetery,

and lots more of the grape-drying structures.

In the other direction you could walk along the riverbed for a little ways and then up the hill to a series of Buddhist caves dating back to the 3rd century AD, before Islam came to the region.

The caves that were open had beautiful old paintings, but like the Bezelik Caves of a Thousand Buddhas we had visited earlier in the day, the vast majority of the painted Buddhas had had their faces gouged out by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately photography was not allowed.

We were able to communicate a little with the ethnically Uighur guard who told Dan he had served in the Chinese army. Although he was Muslim, a religion that famously forbids images of God, his job was to guard these 1,700 year old Buddhist images. A more complicated combination of national-religious affiliations doesn't readily come to mind.

It just makes you -- you know, think deep thoughts and stuff.

We had dinner at the night market in Tulufan which had a fine view of a spectacular musical fountain involving not only neon lights, soaring streams of water and blasting music, but also the occasional burst of flame. Fantastic.

These kids seemed to think so too.