Current Time in Aral, China

Aral, written in Chinese as Alaer, stands on the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, at the point where the Aksu and Yarkand rivers join to form the Tarim, the longest inland river in the country. The name comes from a Turkic word meaning island, a reference to the strips of land between the braided desert channels. Around three hundred thousand people live in the city and the farming settlements that surround it.

Aral is a young city with an unusual administrative status. It was formally established in 2002 and is run by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a state organisation descended from army units that were demobilised in the 1950s and set to reclaiming land. Those soldiers and the settlers who followed dug canals from the Tarim, planted shelter belts of poplar and elm against the sand, and turned desert into one of the most productive irrigated districts in western China. The city that grew from those farms is laid out on a generous grid, with wide tree-lined avenues, blocks of new housing and an air of deliberate planning.

Agriculture defines the economy. The oasis produces long-staple cotton of high quality, along with red jujubes, walnuts, apples, pears and grapes that are dried and shipped across China. Textile spinning and weaving, food processing, fertiliser and building materials make up the industrial base, and the region has attracted investment as a cotton and textile cluster.

The environment is extreme. Rainfall is measured in a few tens of millimetres a year, summers are scorching, winters cold, and spring brings dust storms off the desert. That harshness produces remarkable scenery. Along the Tarim grow ancient forests of the desert poplar, a tree able to survive on saline groundwater, which turn brilliant gold for a few weeks each October and draw photographers from across the country. Dunes, dry riverbeds and the ruins of watchtowers and settlements along the old southern Silk Road lie within reach, and the Tarim River scenic areas offer rafting and camping.

Tarim University, founded in 1958 to train agricultural specialists for the reclaimed lands, is based in the city and is the main centre of higher education and agricultural research in the southern Tarim basin, working on cotton breeding, desert control and horticulture.

Modern transport has ended the isolation of the oasis. An airport opened in recent years, a railway links Aral to Aksu and the main Xinjiang network, and expressways cross the desert northward and along the basin rim. Ürümqi is a long journey away, but daily flights make it a short one.

Aral offers a rare view of how irrigation, planning and persistence have created a modern city on the edge of one of the world's great sand deserts.