Current Time in Turpan, China

Turpan lies in the east of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in north-western China, in a remarkable geological hollow known as the Turpan Depression. Part of the basin sinks to more than one hundred and fifty metres below sea level, one of the lowest places on earth, and the surrounding desert and bare mountains trap heat so effectively that summer temperatures regularly exceed forty-five degrees. Chinese tradition calls it the land of fire, yet meltwater from the Tian Shan mountains has made this furnace one of the most productive oases in Asia.

The city has a population of around three hundred thousand, the majority of them Uygurs, alongside Han, Hui and other communities. Agriculture is the foundation of local life, and Turpan is renowned across China for its grapes, grown on trellises that shade whole villages and dried into seedless raisins in ventilated brick drying houses that stand on every hillside. Melons, cotton and vegetables are also grown, while wind and solar power, oil and gas, and tourism form the modern economy.

The oasis was a vital station on the Silk Road for two thousand years and the seat of successive kingdoms that mixed Chinese, Iranian, Indian and Turkic cultures. The city of Jiaohe, built on a natural island of rock between two river channels, was the capital of the Jushi kingdom and remains one of the best preserved ancient earthen cities in the world, its streets, temples and houses carved directly out of the ground. Gaochang, another great walled city nearby, flourished under the Uygur Kingdom of Qocho, when Buddhism, Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity all had communities here. Islam became dominant from the fourteenth century, and the region entered the Qing empire in the eighteenth.

Turpan is exceptionally rich in monuments, and Jiaohe and Gaochang are inscribed on the World Heritage list as part of the Silk Roads. The Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves, cut into a cliff above a river gorge, retain fragments of vivid murals, and the Astana tombs have yielded silk, documents and painted figurines that revealed much about daily life along the trade routes. The Emin Minaret, built in 1777, is a tapering tower of patterned sunbaked brick beside a mosque, unlike anything else in China. The Flaming Mountains, ridged red sandstone hills that shimmer in the heat, appear in the classic novel Journey to the West. Grape Valley offers cool shade, vine tunnels and Uygur hospitality.

Perhaps the greatest achievement here is the karez, a system of underground irrigation channels dug by hand over centuries to carry mountain water beneath the desert without evaporation, with thousands of kilometres of tunnels still in use. Uygur music, dance, carpets, doppa caps and a cuisine of lamb kebabs, hand-pulled noodles and nan bread are central to daily life.

A high-speed railway, expressways and an airport connect Turpan with Urumqi and the rest of China. Colleges and vocational schools serve the prefecture.

Turpan is famous as a Silk Road oasis of extraordinary heat, ancient cities and sweet grapes.