May 10 Turpan to Urumqi

We headed for the sister-ruined city' Jiaohe, which was established in the second century BC by the Chinese but from the 9th to the 15th

centuries it was ruled by Uyghur kings with only light fealty to China. It seems likely that the city was burned by the same group in the 1400's that destroyed its sister Idikut. It is naturally fortified by rivers on both sides that make it an effective island, and had plentiful water wells on the island.

Next we drove to see an exhibit explaining how the Kariz underground water supply system works.  These are similar to the felaj systems in Oman. Here the source of the water is from melting snow coming down underground from the mountains, and the individual kariz were privately owned, so the owner could sell rights to have an "eye" or open well in a person's home.

After clean water was distributed this way to village houses, the remainder would be stored in a pond which then irrigated the fields.

arial view from model at museum

Building and maintaining these underground waterways was a major enterprise and was key to the prosperity and very existence of Turpan. There were over 5,000 kilometers of underground channels. Today only about half of the 500 kariz are still functional due to the water source going lower than the existing kariz distribution system.

We next visited the Emin minaret, built in 1777 by the son of the Uyghur king Emin Khoja in a central Asian rather than Chinese style, with elaborate patterns made with simple bricks.

all decoration done with brick placement

We had lunch at a local restaurant - this one was a challenge because they had no forks, so we had to eat with chopsticks! Long slippery noodles, though tasty, were difficult to slurp up!  David finally was given rice and allowed to eat with a ceramic soup spoon to avoid hunger.

The journey from Turpan to Urumqi took about 2 1/2 hours on a modern 4-lane toll road, crossing mostly dry desert with harsh mountains on both sides and occasional snow-capped peaks in the distance.  We passed wind farms with hundreds of windmills,

 finally reaching Urumqi at 7 PM and checking in ti the central International Trade Hotel.  We had quite an opulent room on the 18th floor overlooking this regional capital city with a 4 million population, about 20% Uyghur and mostly Han Chinese who have come recently.