Turpan is not China. China wants it to be China, but Turpan is Uighurstan. There is a dialectic between the image of a Han Chinese, scampering from the heat and punishing sun to the confines of a concrete block of apartments, and the image of the Uighur man, clothed in loose linen shirt and pants and woven skull cap, strolling amongst the yellow rocky hills to his home constructed of the same earth as the surrounds, designed perfectly to maintain what coolness basic design can afford. Turpan is a place that the Han try to conquer, but where the very landscape quietly revolts against their presence.
I arrived in the evening at around ten Beijing time. I knew that Turpan would be the sort of tourist trap in which a lone traveller such as myself would inevitably become ensnared. The tout who rode me on his motorcycle to a hotel out of town managed to acquire a tidy sum out of me for the tour the next day of a couple of tourist sites, but a sum I budgeted for.
Turpan is famous for it’s heat – it has the highest recorded temperature in China. It is situated in a region of deserts, and is in a depression known as the Turpan Basin, one of the lowest points in the world. It is an oasis in the midst of a very dry barren land of rocky hills and sandy plains. It has none of the spectacular grandeur of the mountains bordering the Tibetan plateau. It has none of the civilised history, restored for visitors, of other cities in China. Turpan has that sparse, barren aura of a place that has seen the comings and goings of the world, and for a very long time. Xinjiang is famous, like much of Central Asia, for it’s position as a major crossroads for civilisations throughout history. It boasts an impressive diversity of minority groups, from lamist Tibetans to Muslim Uighur to mountain Kazakh families to even remnant Russian populations. The region has the feel of a place where the Han Chinese of the current empire are just another peoples to lay claim to a land that watches civilisations wax and wane, and will always be there, barren and unforgiving.
A place like Tuyoq, a village on the edge of Turpan, has the stereotypical feel of a place that is ancient. The village is nestled in a small valley that emerges from the hills known as the Flaming Mountains. The houses and streets are built around a network of streams, small canals and sluice gates that direct the precious water falling from the hills. Fields of grape vines, for which Turpan is famous, a well as pagodas and arches covered in vines and knarled old trees provide welcome shade and green the valley amongst the desolate rocky mounds around the village. The builidings are mostly built of mud constructions: yellow earthy structures melding into the landscape. The pale green and white tiles of the mosque are the only structure to stand out looking across Tuyoq. Despite it being a supposed local pilgramage site due to the tomb of the first Muslim Uighur, the town has the pace of a quiet shuffle, walking through the village locals could be seen resting from the hot midday sun in the cool of their homes. There would be the occasional bent old woman casually but skilfully tending the vines. The history comes as you stroll along the boardwalk further into the valley. Up a set of steps, perched against the slope of a hill in a secluded part of the dell, a series of structures appear to be carved into the hillside. These are home to a series of caves consisting of Buddha images. Nearly completely destroyed by the ravages not only of decay, but the indignance of various conquering cultures, these fragments of ancient frescoes reveal the true ancient history of the now fervently Muslim Uighur – they were originally Buddhist.
It is easy to forget, as a young person whose existence is, even in the context of the human lifecycle, currently still a fleeting spec and has been spent in a politically stable continent that has experienced little conflict, that the current world order is a new concept, and one in constant flux. Such sites as Tuyoq and the Jiaohe ruins remind you that even the supposed epic histories and infallibility of entire faiths are but temporary shifts in human social consciousness. The Jiaohe ruins are the remains of an entire trading city originally devoutly Buddhist: sanctums and monastery buildings and lines of stupas, now crumbling earthen walls, reveal this past. Travelling through such an ethnically diverse region and also coming along the edge of a region where events are taking place that are truly in the spotlight of international current affairs, you realise how fragile the current modes of domination and submission amongst world powers and bordering cultures are.
So despite the tourist orientation of a town that the Han are trying to subtly permeate, Turpan is worth a visit to remind you that boundaries on a map do not necessarily represent the fluid borders of culture and consciousness that are the true indications of separations, and conjunctions, of humanity.
