Turpan and Gaochang

Before we even had a chance to get off the bus to Turpan, a stranger accosted sat down in the midst of us and started showing Michael a pamphlet with all the things he could drive us around to see. While we were becoming somewhat more familiar with the general aggressive marketing (when we arrived in our taxis at the bus station earlier that morning, guys opened our taxi doors and started trying to make deals to drive us to Turpan), we hadn't expected it before we even got off the bus.

Although we were not taking him up on any offers, he still took it upon himself to show us how to walk to our hotel (all of 5 minutes away). We didn't think we wanted to go with this guy, so one of group members spoke up and asked, "Why are you walking with us? We have not said that we will go with you?"
We were not so into the subtle approach.

In the end, we were able to strike a deal with him and he supplied a driver and a vehicle for the entire afternoon. So apparently his marketing strategy works.

Our first stop was Gaochang which are the ruins of an old garrison town. The outer city was once 3.4 miles long and seems huge as you walk inside. While you can still get a sense of its size, it is hard to see much of anything else there because it has been worn away with time. Michael's anthropological background came out as he noticed and commented upon building layouts, materials, and methods. He was able to draw everyone in the group into the fascinating game of, 'What do you imagine this was used for?'

At the other end of the ruins is a partially restored Buddhist temple. We spent quite a bit of time checking out the rest of the ruins before arriving at that end of the city, so we decided to take a donkey cart ride back to the gate to save our feet.

These ruins have been around a long time but they seemed to have become a popular tourist sight only recently and already you can see the accelerated wear taking place.

The last picture shows the donkey cart road through the town and you can clearly see the wheel ruts from the cart. In some places, the ruts were almost a foot deep.

You can also find all sorts of signs of recent human use in the ruins - like carving in what little plaster is left on some walls and garbage protected by the few standing walls. This lack of care of historical artifacts and sights is true throughout most of China.

The city of Gaochang is located within the Flaming Mountains which were shown in the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". When these desert mountains are lit by the afternoon sun, they look as if they are (shockingly) aflame... or so we heard. We drove through the Flaming Mountains on one of Turpan's few overcast day so the mountains mostly looked like sand and stone.

We drove on from Gaochang to nearby town that was suppose to have an interesting restaurant with local wines and grapes available for weary travelers. We were all pretty excited as Chinese wine is universally terrible and the thought of some decent Chinese was intriquing. The bad news is that the information was a little too outdated to be useful and alas there was no resturant to be found. The good news was that we finally managed to communicate with our driver to the point that he understood we were looking for some experiences off the beaten path. He obligingly started driving us through some small neighborhoods and stopping the van so we could walk around, explore some backyard vineyards, and have a really wonderful afternoon. But that story if for our next blog.