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Aydingkol Lake |
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| Aydingkol Lake, 40 kilometers south of the city of Turpan, is the "Bottom of the | ||||||
| Depression". The lake, 40 kilometers in length, 8 kilometers in breadth and 152 | ||||||
| square kilometers in size, is 154.33 meters below the Yellow Sea level, the second | ||||||
| inland
depression next only to the Dead Sea (-391 meters) in the
world. | ||||||
| years ago, Aydingkol Lake was a freshwater lake one thousand times the size of the | ||||||
| present one. But, except for a sheet of very shallow water in its southwest part, | ||||||
| today's Aydingkol Lake is covered only by silvery white salt crystals and salt crusts | ||||||
| shimmering on the dried-up lake bottom. For this reason, the local Uygur people call it "Moonlight Lake". People are easily misled | ||||||
| by the false appearances of the mirages and the "dry" surface of the lake and often get bogged down. Here one can not find fish in | ||||||
| water or birds in the sky, only a hare or a field-mouse scurrying away. Attracted by its peculiar geographical characteristics and | ||||||
| wilderness,
a continuous stream of visitors from all over China and abroad come to the
lake to | ||||||
| Aydingkol Lake is said to contain an amount of salt large enough to supply the one billion people of the country for a whole year. | ||||||
| In addition, there are rich deposits of coal and oil under the lake. A chemical plant, the biggest enterprise in the Turpan area, | ||||||
| has been set up by the lake side, which uses the crystal salt, vitriol and Glauber's salt as its raw materials and sells its products both at home and | ||||||
| abroad. | ||||||
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