HISTORY

Turpan was called Gushi in ancient times. It was the place where the State of South Cheshi and the South Cheshi Court were set up during the Han Dynasty. During the Earlier Liang Dynasty, Gaochang Prefecture and Tiandi County were established here, which were under the Jurisdiction of the Shazhou (Dunhuang) Administrative Division. During the Northern Wei Dynasty, the State of Gaochang was founded here by the ancient Rourna nationality. During the Tang Dynasty, Xichang Prefecture was set here, which was later renamed ¡°Xizhou Prefecture.¡± During the Song Dynasty, it was called ¡°Gaochang Huigu¡± and later ¡°Uygur¡± with a regent as the governor. During the Yuan Dynasty, the Hezhou Administrative Department was established under the jurisdiction of the Bieshibali (Five Cities in Turkic) Executive Chancery. At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the Department of the Director General (Wanhu Daluhuachi) was established to administer Liucheng, Huozhou and Turpan. During the Ming Dynasty,, Liucheng and Huozhou were incorporated into Turpan. During the Qing Dynasty, it was under the Bizhan Executive Minister of Shanshan, which was under the jurisdiction of the Gansu Administrative Department. In 1779, the forty-fourth year of the Qing Emperor Qianlong, it was under the jurisdiction of the Leading Minister of Turpapn. In 1884, the tenth year of the Qing Emperor Guangxu, it was under the jurisdiction of an assistant general of the governor of Anxi Prefecture of Gansu Province. In the twelfth year of Emperor Guangxu, the Turpan Department was established and directly under the governor of Dihua Prefecture. In the second year of the Republic of China (1013), Turpan County was established. After liberation, it was first under the jurisdiction of Dihua prefecture, then directly under the Autonomous Region; it now belongs to the city of Urumqi and Turpan Prefecture.

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POPULATION AND NATIONALITIES

There is a total population of more than 400,000 in Turpan prefecture, of which the Uygur nationality makes up 72.97 percent, the Han 20.29 percent, the Hui 5.88 percent and other nationalities make up the rest. The city of Turpan has a population of 200,000, of which 71.2 percent are Uygurs, 21.3percent Hans and 7.3 percent Huis.

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ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS

Turpan prefecture has one city (Turpan) and two counties (Shanshan and Toksun), under which there are eighteen townships, nine towns, one strain farm and two grape development companies.

The Communist Party Committee of Turpan prefecture and the Administrative Office of the prefecture are located in the city of Turpan.

Undre the jurisdiction of Turpan City, there are three towns (Turpan, Daheyan and Qiaquanhu), seven townships (Yarhu, Aydingkol, Putao Qatekale, Erbao, Sanbao and Shengjin) and one farm (Hongliuhe Horticultural Farm).

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CLIMATE AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Turpan Prefecture is surrounded by the Bogda Mountains in the north, the Karawuquntag Mountains in the west, the Jueluotag Mountains in the south and the Kumtag Mountains in the southeast. The area below sea level in the Turpapn Depression is 4,050 square Kilometers, making up 8.1 percent of the total area of the depression. The area which is 100 meters below sea level is about 2,085 square kilometers, 4.1 percent of the total area of the basin.

The Turpan Depression relies mainly on the Bogda Mountains in the north and the Karawuquntag Mountains in the west for its water supply. These two mountains have favorable conditions for runoff to form, and showers in summer and the snow-melt are the main sources of

the rivers in the Turpan area and also the main sources of underground water in the Turpan Depression. The water volume of the rivers in the depression is not stable because of such sources. Floods mostly occurring in summer account for fifty to eighty percent of the total annual volume. The volume in winter and spring is very small and in order to meet the shortage, numerous underground water channels and small reservoirs have been built and well-irrigation and winter irrigation systems have been developed in recent years. Most of the rivers of the Tianshan hydrographic net seep into the ground after they flow out of the mountains and come out to the surface at the northern foot of the Flaming Mountains, flowing to the plain south of the Flaming Mountains in the form of run off or undercurrent. There are three big lakes: Aydingkol Lake, East Lake and Ila Lake.

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ECONOMY

Turpan Prefecture has 118 industrial enterprises, thirty-nine of which are communally-owned by the people, with more than 10,000 workers and staff members. Coal and chemical production are the mainstays of the prefecture¡¯s industry, but adding to it are machine-building, electric power, building materials, food, textile, tailoring, leather, paper-making, wine-making and canning industries. The prefecture has three thermal power plants and twenty-eight hydropower stations.

The Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway and the Southern Xinjiang Railway, which are the main arteries of communications of Xinjiang, run through the whole region. The highway mileage is about 1,183 kilometers.

Wheat and sorghum are the main grain crops in the Turpan area and the cash crops grown here include cotton, grapes, peanuts, oil-bearing crops, melons, and vegetables. Turpan has 44,667 hectares of cultivated land,, 44,333 hectares of which is irrigated. Of the total sown area, the grain-crop growing area makes up 66.8 percent and the cash-crop growing area 28.8 percent. Grape growing area is 5,933 hectares. The prefecture has 722,000 domestic animals in all, including 630,000 sheep, 20,000 cattle, 10,000 horses and 43,000 donkeys.

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SCIENCE, EDUCATION, CULTURE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Turpan Prefecture has three scientific research institutions, one branch of the Central Television University, three specialized secondary schools, one technical school, forty-two ordinary secondary schools, 173 elementary schools, six kindergartens, eighty-two medical organizations, twenty-nine hospitals of which ten are county-level ones, four sanitation and antiepidemic stations, one medicine inspection center, more than 1,400 hospital beds and 1,300 or more medical personnel. The prefecture has one professional the atrical company, one radio broadcasting station with a medium-wave relay station, two television and relay stations, 149 film projection teams, three cultural centers, three rediffusion stations and two libraries with a total collection of 173,000 books.

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SCENIC SPOTS AND PLACES OF INTEREST

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The Flaming Mountains, lying in the middle of the Turpan Depression and running from east to west, are one of the branch ranges of the Tianshan Mountains and were formed in the orogenic movements of the Himalayas fifty million years ago.

In millions of years, the natural weathering and the numerous folded belts caused by the crustal movements have formed the undulating lie and the crisscross gullies and ravines of the Flaming Mountains. Under the blazing sun, the red rock glows and hot air curls up like smoke as though it were on fire, hence its name. The mountains are ninety-eight kilometers long and nine kilometers wide. The highest peak is forty kilometers east of the city of Turpapn and 831.7 meters above sea level.

The Flaming Mountains are so hot and so dry that ¡°flying birds even a thousand li away dare not to come.¡± Yet, the mountains at the same time act like a giant natural dam of the underground reservoir in the basin.

Situated on the north route of the ancient Silk Road, the Flaming Mountains have many cultural relics and often told ancient tales. The unbelievable topography, unique products, splendid cultural relics and the well-known story of the Monkey King (a leading figure in the Chinese classical novel Journey to the West who extinguished the flame with a magic fan) nave enjoyed great popularity. In recent years, the number of visitors to the mountains has been on the increase and a clamoring to go on the Flaming Mountains tour has arisen.

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Aydingkol Lake, forty kilometers south of the city of Turpan, is the ¡°Bottom of the Depression.¡± The lake, forty kilometers in length, eight 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 (-391m) in the world.

Millions of 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 cannot find fish in water nor birds in the sky, only swarms of flying insets sweeping past and occasionally 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 sightsee, take pictures and explore.

.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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The Ancient City of Gaochang is located near the seat of the ¡°Flaming Mountains¡± Township forty-six kilometers southeast of the city of Turpan. The city walls are high and the crisscrossing streets and the city moat are still visible. The city walls, which are basically intact, divide the city into three parts: the inner city, the outer city and the palace city. The 5.4 kilometer-long wall of the square outer city is 11.5 meters high and 12 meters thick. The wall is built of tamped earth, with some section repaired with adobe. There are two gates on each side of the outer city and the two on the west side with defense enclosures outside the gates are the best preserved.

The inner city, which is located in the center of the outer city, has a three-kilometer long wall, most of the west and the east sections of which are well preserved.

The rectangular palace city is in the northern part of the city of Gaochang and it shares the north wall with the outer city and uses the north wall of the inner city as its south wall. There are still several three to four-meter-high earthen platforms in the palace city where the court of Huigu Gaochang Kingdom was seated.

In the north-central part of the inner city, there is a high terrace on which stands a square pagoda built of adobe called ¡°Khan¡¯s castle¡± which means ¡°Imperial Palace.¡± Somewhat to its west there is a half-underground, two-story structure which was probably the ruins of a palace.

In the southwestern part of the outer city there is a temple which is 130 meters long from east to west, 85 meters wide from south to north and covers an area of 10,000 square meters. The temple consists of an arched gate, courtyard, a lecture hall, a library of sutras, a main hall and the monks¡¯ dormitory. Murals remaining in the main hall are still visible. The renowned Buddkhist monk Xuan Zang of the Tang Dynasty is said to have lectured in the temple for more than one month in the year 628 on his way to India to obtain Buddhist scriptures. In the vicinity of the temple there are also ruins of workshops and market sites. In the southeastern part of the outer city there is a smaller than those in the main hall.

The construction of the city of Gaochang started in the first century B C. First called Gaochangbi, it was a key point on the ancient Silk Road, but after many changes in fortune over a period of 1,300 years, and under the jurisdictions of the Gaochang Prefecture, the Gaochang Kingdom, the Xizhou Prefecture, Huigu Gaochang Kingdom and Huozhou Prefecture, the city was burnt down in wars in the fourteenth century.

It was classified as an important cultural unit protected by the state in 1961.

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The Ancient City of Jiaohe is located in the Yarnaz Valley thirteen kilometers west of Turpan. It was first the capital of the State of South Cheshi, which was one of the thirty-six states in the Western Region. As described in the dynastic history book The Notes on the Western Region, A History of the Han Dynasty ¡°The State of South Cheshi made the city of Jiaohe its capital, which was circled by rivers flowing by the city, hence the name of ¡®Jiaohe¡¯ (the city of joining rivers).¡± Built on a loess plateau thirty meters high, the ancient city is 1,650 meters long and 300 meters wide. The city has no walls and is protected by the natural fortification of the precipitous cliffs.

During the Western Han Dynasty, the central government established ¡°Jiaohebi¡± (an administrative division) and appointed and dispatched a commanding general officer to the Turpan area. During the period for the Northern Wei to the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Jiaohebi was Jiaohe Prefecture under the Jurisdiction of Gaochang Kingdom. The Anxi Military Viceroy¡¯s Office, the highest civil and military administrative organ set up by the Tang government in the Western Region, was first established in the city. Between the middle of the eighth century and the middle of the ninth century, the city was occupied by Tibetans. After that, it was called Jiaohe Prefecture and fell under the jurisdiction of the Huigu Gaochang Kingdom. At the end of the thirteenth century, it was destroyed in Mongolian aristocratic rebellions.

The size of the existing ruins indicates its great prosperity during the Tang Dynasty. There are two city gates. The main southern gate is in ruins. The eastern gate is relatively well-preserved, with visible gateways and mortice openings for mounting the gate lintels. There are hideouts built in the gate for soldiers to defend the city.

The ruins of the buildings, divided basically into temples, civilian dwellings and government offices, have an area of 220,000 square meters. Entering the southern gate, one can see a 10 meter-wide and 350 meter-long main street leading to the biggest Buddhist temple located in the north-central part of the city. The tower in front of the temple gate is still intact, and standing on top of the tower one can enjoy the panorama of the whole city. There are still some more temples in the city. In the southeastern area of the city are located administrative office buildings and official residences which are the only big buildings built of bricks and tiles. According to researchers, the magnificent, half-underground, two-story building is probably the seat of Anxi¡¯s Military Viceroy¡¯s Office during the Tang Dynasty.

The architectural style of the ancient city of Jiaohe differs from that of the city of Gaochang. Here in Jiaohe, courtyards are pits dug in the ground, dwellings are caves opened into the earth and walls are built of tamped earth. Houses are two-storied without windows and doors on the side facing streets and courtyard gates are hidden in deep lanes. The architectural style also features some typical elements of the Tang Dynasty. Visitors to the city can still walk along the streets and go through the halls into the charming inner rooms.

The ancient city of Jiaohe was classified as an important cultural unit protected by the state in 1961.

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The Bizaklik Thousand-Buddha Caves, forty-eight kilometers northeast of the Turpan urban area, are located in the Flaming Mountains¡¯ Mutou Valley. They were called the Ningrong Grottoes in the Tang Dynasty. There are seventy-seven numbered grottoes, about forty of which still have murals in them. The group of grottoes in Bizaklik, with a total of 1,200 square meters of murals, has the most grottoes, most diversified architectural styles and the richest mural content in the Turpan area. The oldest grottoes were hewn in the period of Quhsi Dynasty in the thirteenth century, it was an important Buddhist gathering place; its most prosperous period was under the reign of the Xizhou Huigu government, which built the royal temple of the King of Huigu on this site. Most of the existing grottoes were extended or reconstructed during the Huigu period.

Even today, one can still see on the remaining Buddhist murals the features of the King and Queen of Huigu and people of different status, as well as scenes of the lives of ancient Uygur people. Inscriptions in the ancient Huigu, Chinese and Brahmi languages and history of Xinjiang¡¯s various nationalities, and Uygur in particular.

The murals depicting ¡°Buddhist disciples wailing in mourning¡± and ¡°Bhikku wailing in mourning¡± on the back wall of the Grotto No.33 are rare artistic pieces which depict the inner feelings of the figures with vivid images and individual characteristics. The ancient instruments shown in the mural depicting ¡°Female Dancers on Performance¡± in Grotto No. 16 and the mural of ¡°Transformation in the Hell¡± in Grotto No. 17 are seldom seen in Buddhist grottoes in China.

The Bizaklik Thousand-Buddha Caves became an important cultural unit protected by the state in 1961.

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Astana-Karakhoja Ancient Tombs Known as ¡°The Underground Museum¡± and widely valued by Chinese and foreign archaeologists and historians, this group of ancient tombs is forty kilometers southeast of Turpan city proper and six kilometers from the ancient city of Gaochang. Astana means ¡°capital¡± in Uygur and Karakhoja is the name of a legendary hero of the ancient Uygur Kingdom who removed the evils from the people by killing a vicious dragon. They are now the names of two local villages.

Buried in these tombs are nobles, officials and others from the period beginning in the Western Jin and ending in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. Curiously, the tomb of King Gaochang is found nowhere in the group of tombs, but the renowned general Zhang Xiong of the Qushi Gaochang Kingdom was buried here with his wife and son Zhang Huaiji. Almost all of the corpses in the more than five hundred tombs have not rotted; instead they have become dried-up bodies, a phenomenon more unusual than the mummies found in the pyramids of Egypt. Most of the dried-up bodies are complete and intact. Thanks to the dry and hot climate, many paintings, earthen figurines and thousands of other unearthed cultural relics are well-preserved and as colorful as new ones. The unearthed boiled dumplings of the Tang Dynasty are the same shape as those of today and the stuffing of the dumplings is still fresh. Furthermore, on a bail of horse fodder are written the words ¡°Judge Cen¡± and ¡°Minister Feng.¡± Judge cen is the famous frontier poet cen Shen of the Tang Dynasty and Minister Feng is Feng Changqing, the governor of Beiting Prefecture of the Tang Dynasty. Most of those buried here were people of the Han nationality, but also some minority nationalities, such as the Cheshi, Hun, Di, Xianbei, Gaoche, and Zhaowujiuxing.

Now three tombs have been opened to visitors. Besides dried-up corpses, there are murals depicting figures, birds and flowers on display in the three tombs.

It was classified as an important cultural unit protected by the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 1957.

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Emin Tower (¡°The Tower for Showing Gratitude to Eminhoja¡±) also called ¡°Sugong Tower¡± and ¡°The Turpan Tower¡± by the local Uygur people, is located two kilometers east of the city of Turpan. Built in 1778 it is the biggest tower in Xinjiang, and has an architectural style all its own.

In the shape of a cone and built of bricks arranged in fifteen patterns of rhombuses, ripples, varied four-petal flowers, and mountains, the tower is thirty-seven meters high and ten meters in diameter at the base. The tower has fourteen windows opened in different directions and at different heights and a seventy-one-stepped spiral flight of stairs leading to the top.

At the entrance of the tower stands a stone tablet erected when the tower was built, on which is recorded, in Uygur and Chinese, the reasons for building the tower. It was built by Turpan

prefectural commandant Su Laiman to commemorate and praise his father Emingoja who achieved brilliant military success in suppressing the armed rebellion raised by the Jungar aristocrats.

Next to the tower is the biggest mosque in the Turpan area, and the two form an integral whole. The rectangular mosque has a hall in its middle and an arched gate with a pointed top. The hall can hold up to one thousand people attending service. During religious festivals, crowds of people stream into the mosque and make the mosque a hive of activity.

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The Karez System, an irrigation system of wells connected by underground channels, is considered as one of the three great ancient projects in China, the other two being the Great Wall and the Grand Canal. There are in the Turpan area nearly one thousand Karez totaling five thousand Kilometers in length.

The structure of the Karez basically consists of wells, underground channels, ground canals and small reservoirs. In spring and summer, a great amount of melting snow and rainfall flow down from the Bogda and Karawuquntag mountains north and west of the Turpan Depression into the valleys and then seep into the Gobi Desert. Taking advantage of the mountain slopes, the working people ingeniously created the karez to draw the underground water to irrigate the farmland. The water in the karez will not evaporate in large quantities even under the scorching heat and fierce wind, hence ensuring a stable water flow and gravity irrigation.

As far back as the Han Dynasty, the karez was recorded in Shi Ji (The Historical Records) and then called ¡°Well Canals.¡± Most of the existing kzrez in the Turpan area were built during the Qing Dynasty and in after years. Nowadays, large stretches of fertile oasis land are still irrigated by karezs. The Wudaolin karez and the karez in the Wuxing Township are open to visitors.

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Looking at the Flaming Mountains in the distance from the city of Turpan, one can see nothing but glowing, barren, red sand. But the Grape Valley of the Flaming Mountains, fifteen kilometers from the city center, is a world of unique beauty, presenting a striking contrast with the hot, dry and barren outside.

Cushioned by green grass and graced with green trees, the valley is a world of green wit brooks, canals and sparkling springs; there is a poetic flavor to the idyllic beauty of the valley. Scattered everywhere in the valley are trees: mulberry, peach, apricot, apple, pomegranate, pear, fig, walnut, elm, poplar and willow; also watermelons and muskmelons, making the valley into a ¡°garden of one hundred flowers¡± in spring and an ¡°orchard of one hundred kinds of fruits¡± in summer. In the valley there is a reception center where dense grapevines interweave with each other and winding paths lead to secluded places with clusters of grapes within easy reach.

Eight kilometers long, half a kilometer wide and inhabited by about 6,000 people of the Uygur, Hui and Han nationalities, the Grape Valley has more than 400hectares of cultivated land, 220 hectares of which is grape growing area. Grapes growing in the valley are of several strains, including the seedless white, rose-pink, mare-teat, black, Kashihar, bijiagan and suosuo. There is a fruit winery producing several kinds of wines and canned grapes.

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The museum is located between the new and the old hotels. On display in the museum are various cultural relics from primitive society to modern times, including stone implement, dried-up corpses, books, records, documents, inscriptions on memorial tablets of tombs, paintings, silk fabrics, earth and wooden figurines, melons, fruits, food, pottery and old coins, all of which were unearthed in Gaochang, Jiaohe, Astana, the Karakhoja ancient tombs and other ancient cultural sites. Touring the places of historical interest before visiting the museum would be helpful for visitors to fully understand the splendid ancient culture of Turpan.

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Almost all the households have grapeyards. The local people are very hospitable and bare-bottomed children wave their chubby hands and say ¡°bye-bye¡± to visitors, Chinese or foreign. The newly-opened ¡°Bazaar¡± down town typifies Uygur architectural style. The stands in the Bazaar are also full of grapes, melons and other fruit between summer and autumn and all kinds of refreshments with local flavors. Personal and all kinds of refreshments with local flavors. Personal ornaments and colorful caps of the local Xinjiang style can be found everywhere on the market.

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Known as ¡°The Wind Bank,¡± Turpan has a ¡°Wind Zone Thirty li (fifteen kilometers) Wide¡± where the wind is so strong that it cannot be rated by the Beaufort Scale and seriously threatens the vast stretches of fertile oases.

Wudaolin Forest Belt twelve kilometers northwest of Turpan is the result of ¡°the mass campaign of forestation to combat the desert¡± organized by the local government in 1964.

In the campaign, several measures were taken, including ¡°digging ditches to plant trees,¡± ¡°combining canals with tows of trees,¡± ¡°alternating wide row spacings with narrow ones¡± and ¡°arranging trees in multiple lines¡± and an original of forestation method was erected. Wudaolin Belt is 3,800 meters long and twenty-three meters wide. In the belt, five parallel ditches were dug, and on both sides of each poplar, mulberry and narrow leaved oleaster trees were planted, totaling ten rows of five lines, hence the name ¡°Wudaolin¡± (Five-Line Forest). The belt has effectively diminished the sand threat and wind disasters and attracted a lot of Chinese and foreign visitors. In addition to the belt, there is a larez built on the mountain slope with clear water winding down.

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The farm, thirty-eight kilometers from the city proper,, is located in a desert on the northwest fringe of the Turpan Depression. The area, short of water sources, seriously salinized and full of gravel even ninety meters underground with only ten to twenty percent of soil, is so arid that not even a single blade of grass would grow here.

In 1959, a group of young people from Jiangsu Province began to develop the area. Today a large stretch of oasis has appeared: the Hongliuhe Horticultural Farm known far and wide. The farm grows more than one hundred strains of grapes. And the Hongliuhe Grape Kivelopment Company and a hotel have been set up on the farm. The crisscrossing canals, overarching trees and fragrant flowers, all make it hard to believe that the oasis used to be a desert.

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The farm, eleven kilometers south of the city of Turpan and 20 hectares in area, is located in an area under the jurisdiction of the Qiatkale Desert Control Station.

The farm has successfully set on wind-eroded land and desert sand hills 128 species of plants of 63genuses of 27 families, including 103 species of dry land, sandy land, saline land and a few wet land plants, as well as some plants and seeds introduced but not yet set. Among them most are of the fabaceae, chenopodiaceae, salicaceae, polygonaceae and tamaricaceae families. They can be divided into oil-bearing, medicine, dyeing, fabric, sand-fixing, fuel, fodder and weaving-material plants. Some of them can be grown as ornamental plants, such as sand holly, hedge rose, bluish dogbane, high mallow, tamarisk and so on.

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The center is sixteen kilometers northwest of the city. Every year from June to August, the two big sandhills are thickly dotted with colorful cloth sheds, parasols and tents. Under these sunshading facilities, people, lying or sitting. Bury their bodies with hot sand, dripping with sweat. This is the well-known and peculiar ¡°sand therapy of Turpan, the Flaming Prefecture.¡± The sand therapy has at once the effects of heat therapy, magnetotherapy and massage. According to scientific experiments, the effectiveness of the treatment for arthritis and rheumatism is above ninetypercent.

The whitewashed building nearby is the newly set-up Sand Therapy Center, consisting of treatment rooms, wards and a canteen, with medical workers for auxiliary medical treatment. Board and lodging are available in the center for patients.

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The Mountain is 110 kilometers from Turpan and close to the southwestern part of the seat of Shanshan County. It covers an area of 2,500 square kilometers with undulating red sand hills, a boundless and magnificent scene, and it is one of the famous sand mountains in Xinjiang.

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The caves are forty-three kilometers east of the city of Turpan and forty kilometers from Shanshan County. They are considered to be the earliest hewn caves in the Turpan area. This group of caves, hewn in the Gaochang Prefecture period between the Jin and the Earlier Liang dynasties, has a history of 1,600 years. There are forty-six caves in the group, nine of which have Buddhist murals still visible in them.

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The tombs seventy kilometers from the city of Turpan are situated in the Qiongkuli Township of Lianmuqin District in the western part of Shanshan County. They are the tombs of ¡°The Seven Girls¡± in a fold legend.

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The tomb, in the vicinity of Tuyugou Thousand Buddha Caves, is a local Islamic holy place. On religious holidays, it becomes an exceptionally lively place with huge crowds of people coming to pay religious homage. Like the Grape Valley, Tuyugou Grand Tomb is a tourist attraction with a scenic landscape.

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The tower is located on the right side of the Turpan Shanshan highway in Shanshan County. It is the most well-preserved ancient beacon tower in the area and it was probably built during the period between the Han and the Tang dynasties.

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Located in Astana Village (¡®Sanbao¡¯ in Chinese), this is the ruin of a Buddhist structure of Gaochang times (from the sixth century A.D to the seventh century A.D). With Buddhist images and murals in the shrines on its four sides, the tower, built of tamped earth, is about twenty meters high and twenty meters wide at each side of the square base.

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The caves, forty kilometers northeast of the Turpan city center, built of adobe and decorated with murals, are the ruins of a temple of the Tang Dynasty; they lie in four groups, with two groups located half way up the mountain and other two at the foot of the mountain. The ceilings of the ten caves are covered with images of a thousand Buddhas and brilliant paintings of lotus flowers, jackdaws nestling on withered trees, grape clusters hanging from vines and shading weeping willows. Most of these paintings bear inscriptions in the ancient Huigu language. On the west wall of one of the caves are Buddhist sutras written in Huigu. In addition, in the courtyard at the foot of the mountain lie a grand hall and monks¡¯ dwellings, where documents in Brahmi, Buddhist scriptures in Sanskrit and in Chinese and coins of the Kaiyuan reign of the Tang Dynasty were found.

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The caves, ten kilometers northwest of Turpan and opened on the earthen cliff west of the ancient city of Jiaohe, are said to be the relics of the Tang and the Song dynasties. Seven caves are still intact, all having murals in them. On the west wall of the Cave No. 5 are inscriptions in Turkic, and one inscription reads ¡°On July 29, the year of Jichou (not legible) came to the Xigu Temple.¡±

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The fort, a ruin of the Tang Dynasty, is located at the mouth of Ala Valley fifty kilometers west of the Toksun County seat. The Uygur word ¡°Tashtur¡± means ¡°the Stone Tower.¡± Built of gravel, this well-preserved historical relic of the Tang Dynasty is about sixty meters in circumference and four meters in height. On the written contracts and documents unearthed here were recorded the names of the beacon towers, shops and towns in the area as well as names of the soldiers and generals of the frontier guards.

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