By Xuefei Chen Axelsson
Stockholm, May 7(Greenpost) — Turpan sits south of Urumqi and takes about two hours to drive and one hour by fast train there. Last year I visited northern part of Xinjiang and this year, I like to have a look at southern part with my own initiative and on my own expenditure.
Turpan is completely different from northern part of Xinjiang. The color is very different. Turpan is rich in sand and yellow land and is very hot because it is a basin, lowest basin in China.
But on the highway to Turpan, it was very windy and dusty. The land was barren and the wind was strong. Thus the wind power farm boasts to be the second largest one only second to Denmark. Xinjiang is really large with 1.66 million square kilometers and 56 ethnic groups.
During this trip due to time limitation, I just visited the Grape Valley and the Kare undergroud canals in Turpan.
The town is famous for chicken lunch. We ate in a small restaurant . 
The wind is strong here 
Yes, it is full of wind turbines on the way. 
It is windy, but sunny. 
The road is wide and new. Large amount of money has been invested in the road, railway and airport construction in Xinjiang. 
In March trees were not green yet, but the spring came and it was very warm. 
In the youth street, children just finished their school in Turpan. 
Lovely boys were very happy to take a picture! 
In Turpan I was lucky to meet the director of Turpan Culture and Tourism Bureau. He said last year, Turpan received about 16 million tourists. I was accompied by Yusupu and Mouhamoud. 
Two Turpan Muqam artists played beautiful Muqam songs for us in the evening. 
Turpan Grape Valley Gate 
Turpan Grape Valley Grape shelf 
Beautiful peach’s flowers blossomed. 
Typical house for drying the grapes. 
The Grape crops. 
The Grape Valley Park 
Dried Grapes 
Wang Luobin Museum. Western King of Songs 
Grape Valley 
Fire Mountain in Turpan Xinjiang 
Typical Xinjiang food Nang 
Typical Xinjiang food mutton sticks
With the help of Yusupu the driver (who is also an acrobatic teacher) and guide Mouhamoud (who is also an editor), I had visited Grape Valley and seen the houses where the Uygurs live. Their houses are not built by wood such as in Northern part of Xinjiang, but by mud and sand soil. It looks very earthy. I just wonder if there is heavy rain, will these houses survive? But the problem is exactly that it is very dry here and there is no rain almost all year round. The sunshine time is the longest in the whole country. The temperature is also very high. Thus the vegetables and fruits are very good at growing in this land. Thanks to the snow mountains, they can use the snow water to water crops.
I was impressed by the happy faces of these children. Some of them are Han and some of them are Hui. Yusupu was born in this city. He said in fact, most people in these areas speak Uygur languages. Even Han people can speak Uygur language because more than 70 percent of the people here are Uygurs.
Turpan enjoys a long civilization and has long history and culture.