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Epicure

Baked to perfection

By Alexis Hooi (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-23 10:30

An oversized thermometer stands below the Flaming Mountains.

The slopes of the bone-dry valleys have clay-bricked barns perforated with square holes that dry the grapes naturally in the arid climate, to produce raisins that have been sought after across the country since the northern overland trade routes formed in the 1st century BC.

Buy a bag of the raisins to accompany a piece of oven-baked naan, the Uygur flatbread staple, to taste the sustenance of the merchants who plied their goods between imperial China and classical Rome.

But it is the ancient irrigation system in the region that has ensured the survival of the people and maintained the fertility of the oasis into modern times.

Known as karez ("well") in the Uygur language, the network consists of wells linked by underground canals that collect water from the runoff and snow melt of the nearby Tianshan mountain range, which looms over the occasional oil well on the desert.

The canals channel the water to nourish surface farmland through gravity in the Turfan Depression. Evaporation of the precious resource in the blazing climate is minimized because the aqueducts are covered.

Even today, youths can be found escaping from the heat to while away lazy afternoons on the sides of the subterranean channels, where temperatures can be a cool 18 C compared with the sweltering surface.

Throughout the centuries, more than 1,000 wells have been dug in the region, along the estimated 5,000-km-long karez network.

Still, residents say dangerous maintenance work on the system and modern irrigation methods means that less than half of the wells are now in working condition.

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