Grape Valley
Grape Valley sits on the western slopes of the Flaming Mountains, thirty-minute drive northeast from the Turpan county. Looking at the Flaming Mountains in the distance from the city of Turpan, one can see nothing but glowing barren red sand. Only the Grape Valley, presenting a world of unique beauty, is a striking contrast with the hot, dry and barren outside.
With green grass and trees, the Grape Valley is a world of green with brooks, canals and sparkling springs. Like a silvery chain, a stream of water rushes down for fifteen kilometers irrigating the whole valley, and the slope sides are covered mulberry, peach, apricot, apple,pomegranate, pear, fig, walnut, elm, poplar and willow; also watermelons and muskmelons. Chatting, laughing and singing, gaily-dressed Uygur girls move about in the green foliage with their wicker baskets picking grapes. That is a poetic flavor to the idyllic beauty in the valley.
The Grape Valley is praised as "garden of one hundred flowers" in spring and an orchard of one hundred kinds of fruits in summer. Inhabited by about 6,000 people of the Uygur, Hui and Han nationalities, the Grape Valley has more than 400 hectares 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.
