Friday, November 21, 2003
Maybe it was the cold weather here that got me thinking about Turfan, in Xinjiang Province, China. This is probably one of the hottest places on earth. I visited here three years ago. The city itself is several hundred feet below sea level. Even in May, when I was there, the temperature in the afternoons was over 100 degrees F. No one goes outside in the afternoons, as can be seen from the photo of the city’s main street. In the evenings, after the sun goes down, thousands of people promenade on this street, which is lined with restaurants, cafes, and night clubs featured discalced, bathukolpic dancing girls. The majority of people here are Uighurs, not Chinese.
