Are you ready for another installment in my occasional series on lowpoints? I am.
Everyone always focuses on the greatest of mountains and the highest of elevations. Lowpoints need a little love too, especially those below sea level, and the further down the better. I turned my attention to China, a nation that does not receive nearly as much 12MC coverage as it deserves, and to its Turpan (Turfan) Depression (map) in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The deepest spot on the Turpan Depression descended an impressive 154 metres (505 feet) below sea level. That makes it perhaps the second, third or fourth lowest point of land on earth depending on the source consulted.
Easily Found
The Chinese deserved credit for marking the spot rather distinctively. It might not be quite the tourist destination as Death Valley, however it seemed to have a lot more potential than Laguna del Carbón or Lac Assal. It is also located near a sizable city, Turpan, with more than a quarter of a million residents. The area is already becoming an attraction for extreme sports so lets add extremely low elevation to the list.
Historic
The Turpan Depression exhibited history in abundance as a site along the famous Silk Road’s northern route. Dynasties came and fell over a couple of millennia as they sought to control trade at this pivotal oasis. Later it became the city of Turpan: the Tang, Uyghur, and Moghul all spent time here. The nearby ancient city of Jiaohe dated to the earliest of those times. It arose around the same basic period as the Roman Empire, and lasted until Genghis Khan destroyed it much later.
“Archaeological evidence suggests that the city of Jiaohe is nearly 2,300 years old. Jiaohe was of great military significance as it was located directly in the path which at the time safely and conveniently connected the Orient to the Occident. Geographically Jiaohe city is located near the nexus of the Flame Mountain and the Salt Mountain, through which was the only course for trade exchanges and military movement. On the other side of the pass ancient cavalries could reach an oasis in the Turpan Basin.”
Clearly, this lowpoint of China has potential as a premier tourist attraction in the desert.
Blazing Hot
It is truly a desert too, and hot. [link to page on china.org.cn no longer works]
“Turpan is not only special for its low altitude, but also for its strange climate. In summer, the temperature can reach as high as 47°C (117°F), while on the surface of the sand dunes, it may well be 82°C (180°F). It is no exaggeration to say that you can bake a cake in the hot sand. The average annual rainfall is little more than ten millimeters; sometimes there is not a drop of rain for ten months at a stretch.”
The extreme lowpoint of the Turpan Depression sits at a location known as Ayding Lake or Aydingkol Lake (map).
As one might suspect, a gouge in the earth created by shearing land masses during continental drift might serve as an excellent basin to catch water. Ayding Lake was indeed an impressive body of water into the early part of the 20th Century. Its name derived from the Uygur word for Moonlight, “gaining the name for the lake water as bright and beautiful as moonlight.”
Today some might describe it better as a cautionary tale or an ecological disaster. People siphoned the waters of Ayding Lake primarily for agriculture. Now instead of a large lake “…you won’t see moonlit water. What you can see is perhaps dried mud and salt beds.”
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