Turpan City is located in the middle of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and was also known as Gushi in ancient times. It occupies a total area of 697,000 square kilometers and has a population of 140,000 people of different nationalities, such as Uygur, Han and Hui.

Located at the central part of the Turpan Basin, Turpan is only 32.8 meters above sea level, the lowest place in the Chinese mainland. The weather has a striking characteristic of being dry, extremely hot and windy, winning Turpan the name of a ˇ§Fire Continentˇ¨. In the south temperate zone of dry continental climate, Turpan has an annual average temperature of 13.9˘J and annual average rainfall of only 16 millimeters.

The northwest part of Turpan is a famous tourism scenery area, with well-known cultural relics and historic sites of the Jiaohe Ruins, the Gaochang Ruins, the Astana Ancient Tombs, the Bezeklik Thousand-Buddha Caves, the Sugong Tower, the Flaming Mountains, the Aiding Lake, the Grape Valley and the Karez Well System, etc. Well-known local produce includes seedless grapes, Hami melons, long fine-hair cotton, red grapes and Manaizi grapes, etc.