Qu Bowuguan (Regional Museum)

Description:

• The museum underwent a full renovation in 2005, and its exhibits are now well presented in the shiny interior of this massive building. Don't miss the 12 remarkably well-preserved mummies, many with Indo-European features: high cheekbones, long noses, brightly colored woolen kilts. The mummies, some of which date from 2000 B.C., were unearthed from tombs scattered around the Taklamakan in Loulan, Astana, Hami, and Charchan (Qiemo). They do little to further Han claims over Xinjiang. Add the cost of preservation and you might believe, as some suggest, that additional finds are being deliberately left in the ground. Han Chinese chauvinists point out that Uighurs, a Turkic people who migrated from western Mongolia, have nothing in common with the indigenous Indo-European Tocharians, who spoke a language that resembles a Celtic tongue. But there are enough blue- or green-eyed folk on the streets of Turpan and Kuqa (former Tocharian strongholds) to suggest that interbreeding was common. As my Uighur companion remarked, "So we killed all of them?"

  Han Chinese guides make much of the relatively young mummy of General Zhang (d. A.D. 633), commander of the armies in Gaochang, whose wife rests in the Turpan Museum. Other interesting items on exhibit are lead and bronze eyeshades used in sandstorms, and a hunting boomerang unearthed in Hami.

• © Frommer's 2012