 Re: Turpan grape festival
It's the season when the best grapes in all of China are reaching the peak of ripeness. It's the time when they are most delicious. That's cause for an annual festival in northwest China. And this year's Grape Festival is already underway in Turpan, in the Xinjian Uygur Autonomous region.
The people of Turpan celebrate their annual grape harvest each year. Visitors from home and abroad come to listen to the jubilant musical airs and witness the dancing of folk artists --- and not to be forgotten -- to enjoy the succulent grapes.
This year's festival is the seventeenth. It opened on Tuesday, two days after the closing of the Beijing Olympic Games. The festival carries on for eleven days...so the region is expecting a lot of Olympic visitors to head that way from Beijing.
Turpan's grape festival started in 1990, to commemorate the 21-hundred year history of the Silk Road. The Silk Road was one of the most celebrated trade routes of the ancient East. People come from all over nowadays to enjoy feasting on grapes and to take time to look back over the region's long commercial history. |