The Ancient City of Gaochang

There are two ancient cities in Turpan including Gaochang and Jiaohe, of which, the big one is Ancient city of Gaochang, 40-km southwest of Turpan City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, used to be a political, economic and cultural center on the ancient Silk Road.
It was a garrison city in the Han Dynasty and then became the capital of the Gaochang Kingdom. Later on, it was the garrison post for Xizhou Region in the Tang Dynasty and then became the imperial city of the Uygur ethnic group. However, the city was destroyed among the Mongolians civil war in the 14th century, and abandoned since then on.
Although the city was abandoned for centuries, the ruins of the rammed earth structures in the city remain complete, where one could be able to faintly identify the sites such as bronze casting, distillery, weaving, pottery making and workshops etc. When you wander in the ruin site that covers an area of 200 hectares, the spectacular buildings will impress you profoundly. There are three quarters for the city including Outer City, Inner City and Palace City. The dominant religion was Buddhism so that there are many temples and monasteries that you still can see the Buddha statues.
Von Le Coq from Europe in 1905 had discovered the sutras of Manichaeism which extended the knowledge about this religion in central Asia first time. Moreover, it proved that Manichaeism were the prosperous during Gaochang Huihu Kingdom.