Hotan

» Xin Jiang

Hotan Overview & Map Weather Transportation Information

Today's Hotan weather forcast

Visit the excellent museum in its newer, larger facility that brings together the region's 5,000 years of human history on the crossroads of Indian, Central Asian, Chinese, Russian, Middle Eastern and even Greek cultures, a corridor for and center of shamanism, Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism and Islam. Plus the museum offers an entire floor of more recent cultural treasures of jade, carpets, silk, ethnic attire, jewelry, musical instruments and Uyghur traditional medicine.

Visit a Sunday bazaar that rivals any in Central Asia for size and variety, then stop by Hotan's nearby main mosque. Or head out on Thursday nearby to a weekly tiny bazaar and festival in the desert an ancient sacred site of pilgrimage at the edge of the desert, with its ancient shrine, tomb and mosque.

Beat the heat along more than 1,500 kilometers of shady grapevine-covered corridors in the county, or in one just outside your hotel door. Wander around neighborhoods with traditional Uyghur architecture. Watch nightly authentic Uyghur traditional music and dancing. Eat rice-based polo or noodle-based langmen from bottomless cauldrons in busy Uyghur restaurants and nibble your way along the stalls of an ancient night market, with sizzling lamb kebabs, mountains of fresh melons, stacks of nut bars and an endless variety of other treats.

But the old and new exist side-by-side in ancient Hotan. Marvel at the dramatic modern architecture in the center around the enormous Unity Square. Dance the night away at a score of flashy night clubs, grab a burger or fried chicken at a Chinese chain, wander the endless aisles of three enormous supermarkets, pick your live seafood for dinner from two walls of tanks in a new restaurant more than 2,500 kilometers from any ocean, or watch the world pass by as you linger at a number of modern coffee bars or internet cafes.

Spend Y20 to Y2,000 per night on a range of accommodations. Visit different nearby ancient ruins from this fabled Silk Road kingdom, by taxi, by 4WD, or by an overnight camel caravan. Wander along the bed of the Yorungkash River, whose jade has been traded from here to central China for more than three thousand years, washed down from the fabled Mt. Kunlun of immortality, home of the Great Mother Goddess of the West.

Historical Site

• Mallikurwatur Ruins
• Amannishahan Tomb

Hotan Highlights

Jade

In China, jadeware underwent a long process of development beginning from the New Stone Age 10,000 years ago. It is a gemstone of unique symbolic energy, and unique in the myths that surround it.

Silk Road city highlights

The Silk Road, or Silk Routes, refers to an extensive interconnected network of trade routes across the Asian continent connecting East, South and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world, including North Africa and Europe.

• Urumqi
• Turpan
• Kashgar
• Dunhuang
• Jiayuguan
• Lanzhou
• Tianshui
• Zhangye
• Korla
• Kuqa
• Hotan

Xinjiang Kebab attraction highlights

Xinjiang Kebab is as famous as the roast duck of Beijing. It is a popular snack nationwide -- found in the streets and bazaars throughout China, and a lot of people like it very much.

• Grand Bazaar

city highlights

• Urumqi
• Turpan
• Kashgar
• Korla
• Kuqa
• Burqin
• Yarkent
• Hotan
• Fuyun

Uygur Ethnic Group city highlights

Xinjiang province, a place of large desert, tasty fruit and friendly people, is where almost all the Uygurs are found. It occupies much of the sparsely-populated Northwest.

• Urumqi
• Turpan
• Kashgar
• Korla
• Kuqa
• Burqin
• Yarkent
• Hotan
• Fuyun

Hotan FAQ & Travelers's Tips

  Shopping

1. What is the best sourvenir to buy?

  Other Hints

1. Will I have internet access there?
2. How is the post communication there?
3. Khotan? Hotan? Hetian? I'm confused...

• What is the best sourvenir to buy?

  The area has been famous for jade for centuries. Khotan jade is first mentioned in written history about 200 BC. There are mines, but much of the stone is found in riverbeds. This is one of the few areas with black jade and white jade. Be prepared to bargain hard.

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• Will I have internet access there?

  There are many Internet cafes in central Hotan. Ask at your hotel for the closest place. Crazy Boy Internet Cafe is next door to Lokman Restaurant.to the Han majority. A common written language and a strong central government, both created by the Qin and refined by the Han and later dynasties, are the ties t

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• How is the post communication there?

  The main China Post office is on Beijing Xi Lu, just a few doors east from the Hotan Museum on the corner of Beijing Xi Lu and Xi Huai Lu. This office can accept international parcels; don't seal the box until it is inspected at the post office.

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• Khotan? Hotan? Hetian? I'm confused...

  Hotan is the most common way today of spelling the name of this city in English.

  The pinyin for the Chinese name of the city today is Hetian. The Chinese transliteration of the name is used on buses and in some translations of Chinese.

  One source says, "It is documented in early Prakrit documents as Kustana, or "the Breast of the Earth."

  Whichever pronunciation you choose, its most ancient known name came from the settlers from northern India in the mid-third century BCE. But the Hotan oasis was inhabited for probably 10,000 years before then, based on tool finds.

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