The Karez Well has been recorded in Historical Records. In Uygur, kaner is pronounced as “kan’ermei”. The Karez Well currently existing in Turphan have mostly been built since Qing Dynasty. Today they are still irrigating vast stretches of fertile oases. Wudaolin Karez Well and Five Star Township Khanat in the suburbs of Turphan are accessible to tourists.  

 

The Karez Well is an extremely old form of horizontal water collection construction developed to exploit the underground water.

Applicable at foothills and alluvial cones, it is used mainly to draw underground water for the irrigation and drinking. The Kaner Well, the Great Wall, and Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal are the three major ancient projects in China. There are nearly 1000 Kaner wells in Turphan, stretching a distance of about 5000 km. The Kaner well generally consists of four parts: the shaft, the underground channel, the surface channel and “Laoba” (small reservoir). In spring and summer, large amount of melted snow and rain water flows into the valleys from Bogda Mountain north of Turphan Basin and Karawushen Mountain west of the basin. The water then penetrates beneath the Gobi desert. By making use of the slopes of the mountains, people have ingeniously created Kaner wells to channel the underground water for the irrigation of farmland. Kaner wells can prevent water from evaporation in large quantities because of the high temperature and the huge wind. As a result the flow is steady and irrigation by automatic flow is guaranteed.