The Yili valley is a broad, well-watered basin in the western corner of Xinjiang, ringed by the Tianshan and open to the west, which gives it a milder and more humid climate than the rest of the province - apples, wheat, maize and rice all grow here. In the 1960s lavender was introduced to the valley from France as a substitute for imported essential oil, and the crop took to the local soil and light so well that Huocheng county, west of Yining, is now the country's lavender centre. Rows of it run for kilometre after kilometre along the fields between the villages.
When it flowers
The main flowering runs from the middle of June into early July, with a smaller second flush in early autumn. The peak is short, and the local harvest festival is held in the middle of the season, which is when the roads out of Yining are busiest. A field in full flower is a sheet of violet with the Tianshan snow line behind it, and the smell carries a long way. Mornings and the two hours before sunset are the best light; the middle of the day is bright, flat and hot.
The harvest and what is made from it
Lavender is cut at the point where the flowers are open but not yet fading, because that is when the oil content peaks. Some of the crop is steam-distilled on site for essential oil, which is sold into the cosmetics and soap trade and also blended locally; the rest is dried, stripped from the stems and packed for sachets, pillows, tea blends and dried-flower arrangements. Farm shops along the road sell all of it, and several farms have opened visitor gardens with a viewing deck, a small exhibition on distillation and a cafe selling lavender ice cream and shortbread.
Practical notes
Huocheng is about an hour's drive west of Yining, which has an airport and a railway station on the line from Urumqi; there is no practical way to reach the fields by public transport, so a car and driver is the sensible arrangement. Bring a hat and water, since there is no shade in the fields, and ask before walking into a working row - the plants are a cash crop, not a park. Lavender combines naturally with Sayram Lake and the Guozigou bridge on the same road, and with the Kazakh grassland country further up the valley.
