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Kashgar
EVAN HARRIS

Spirit of

The very word Kashgar carries an inimitable ring. As an oasis stirring amidst the sands of the Tarim Desert, Silk Road travellers regarded its limits as a salvation following exhausting journeys over empty expanses. Yet as is the case in much of Chinas subdued West, the original version is being threatened by a utilitarian new town. Evan Harris visits a millennia-old city under siege.

WENTY-FOUR HOURS of meandering road away, behind the hulk of the Tien Shan, the charismatic antique Islam/ modern China dichotomy of Kashgar awaits. But rst you must endure the worlds worst bus journey, prone to delays as passengers load whole cherry orchards into the belly of the vehicle, bribes, pauses for prayer, inordinately long Chinese lunches, and the improbable developing of coughs in the customs queue at peak swine u season. I daresay its worth it though. Kashgar makes for a passionate technicolour quickie after the grey, grinding stay-together-for-the-kids of Bishkek. The Silk Routes rich history of trade, conquest and civilization spills into Kashgars present, but you had better visit soon; China is holding the brush that threatens to sweep the distinctive Uighur culture into the desert. It has one of the most pronounced dissociative disorders of any Chinese city: the modern towers, wide roads, and confused capitalism have encircled and in some cases intertwined with the dense adobe warrens of Kashgars traditional dwellings. My couchsurfer host informs me that this has created de facto apartheid, and now the governments plan to demolish the adobe houses and re-accommodate the Uighur in modern highrises threatens to ghettoise them. Examples of the traditional architecture will be preserved,

but as one of the soulless UNESCO restorations that a ict the Silk Routes historic settlements. Without romanticizing the melancholy aesthetic of dusty Turkic poverty, it is impossible not to notice that the Chinese government seems uninterested in the plurality of approaches to urban housing policy, preferring its slash and burn method which conveniently erases all but token traces of the ethnic culture which once stood at the heart of its cities. Kashgar has been settled since 300BC and has been ruled by Huns, Turks, Arabs, Mongols and now Chinese. The true ethnography and etymology of the Uighurs is shifting in the quagmire of academic debate, but Uighur tribes seem to have settled in the Tarim basin (in which Kashgar sits) at the beginning of the 8th century, having split from the disintegrating Uighur empire which originated in present-day Mongolia. The Chinese soon entered into a tense and uctuant relationship with their northern neighbours. Fantastic warriors and horsemen, the Tang emperors recognized them as the barbarians that could keep other barbarians at the gate. But when they werent acting as defenders of the frontier, marrying Chinese noblewomen as tribute for their troubles, the subjects of the Uighur kaghans were raining a chaos down on westward-bound caravans of silk, devouring travelling merchants in a melee of sharpened metal and beating hooves.
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July 2010 The Spektator

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Kashgars host province Xinjiang is home enshrined amidst the daily grind of a crumbling to a number of Turkic groups including the Kyr- post-Soviet infrastructure and a coup-prone state gyz; it was formerly known as Eastern Turkestan, apparatus. The other, meanwhile, lives in one of representing one half of an e ective division the most rapidly-modernizing countries in the between cultural overlords Russia, to the west, world, yet that modernization has shown itself to and China, to the east. Fascinatingly you can see bulldoze minority cultures, and he is a straggling the abrupt nature of this minority. separation as you drive It Immersion is Kashgars shamewill bea a crying from Osh to Kashgar. when synthetIn Kyrgyzstan, your appeal - allow yourself to drift ic Chinese transplant bus lurches along potreplaces Kashgars holed dirt-tracks, past around the place, drawn this organic heart, for the pastures of yurta and way and that by the striking beat of its pulse is vimen in their distinctive brant. Deeply dejected kalpaks. Torturously, you curiosity of its daily routine after the bus journey, I cross the border, going leave the fading granthrough a Kyrgyz cusdeur of my room at toms shack before heading over no mans land the former British embassy - now the Qiniwak in the direction of a white tiled Chinese complex hotels rear annexe - in tentative search of a midreplete with basketball courts to distract the night feed. Immediately I am overwhelmed by nervous military boys. the energy coursing through the city, even at Out the other side and your bus glides along this late hour. Eventually I nd out, by way of a smooth tarmac, past pastures of yurta and men missed meeting, that Uighurs observe local time in their distinctive kalpaks, except now road signs instead of the o cial Beijing time, a subtle but are not in Kyrgyz or Russian, but Arabic and Chi- ceaseless non-conformity said to infuriate the nese. With delays at the border, fteen hours can upper ranks of Chinas elite. separate one Kyrgyz village from the other. As you Sitting down in an enormous caf, I battle make the journey, you will therefore have plenty through the language barrier with imprecise of time to consider which kalpak-wearing man is hand jabbing and settle into a liver, skin and fat the more fortuitous. One became the titular na- kebab, accompanied by a starch jelly and chilli tionality in an independent country, his culture salad. It is delicious.
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Top left An Uighur waitress watches the world go by from a restaurant balcony (all photos Evan Harris) Above Heavy-laden donkeys still trot around Kashgars Old City, hawking bicycles, sheeps wool and other goods

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Travel Details
The bus from Osh to Kashgar via the Irkeshtam pass costs $75, and is one youll remember for a while unless you selectively erase it from your memory. Allow at least 24 hours and come well prepared with food and water (unlike yours truly). Be prepared to be unable to communicate with anybody on the bus including the driver and xer- everyone was Uighur/Chinese and none of them spoke a lick of Russian. Alternatively you can get a bus to Sary Tash and then hitch to the border from there. Or you can get a taxi to the border for between $135150. As always, the friendly guys in Osh Guesthouse will sort you out with all the information you need. Alternatively you can go via the reportedly hit and miss Torugart pass from Bishkek. Check travel agents in Bishkek and/or Thorntree to get the lowdown. I went to eight other hotels (long story), and stayed in four, so I know that for your bucks the rear annexe at the Qiniwak hotel is your best bet. Karakoram cafe opposite the Qiniwak hotel will sort you out with a cappuccino, very helpful travel advice, and local guides. They also do western food if youre homesick, but seriously make the most of the local cuisine. http://crowninntashkorgan.com/karakoramcafeesp.html
July 2010 The Spektator

So is the fresh fruit thrust upon you by street brick honeycomb of alleys, courtyards and houssellers, as is the native lagman dramatically es stands on millennia old foundations and is inbeaten out in front of you in the old towns res- habited by over 200 thousand Uighurs. Passing taurants. The streets leading o the main square by open doorways and courtyards you glimpse outside the Id Khah mosque are positively alive veiled women tending to simple domesticity; with the sight and smell of truly exotic food - poultry, wells and washing lines. Giggling girls pass up nothing if your stomach and balls are glide by on bicycles, their red frocks blurring big enough. against the uninterrupted desert browns of Immersion is Kashgars appeal - allow your- these ancient structures. In their open-fronted self to drift around the place, drawn this way workshops, leather skinned men turn tools from and that by the strikpale woods and haming curiosity of its daily A few blocks away a twenty mer horseshoes in front routine. An infectious metre concrete Chairman Mao of furious furnaces as momentum ebbs and skull-capped sorts gosows through the day would like to remind you that this sip over perpetually on a current of chat- is China after all, and modernity poured pots of tea on tering beards in teapavements broken by houses, climaxing after is coming to get you embroidered blankets. evening prayer when Kashgars beauty is in the Id Khah mosque spews worshippers out this timelessness. Then, without warning, gloof its yellow mouth, into the square and sur- balization slaps you with the bizarre motif of a rounding eateries. The square itself is an amphi- drably veiled woman carrying a live chicken in theatre of simple drama: frolicking families play a Morrisons (British supermarket) carrier bag. A with beach balls, scru y street kids make play- few blocks away a twenty metre concrete Chairgrounds of the public space. In the evening your man Mao would like to remind you that this is spine is shivered by the wail of the muezzin, as China after all, and modernity is coming to get late young men sprint, and greybeards hobble you. across the paving to commune with their Allah. No doubt there are plusses to modern ChiDuring the day, go and get lost in and nese cities, and there is indeed excitement to be amongst the Old City that stood in for Kabul had for the western tourist in uptown Kashgar, in box o ce hit The Kite Runner. This earthen with its confusion of familiar concrete structures
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and alien street stalls. But make no mistake, a more ruthlessly developed metropolis like Chengdu is now indistinguishable from a bland western prototype, and shares none of Kashgars historic saving graces. Where remnants of Chinas ancient civilisations possess a fragile charm, modern China simply has oddities. Not content with erecting monuments to their own recent mythology (hello again, Mao), I stumble across a bizarre circle of Snow Whites seven dwarves cast in concrete in front of a ferris wheel an adobe bricks throw from the Old City. The dichotomy is truly apparent in the most advanced beggars this young writer has seen. On the concrete streets of the modern city, x-rays of smashed limbs and tuberculosis-infected lungs are propped up next to the a icted. One even limply clings to an intra venous drip of piss yellow liquid, which feeds into his chest of weeping, livid red sores. The tension between modern China and its indigenous Uighur violently expressed itself in riots that left hundreds dead shortly after I left. Though there was no trace of violence during my stay (aside from Turkic tempers), the locals I spoke to were deeply aggrieved by what was happening to their city. One owner of a tour company told me his business prospects were bleak if Kashgars antique draw was erased; he was already struggling in a global recession year that had left the town empty of tourists. A taste
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of the future is o ered by the citys main bazaar, which has been sanitised and re-housed in a cavernous structure that has little to o er for those already familiar with Central Asias markets. More authentic oddities are to be found in the surrounding streets however. A cacophony of tenuously chained dogs bray at onlookers as they are bargained for next to bundles of hay sold out the back of a horse and cart. Cheerfully paraded out front of a carpet workshop, Kashgars indigenous weave has produced a rug celebrating (not commemorating) the 9/11 attacks. Con ned to the outskirts of the town is Kashgars famous livestock market, now reduced to having an instrumental commercial purpose rather than being the city social hub it once was. Having recently visited a similar market in Kyrgyzstan, I already knew the drill. Here, men in their element haggle over a variety of livestock drawn from large lorries, or pulled roughshod from the boots of cars. Children parade cavorting horses and women showcase the animals nal destinations - succulent fatty kebabs. The Kyrgyz version, I remember, was Siamese-twinned with a used car market. Similarly, Kashgars Old City also has an industrialized counterpart trading under the same name, but new Kashgar moves more like a polished juggernaut than a rusting lada. Brave the bus ride from hell to catch the original, before it loses out in this simmering sibling rivalry.

Far left: The bicycle is still the most used form of transport in China, the largely Islamic Xinjiang region included Left An Uighur man in the Old City Above A young girl helps a veiled relative navigate her way home after a visit to one of the mini-bazaars in Kashgars side alleys

July 2010 The Spektator