CHINA

Cars may be banned in Kashgar’s Old City but motorcycles still whiz

by, sometimes at ludicrous speeds.

China’s westernmost city is as far removed from Beijing

as you could possibly fathom. Dave Hazzan unravels the

ancient city of Kashgar.

Photography by Jo Turner

70 get lost ISSUE 53 ISSUE 53 get lost 71

On Sunday morning in Kashgar the livestock market is the place to

be. We pack into the public bus to get there, the only foreign faces surrounded almost totally by Uighur men. Nearly all of them sport moustaches or wispy beards, black doppi (skullcaps) or fur hats and thick black coats. Not one appears younger than 50.

They all seem to know each other, judging by the lively conversation, but I couldn’t tell you what they’re chatting about. Even the young Chinese woman visiting from the coast doesn’t understand a word – the Uighur language is as different from Mandarin Chinese as Mandarin Chinese is from English.

After 20 minutes we disembark and march in procession for a kilometre along the highway. Some ride in horse-drawn carts full of sheep, or drive trucks crammed with cattle. The road is, as you can imagine, a minefield of dung, but these men are experts in avoiding it. They hop around the piles like 70-year-old Uighur ballerinas.

At the livestock market it’s pure madness. This is a carnivore’s dream palace, the anti-PETA, where huge pens of cows, black-faced sheep, donkeys, and even eight-foot-tall Bactrian camels with two humps are in stock.

Across from their live brethren are the departed ones. Men and women carve up the carcasses hung from hooks. They sell the meat both raw and cooked, wrapped in plastic or baked into meat pastries called samsas. This all seems to create a sense of foreboding among the animals, who appear to smell their buddies being cut and cooked.

Shoppers haggle. I watch two men barter over a cow, shaking heads, shrugging shoulders, pleading in tones that say, “What more can I do?” After two minutes the deal concludes with a warm handshake, big smiles and a fat wad of 100-yuan notes exchanging hands.

Through a combination of sign language and scribbling on my notepad, I ascertain I can aquire a sheep for 1200 yuan (about AU$230), a donkey for 5000 yuan, a very large cow

Caption CaptionNuts and sweets for sale at the Sunday bazaar.

Id Kah Mosque is the largest mosque in China.

Stalls sell meat and pastries at the Sunday bazaar.

CHINA

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for 15,000 yuan and, last of all, one of the towering, double humped camels for 22,000 yuan – about the same as a used car. I’m sure I could negotiate my way down, but I don’t dare try for fear of actually ending up with my very own hay-eating source of protein.

This is Kashgar, the end of the line in Xinjiang region, the westernmost territory in China. It’s closer to Tehran or Damascus than Beijing or Shanghai, not just geographically but culturally too.

The population here is mostly Uighur, an ethnically Turkic nation, like the peoples of the Central Asian ’Stans. They are mostly Muslim, though strict rules imposed by Beijing means their freedom to worship is curtailed. They can’t bring their kids to the mosque and the sound of the muezzin – whose amplified call to prayer rings out over almost all other Muslim communities – is silent here.

Full face veils are banned, and throughout the city messages from the government, printed in both Chinese characters and Uighur script, remind everyone that we all live together in harmony – whether you like it or not. A low-level insurgency has been boiling for years, but it’s rarely reported on, especially in English. The young Chinese woman we met on the way to the livestock market tells us the mayor of a small town a few hundred kilometres away was killed by separatists just the week before.

But within the east-Islamic style arches of Kashgar’s Old Town you get little sense of this. People live their lives normally. Kids head off to school in blue Adidas tracksuits with red kerchiefs tied around their necks. Parents open their restaurants and shops, and artisans

bang away in forges and weave handicrafts for the (almost exclusively Chinese) tourists. Normality reigns under the watchful eye of the Chinese Communist Party.

After the livestock market, we catch a taxi to the bazaar. The driver haggles over a price, because unlike most cities in China – but much like the rest of Central Asia – drivers in Kashgar refuse to use their meters. In the end, 25 yuan (AU$5) gets us there.

The bazaar is bursting – perhaps we’ve made a mistake visiting on a Sunday. At one point, in a heavily pedestrianised area, two cars sit nose-to-nose blasting their horns and shoppers spill around them. There’s a shove and a heave, and then we all push forward like we’re in the mosh pit at a heavy metal concert. I fear for myself but also my wife who, at five-foot-one, could easily get trampled, but

we make it out into an alley unscathed.

Outside the crowds, the market is full of wonders. My favourites are the old electronics: the little box TVs,

shortwave radios, turntables for 78s and boomboxes with tape decks and long, collapsible aerials.

The spice, tea and herbal medicine market is fascinating too. Here you’ll find loose-leaf tea from Sri Lanka, Pakistan and every region of China, each with a short description explaining which of your organs it benefits, which ailment it soothes or simply which is most delicious to drink. It’s the tea sellers who are most interested in our business, and they’re among the few here who speak English. They tell us that we absolutely must try some of their red Turkish tea, that we will never taste any of it again in our lives.

A statue of Chairman Mao in People’s Park reminds the locals who’s in charge.

Fresh dumplings in the Old City.

The bazaar is a snacker’s paradise.

Drinking tea and chatting is the most popular pastime in the Old City.

In the realm of traditional medicine, I can’t figure out what sicknesses are cured by the dried starfish,

preserved lizards or coiled snakes in glass.

CHINA

74 get lost ISSUE 53 get in the know Kashgar is the westernmost city in China and only a few hours’ drive from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, though not all borders are open to travellers. ISSUE 53 get lost 75

GET THEREKashgar is remote, so it’s best to visit as

part of a wider trip to China or Central Asia. For AU$810 China Southern Airlines can take you from Sydney to Kashgar, via Guangzhou – but be wary of long layovers. The city is also connected to the rest of China by air and high-speed rail. csair.com

STAY THEREKashgar Old Town Youth Hostel offers a

range of simple, comfortable private rooms, built around the courtyard of a traditional home. A double room with a bathroom starts at AU$33.

kashgaroldcity.hostel.com

TOUR THEREKashgar is easy enough to tour on your

own with the help of a Chinese phrasebook and a little guidance from the hostel’s front desk. Most of the attractions are within walking distance, except the livestock market, for which you’ll need to hop on Bus 23 from the bazaar or get a taxi.

GET PLANNING

In the realm of traditional medicine, I can’t figure out what sicknesses are cured by the dried starfish, preserved lizards or coiled snakes in glass. The spices smell rich and appealing, and the stall owners encourage us to stick our noses right down into the mix, to catch a whiff of what could be in tonight’s cooking.

Across the river is the Old City and its tall, thick brown walls. The Old City is only partially old – the government has been tearing it down bit by bit and replacing it with a ‘new’ Old City. For most tourists and those who seek to preserve historical authenticity, this is an assault on Kashgar’s history. But for many locals, it means a better and sturdier home.

You can tell the actual Old City from the new Old City by the houses’ adobe walls. The original ones are covered in graffiti and markings, but otherwise bare. The new walls are clean of graffiti, but decorated with reliefs and colourful signs.

To get lost in the Old City is one of Kashgar’s great joys. Most of it is closed off to cars (though not motorcycles) and it’s a labyrinth of streets and alleys. Some are peaceful, others heave with doddering oldies, merchants bellowing out today’s sale and children weaving through legs.

Outside the mosque in the park thousands of locals devour street food, drink juice and lounge about, enjoying their Sunday off.

Like everywhere else in China, in Kashgar you are never far from a restaurant. The Old City has hundreds, and the way to find the best is to determine where everyone else is eating.

Checking out the menus, you can see why the livestock market does such robust business. This place is hell for vegetarians. Grilled kebabs are the order of the day in most restaurants, and

the smell of roasting meat pervades the streets.My favourite though is the laghman noodles.

Energetically kneaded, stretched and pounded from a ball into long skipping ropes, the dough is then cut into squares, and topped in a tomato sauce with potato, onion, capsicum and lamb. It’s spicy, filling, costs about 10 yuan (AU$2) a dish and is available everywhere.

I’m more intrigued by the roast pigeon, which is served headless but otherwise whole. Its brownish-grey colouring is a bit of a turn-off, and it’s as chewy as beef jerky, letting you mash all the flavour out before you swallow.

As for the kebabs, quality varies. Lamb is a safe bet, but the great skewers of liver and whole kidneys give a strong-tasting boost to your iron levels.

The main way in and out of Kashgar is by train. The city sits at the end of the railway line, and if you want to go any further west it’s by car or bus into the ’Stans. We catch the line back east to Urumqi, the capital of the province. Urumqi is much bigger and has many more Han Chinese settlers, as well as more stern soldiers with machine guns on half-track military vehicles.

On the train the sharing of bread is common practice, and failure to offer your own is a major faux pas – the equivalent of backhanding your cabinmates across the face. Over shared provisions and Google Translate, our fellow commuters are desperate to know what we are doing in Kashgar. Business? Official work?

They’re chuffed when we spell out ‘tourists’ on our phones. They shake our hands and congratulate us on making it all this way, to the wild west of China.

Rounding up sheep at the livestock market.

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get in the know For over 2000 years Kashgar was a major post on the Silk Road from China to Europe.76 get lost ISSUE 53