Kashgar from Google Maps
The hilltop neighborhood stands like a mud lamp standing erect over Kashgar, looking out over the city. This hilltop neighborhood is the last remaining architecture preserved of this ancient city which Marco Polo once wandered through, seven centuries before.
View from above
Hilltop Neighborhood from Google Maps
Kashgar sits on a flat plane, punctuated by this small hill. The neighborhood built atop this hill was nothing special when it was built. Like everywhere else in Kashgar, it was a warren of brick-paved alleyways and mud houses, looking more like something from the Middle East than the Middle Kingdom. It is special now, only because it is the only remnant of Kashgar’s past that has been left untouched by the Chinese State.
This is all that remains of the original architecture that once filled Kashgar, one of the most important stops along the Silk Road. The seeds of the city’s architectural depredation were sown in 2009, in Urumqi, 700 miles to the east. Ethnic rioting began what has become a deadly game of cat and mouse between the Uighurs and the Han Chinese state. Authorities in Beijing feared that the impenetrable alleyways of Kashgar were breeding unhealthy Islamic ideas, allowing Uighur culture to not be alloyed with a more moderate Han Chinese culture. Thus, they issued an order to tear it down, claiming the government’s destruction was because the city would have been extremely dangerous during earthquakes.
Much of the old city of Kashgar has already been torn down and rebuilt, stucco painted to look like the original baked-clay architecture. This rebuilt section is the area that the government wants tourists to visit. It is clean and fairly wealthy, populated with Hondas, a sign of upper middle class success in China. I have read reports that, after the government tore down most of the city and rebuilt it, many of the poorer residents, those most disaffected by the Chinese state, had to relocate to the peripheries of the city, not having the money to buy into the redeveloped areas.
And that suits Chinese authorities just as well. They would prefer those Uighurs who are poorer, more religious and less willing to follow the Party line to be out of sight. Those Honda-driving merchants or bureaucrats are invested in the success of the Chinese state, so they are willing to take its orders. Those are the kinds of people authorities want the tourists to meet.
Hilltop Neighborhood from across a lake
Somehow though, this hilltop redoubt of traditional architecture has survived destruction and is filled with many of the same families who have lived there for centuries. Appearances and a source I talked with suggest that the government has declared a truce, leaving this one section of the city as it was, but it is unclear how long that truce will last.
Sad thoughts of destruction consumed me as we entered, but, as we wandered through the hilltop neighborhood, this melancholy dissipated with the treasures we found. A gang of young boys toted a large bag up the hill while old women sold corn at the entrance to the neighborhood. At each turn, we found an old neighborhood mosque with an arabesque doorway and two bulbous minarets above. The houses are built out of caked mud, with wooden logs acting as support structures. Some have rooms extended out over the alleyways, forming cavernous passageways between the homes.
We wandered through the city, hiding underneath a mosque entrance as flakes of light rain hesitated down onto us. Thinking of his camera equipment, Galen headed for shelter in the Sunday Market, but I wandered on.
Around another bend, a two year old boy wearing a striped shirt and no pants was leaning against the post of his parents’ house, brimming with cross-legged moxie. He looked at me, a little perplexed. He was hardly old enough to know why he felt I was so strange. I walked closer, and took some photos.
A woman, the boy’s mother or aunt, came out to the door post, staring at me. I showed her the picture, and she took my camera, disappearing into the house. Seconds later, a bouquet of women’s laughter issued out from one of the rooms. I could not see the boy’s female relatives laughing at the photo I had taken of their child, but, from a distance, I could share their joy.
I left with my camera, briefly heartened, before distant thoughts in my mind came closer. The boy with no pants, what would his future look like? Would his home survive? Would his culture be bulldozed? I left as sad as I had entered.
