Here are some photos Galen took while we were in a ferris wheel that oddly has been constructed above the old city of Kashgar, along with a small amusement park. Interestingly, the ferris wheel was largely empty. Apparently, only a few people use it each day, even though it is open from 12 pm to …
Like in Urumqi and Turpan, Kashgar is blanketed in the omnipresent sound of police sirens. This is not so much because of the prevalence of crime. Instead, it is because ethnic tension has been racheted up. The police want to have boots on the ground, to discourage any large-scale violence. But I have been …
I talked about the Dutars a couple of days ago. We got to see them ‘in action’ at this tourist friendly restaurant, the Uighur players sitting around a plate of some sort of traditionalish breaded noodles.
The Tomb of Yussof Khass Hajip was in a quiet, leafy part of town, south of the city center. The entrance to the tomb was lined with grape vines, with shaded arbors on either side of the main passageway. At the entrance, there was a hulking block of carved chalk looming, for some reason, behind …
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 Kashgar sits on a flat plane, punctuated by this small hill. The neighborhood …
I’ve talked a lot about how different the Uighurs are from Han Chinese and how distinct Kashgar is from places farther east in China. But nothing does a better job of demonstrating that than Galen’s photography. Here are some of the portraits that Galen did while in Kashgar, mostly in the Sunday Market:
When we first arrived, Kashgar’s famed Sunday Market seemed cavernous but dead. It was nine-thirty in the morning, Beijing time, which meant that it was seven-thirty, Xinjiang time. Markets are normally bustling by seven thirty. In fact, if you get to many markets any later than that, you have missed the best time. But the …
We realized that Kashgar was a very sensitive area, though that realization would become very real for us when, as we were leaving the city a few days later, there was an assassination and the city was almost completely shut down. But on our arrival, we were still only moderately aware of how sensitive …
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Galen put together a great two minute video of our time around the Sunday market in Kashgar:
Kashgar. Something about that name rings of the end of the earth. Like Kathmandu or Patagonia, the city’s name is redolent of a wild and ancient greatness that leaves me wondering why it has not yet been appropriated as the name of a clothing company, as the other two names have. Kashgar is the epitome …