I saw men playing this game drawn out in the dirt, but I could not tell what it was. Are they playing some version of backgammon, come to them via Persia and Central Asia? Or is this just a Uighur game? Or What? If anyone has any idea, leave your answers in the comments.
Way back when we were in Urumqi, I did a post on the awkward problem of timezones in China. Despite being the size of the U.S., including Alaska, China has only a single official timezone: Beijing Time. Beijing is in the east of the country. If you were to compare China’s geography to America’s, Beijing …
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 …
I have mentioned that Kashgar is a Muslim city that is known for trading. I wanted to detail this encounter we had. Walking down a lane in Kashgar’s old city, Galen and I came upon a handful of men with a sheep on a rope leash. We watched as one of the men picked up …
As many of the rest of the following posts will be on ethnic unity, I wanted to post these photos that I took in Xinjiang. Ethnic unity is the heavily propagandized virtue, and I often came across walls painted with propaganda messages. This propaganda is becoming increasingly important as ethnic unity breaks down, and interethnic …
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 …
Continue reading ‘If the Cops Ask, You’re Not Staying Here’ »
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 …
Recently, the Uighur economist professor at Ethnic University in Beijing was known as a moderate promoting Uighur rights in Xinjiang. When talking to the Uighur on the bus, my friend mentioned this economist in this post a few days ago: http://www.silkroadhitchhikers.com/?p=1667 I wanted to let yall know that he was recently given a life sentence …