Blogs from Kashgar, Xinjiang, China, Asia - page 4

Here we are late into Sunday afternoon, the Kashgar night market, which in fact moves along quietly all day then revs up in the evening . The street vendors setting up in every available square meter of pavement. Packed, vivid, a colourful array of people and their produce. Starting along the rag trade pavement, stalls that boasted, trinkets, shoes, constantly sorting through the piles, bargaining, packaging, paying, the cashier at the busy spots keeping an eye on the money. The crowd is a wonderful array of differently dressed people, the men are typically all very much similarly dressed, The older men wearing the felt hat. The elderly woman covered head to toe only lifting her heavy face cover to answer her phone, some prefer talking through the head rug. On the other end of the spectrum ... read more

My little team and I have had 4 very intensive days them guiding me through the daily lives of some of the 47 different nationalities that live in the Kashgar Region, a wonderful cultural experience. It was time for a gentler Tommy Tourist pace, including little tests of Bo’s vast collection of accumulated knowledge, unfortunately have been getting quite a lot of the eye rolling thing, I think I am a little slow for this lot. A couple of Uyghur men who’s company motto is to ”exceed ones expectations” and they have certainly done that. Both Muslim men, Abdul Guide, for 9 years, is a very devout 26 year old five times a day prayers if he can. A young man with more than his share of .tragedy who’s work is what keeps him going. Abdul ... read more

Day two headed out of town with Abdul Driver and Abdul Guide we found the Chinese. Like Bole a massive modern city is in the making. Guangzhou has moved in, pouring huge amounts of money into apartments, industry, businesses, etc and it was mentioned as in Bole, 80%of every train in, is Han Chinese who arrive here and seemingly disappear to their new city ghettos, so to speak. Every time we drove down the main street I got, the Chinese live on this side of the road and the Uyghur’s on this side of the road. Tall buildings are allowed on the Chinese side and not on this side, I must go for a wander down these separate streets and see if there is a different feel to them. At one point a van load of ... read more

Kashgar was not the China I was expecting when I arrived there about a week ago. I was expecting the slick Urumqi that I had left nearly a month before. A multi-ethnic, have a beer at the delicious night market, clean, livable place. Kashgar, even by Chinese standards, is something completely different. While it still has the busy night markets with delicious food (although boiled goat heads are a questionable choice), there is certainly no beer to be found in this Muslim outpost in the far west of the country. I cannot call it clean either. Again, sitting on the western edge of China also means you sit on the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert. When the wind blows, so does the dust, dirt, and sand from the east. So what DO you see in ... read more

"There once was an old farmer with one son and one horse. The horse ran away and the man was unlucky. When the horse returned it had found a mate, now the man had two horses and was very lucky. His son tried to ride the horse and fell off, breaking his leg. Now the man felt unlucky again but soon the nation went to war and all of the young men were called to fight. Luckily, because of his recently broken leg, the farmer's son was excused and he was again lucky" A swiss man told us this story at Chinese customs the other day as we were receiving a bit of unexpected news. The Irkeshtam pass bridges the border from Kyrgyzstan into China's wild west in a gap where the Tien Shan technically meets ... read more