Kashgar - when did Central Asian become ‘Chinese’? For the last five days we have been in Kashgar, an exotic city - the westernmost in China. The region we are in - Xin Jiang - is predominantly Muslim, and in very sense it is more Central Asian than Chinese. As Indie highlighted in his last political opinion piece (some of you may call it a rant), Kashgar represents a land that has been gradually usurped by the Chinese. Nevertheless, even in spite of increasing numbers of Han Chinese migrants here, the place feels like a far-flung Arabian Nights setting. The local language, Uighur, uses Arabic script; the mosque is literally the center of the city; and metalworkers, jewelers, cobblers and carpet-makers fill the dusty streets of the old town. We are in the desert here,
... read more
