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| China |
Eight o’clock
breakfast in Kashgar is a lonely experience; the unappealing buffet is attended by a few
bleary-eyed staff and you eat alone, except for a couple of mystified Han
Chinese who, like you, are working on Beijing time but, unlike you, believe Beijing
time is everybody’s time.
We were in the
lobby waiting for Sadeek before nine. At 9.20 I wandered into the 'business
centre' and phoned his mobile. It was not switched on. At 9.30 we were planning
a day in Kashgar without him when Mohammed Yusuf bustled in, his face full of
peevish irritation.
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| We have now reached Kashgar (Kashi), in the far west of China, 4,000km from our start in Shanghai Officially all of China uses Beijing time, but Kashgar life is often two hours behind, in accordance with its longitude |
‘I have had a call
from Sadeek,’ he started. ‘He says he is ill.’ Big sigh. ‘He said you were
going to a village market, did you go to the Kashgar market yesterday?’ We said
we had. ‘It will be much the same only smaller. Do you still want to go?’ We
said we did. ‘Then I will take you.’
He may have had
other plans for his Monday morning, but this had become a matter of honour and
he was determined to do his duty, or, in this case, somebody else’s duty. As we
pulled out of the car park he made several unkind remarks about Sadeek, the
sort of remarks a devout Muslim might make about a fellow Muslim who owned a
bar. ‘And,’ he added, ‘I will find you another guide for Wednesday.’
We left Kashgar
heading south on the Karakoram highway. Our destination, Upal, was 50km away,
another 500 km and we would reach Islamabad via the world’s highest border
crossing at Khunjerab. Urumqi, the Xinjiang state capital, was 1200 km behind
us, while Beijing was some 3500 km east.
The Karakoram
Highway leaves Kashgar as a six-lane road. The inside lane is for donkey carts
and bicycles, for old women to sit and eat melons and for small boys to lead
five sheep to market on a string. The middle lane is full of heavily laden
trucks thundering towards Pakistan, equally laden local buses and the odd rich
person (like us) in a private car. The ‘fast’ lane is used by donkey carts and
motorcycle pick-ups heading in the opposite direction.
.JPG) |
| Mahmoud Kashgari, or someone who may look like him, beckons us in to his mausoleum near Upal |
His grave lies in a
small building at the top of a wooded slope. Beside his sarcophagus is a plate
bearing a likeness of the great man, his gaze wise and avuncular. As even the
Chinese do not claim to have invented photography in the eleventh century, the
likeness owes more to imagination than accuracy. There is also a small mosque
and a room for teaching. At the top of the hill, where the land stretches away
arid and stony, lies the graveyard for Upal’s common people, their ochre
tombstones blending timelessly into the ochre hillside.
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| I enter Mahmoud Kashgari's Mausoleum, Upal |
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| The grave of Mahmoud Kashgari |
A few kilometres on
and we entered the village. Here the road was further narrowed by encroaching
market stalls and slow moving animals. Mohammed parked by a row of restaurants
and suggested he would have a cup of tea while we looked at the market. ‘It
won’t take you long,’ he said, ‘it’s only a village market.’
.JPG) |
| Approaching Upal market |
.JPG) |
| Upal Market |
Mohammed was right that it was only a village market, but that did not mean it was small and certainly did not mean it was uninteresting. On one single site it was possible to buy everything you might want and several you never knew you needed. There were butchers and cloth merchants, vegetable and livestock dealers, shoe sellers and the inevitable kebab stalls.
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| Butcher's stalls, Upal Market |
There were people of all ages, dressed in bright traditional costumes, browsing, bargaining and hanging out with friends. If the people of Kashgar are two hours adrift of the rest of China, there were old men at this market who looked two centuries adrift of the rest of the world.
There was no way we
could be a part of the market, we were as alien and exotic to the buyers and
sellers as they were to us. It was enough just to be there and to feel the
pulse of life around us. Tourism is forever doomed to kill the things it loves:
the fishing village in a secluded cove becomes a five mile stretch of high rise
hotels, slices of paradise are packaged, denatured and sanitised to suit the
tastes of the rich. Kashgar is hardly Benidorm, but we were not the only
foreigners at the Sunday market and it sits inside the horizon of tourism. At
Upal we had slipped over that horizon, but human beings, like sub-atomic
particles, are changed merely by being observed. Mixed with the exhilaration of
just being there was the fear that we were the latest link in a chain of
foreigners relentlessly dragging that horizon behind us..JPG) |
| Upal Market |
We spent longer than
Mohammed had expected and he had consumed more tea than a man can reasonably
drink before we reappeared. He drove us back to Kashgar, but as we neared the
city he suddenly swung off the main road and we bounced along a roughly made,
potholed track. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘There’s a road block ahead,’ he
answered. ‘It’s quicker to go round it.’ Most of the traffic from the main road
had followed us. If the people of Kashgar going about their lawful business
knew about the roadblock and how to get round it, then so must any potential
terrorist. So, what was the road block for, if not just to irritate the locals?
It was the first time I found myself asking that question. It was not to be the
last..JPG) |
| Upal Market |
After the
obligatory visit to a silk carpet and jade warehouse, which was disappointing,
at least for those hoping to sell us anything, we found ourselves back at the
‘Best Uigher restaurant in Kashgar’. Mohammed recommended mutton pie, a
hitherto untried Uigher speciality. It consisted of pieces of sheep in a pastry
case; my mother used to make something similar in the 1950s. It was pleasant,
but hardly added a new dimension to our concept of Uigher cuisine. Around us
everybody else was ordering ‘laghman’, the mutton and noodle dish that is the
Uigher staple. Whenever a group of Uighers walk into a restaurant, there is an
animated discussion about what they will eat. Ideas are thrown this way and
that until eventually someone will say ‘laghman’ and they all smack their lips
and smile and order laghman like it is a special treat, although most of them
eat it twice a day, seven days a week. Usually, they will have a few kebabs on
the side. Mutton pie, on the other hand, really was a special treat so we awaited
the bill with apprehension. Pie for two and unlimited rose scented tea cost
just over £1.50.
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| The best Uigher Restaurant in Kashgar |
In the evening, we bumped into Sadeek as we passed through the lobby. ‘Sorry about this morning,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t well.’ We shrugged. ‘Never mind,’ he carried on brightly, ‘we’ll go to a different village market tomorrow.’ We explained that we had already seen a village market, had no need to see another one, and anyway we would not trust him to turn up for his own funeral. His face fell; he seemed genuinely hurt and surprised that we no longer had any need for his services. Lynne seemed particularly impervious to this attempt at boyish charm. He had had his chance, we told him, and he had blown it.
Later we ventured
into a self-styled ‘fast food’ restaurant on the road up to Id Kah Square. We
had passed it a number of times and had usually been invited in by the lad
sitting outside threading sheep onto skewers. It looked reasonably clean, so
now seemed the time to take up his invitation.
Perhaps I was
becoming overconfident, perhaps I had seen enough chunks of mutton for one
week, but I ordered a couple of kofta kebabs to go with the naan and the
regular kebabs. I watched the lad dip his hand into the bowl of mince and press
it onto the skewer, fat oozing between his fingers.
Lynne shook her
head. ‘They’re dangerous,’ she said, adding something about barge poles and not
touching. But was I listening? Of course not, I was too busy scoffing at her
apprehension while watching a cockroach scuttle across the concrete floor.
What passed later
is best left unrecorded. Suffice it to say, my morning began at half past three
and I failed to make it to breakfast at either Beijing or Kashgar time.
The next few hours
were spent watching yet more Olympic success for Zhong Guo while Lynne dealt
out medication liberally and sympathy rather more grudgingly.
By eleven, I felt
fit enough to face the world and we headed for the tomb of Abakh Hoja. Guided
by the ever-useful card from John’s Café, the taxi took us past the market site
and out to where the eastern suburbs began to melt into farmland. Turning off
the main road, he dropped us in a courtyard containing the cold drink and tat
stalls that surround the entrance to every tourist site.
In the 16th century
the southern Taklamakan was ruled by a Khanate based in Yarkand, 250 km to the
west. In the early 17th century Abakh Hoja displaced the ruling dynasty and
made Kashgar his capital. He was a strong and capable ruler, but his
descendants, seventy-two of whom share his mausoleum, struggled to keep
Kashgaria independent, caught as they were between the Dzungor empire to the
west and the Chinese to the east.
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| The Mausoleum of Abakh Hoja, Kashgar |
The tomb is also the reputed resting place of Ikparhan, a Uigher princess known to the Chinese as Xiang Fei - the Fragrant Concubine – because of her attractive floral scent. The tale of Xiang Fei varies depending on who tells it. In the preferred Han version, she was a granddaughter of Abakh Hoja and became a concubine of the Qin emperor Qianlong. After a difficult start she won him over by her beauty - and indeed body odour - became his favourite and lived a long and happy life, exemplifying the eternal bond between the Uigher and Chinese peoples. The Uigher legend has her being abducted from her husband’s bed, or even being a captured resistance leader. The stories concur in her winning over Qianlong by her beauty (and BO), but in this account her success upset the emperor’s mother to the extent that she had either had Xiang Fei murdered or forced her to commit suicide. This version suits the Uigher sense of grievance, and is just about acceptable to the Chinese as it allows the perfidious Qin to be contrasted with the cuddly Chinese Communist Party.
.JPG) |
| The graves of Abakh Hoja and his kin, Kashgar |
Constructed around 1640, the tomb is a sturdy mosque-like building, its towers and dome faced in dark green glazed tiles. That, at least, is how it looks in the brochures. In fact, although the surrounding garden is pleasant, the building itself is in disrepair and many of the tiles are missing. Inside, the tombs look dusty and neglected, while the adjacent teaching hall is only kept standing by large wooden props and is closed to the public. The roof of the open sided prayer hall is supported by a series of wooden columns, each one carved differently to display local skills. It also displays a lack of overall design and, again, a lack of maintenance. Perhaps the local government is less keen to provide funds now it is generally agreed that the concubine who inspired the Xiang Fei legend is actually buried in Hebei, several thousand kilometres away.
.JPG) |
| Prayer Hall, Abakh Joa Mausoleum, Kashgar |
Sadly, the tomb was
not the only thing in a poor state and we returned to our hotel for further
medication, a bit of a lie down and no lunch. China continued to do well in the
Olympics, showing particular skill in shooting and beach volleyball, but by mid-afternoon
I had endured more than enough televised smugness and felt just about strong
enough for a stroll round the oldest part of the city.
The entrance, a hundred
metres from our hotel, was clearly marked. As we climbed the steps up and over
the city wall, we were suddenly surrounded by a posse of young ladies all
elegantly attired in dresses of what we would later learn was atlas silk. This
was not, unfortunately, a result of my natural charm, but of their desire to
sell us tickets to enter their quarter of the city.
.JPG) |
| Kashgar, The Old City |
Old Kashgar is
jumble of mud brick buildings set in a maze of narrow streets. There was little
else to see and there were few people about, but those we saw were all dressed
in full local costume. Several of them stopped to check our tickets.
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| Kashgar, The Old City |
I suspect a medieval city would have smelled a lot worse, and it certainly would have lacked the spider’s web of cables criss-crossing each street and feeling its way up the front of every building, but otherwise there was nothing to say we were still in the present century. Many of the inhabitants have moved out to Chinese-style tower blocks. These may be ugly but, for their residents, running water, reliable electricity and the ability to keep warm in the bitter Kashgar winter are worth far more than the scenic charms of the old city. We cannot expect people to live in picturesque poverty for our amusement, but when most have left there will be an opportunity to create a museum town, like Ghadames in Libya. The Chinese, however, are much more likely to bring in the bulldozers, as they have done with much of the rest of Kashgar.
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| Kashgar, The Old City |
.JPG) |
| Not quite so old Kashgar |
This was the street of metal workers, and outside each shop, men sat cross-legged tapping designs onto vases and trays.
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| Metalworkers, Kashgar |
We returned to the
hotel for more medication, no dinner and an early night.
I felt better in
the morning. After breakfast we went down to the lobby where a young man called
Hassan introduced himself. He seemed pleasant, and if his English was not as
good as Sadeek’s, he was at least there and on time, which counted for a lot
more. We took our cases outside and he introduced us to our driver.
Before we left
Kashgar the driver had to report to the police station to obtain a permit to
leave the city. We sat outside and waited. After five minutes, he returned
grumbling and moaning, rooted around under the dashboard and produced a fire
extinguisher, which he took to show the bureaucrats inside. Perhaps I should
have been pleased by this untypical Chinese respect for health and safety, but
I was more irritated by a system that requires you to complete a box ticking
exercise before driving down the road to the next town.
This incident set
the tone for the day. Every time we moved from one municipality to the next,
which was often, there was a checkpoint where a policeman demanded documents.
Usually they were only interested in the driver and Hassan, but some insisted
on seeing our passports, too. As these were largely village bobbies from some
of the remotest villages in China, a British passport was a distinctly
outlandish document and finding the picture inside the back page was a major
challenge. As one officer took my passport, it fell open at my outdated
Mongolian visa. He studied this document minutely before nodding, returning the
passport and grunting wisely.
We drove through
cultivated fields and occasional habitation. The road was not busy, but there
was the usual assortment of carts, animals and children. Our driver’s technique
for dealing with hazards was to point the car at them and accelerate hard,
which was a little nerve wracking but seemed to work for him.
After 70 km we
reached Yengisar, the knife capital of Xinjiang. Knife crime may be a cause of
much hand wringing to the British, but to a Uigher it is a cultural statement.
Since the grenade assault on the Kashgar police station the BBC website had
carried news of a knife attack at a checkpoint. I suspect it was frustration
rather than terrorism, but what surprised me was that there had been only one
such attack.
The main street of
the small town is lined with large glass fronted showrooms dedicated to the
knife. There are displays of dazzling craftsmanship and scary lethality, but
all is not well in the world of Uigher knife making. Security regulations mean
that knives cannot be carried on buses, planes or trains and they can no longer
be sold mail order. They produce the knives, there is a market for them, but
regulations divide the knives from their market. We bought two rather finely
made nail clippers. They are undoubtedly the best nail clippers we have ever owned,
but are a rather sad reflection of the current impotence of Uigher culture.
Outside we heard
what sounded frighteningly like a volley of small arms fire, though the locals
seemed unconcerned. Then a funeral came into view. A truck decorated with a large
rosette carried the coffin and a dozen or so relatives who were lobbing
handfuls of firecrackers into the road to scare off demons. Behind them came a
cortege of twenty or so vehicles of assorted shapes and sizes.
.JPG) |
| Funeral truck, Yengisar |
We followed the funeral until they turned off at the edge of town. From there, our 200 km journey to Yarkand passed through a landscape sometimes yellow with sand, sometimes green with cultivation, but always punctuated by checkpoints.
Once the seat of a
great Buddhist kingdom, later the capital of Chagotai Khan (son of Ghengis) and
always a major city on the southern Silk route, Yarkand looked disappointingly
like everywhere else in modern China. The main remnants of the old town are the
Aleytun mosque – closed to foreigners - and the burial site of the kings of
Yarkand.
.JPG) |
| The tomb of Sultan Saiyidhan, Yarkand |
Less ambitious in
scale but better kept than the tomb of Abakh Hoja, who usurped their power, the
graves lie in a pleasant rose garden beside a wide, dusty street. Sultan
Saiyidhan has his own mausoleum, a delicate, wooden construction covered in
fretwork, but pride of place, as at Abakh Hoja, is given to a woman - though in
this case to a woman who is really buried there. Amannishahan, wife of a
sixteenth century khan, was a poet, musician and composer. Although she died in
childbirth in 1560 she packed enough into her 34 years to still be revered as
the mother of Uigher music. Twenty stone arches create a shaded veranda around
her mausoleum, which is topped by a blue tiled cupola. Light and graceful, the
building would be perfect if it was not for a nagging feeling that this was
where Walt Disney found his model for oriental architecture.
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| The tomb of Amannishahan, Yarkand |
Half an hour further on, we stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. Lynne and I ordered mutton pilaf while Hassan and the driver sat and discussed and threw ideas back and forward. Eventually the driver said ‘laghman’ and Hassan licked his lips and smiled. A decision had been made.
.JPG) |
| Roadside restaurant beyong Yarkand |
Eventually, at one
of the rare outbreaks of cultivation around a stream rushing down from the
Tibetan plateau, he finally took a breather. The driver headed off to stick his
head in the water, Lynne disappeared in the bushes on the far side of the road
while Hassan and I took it upon ourselves to water the nearest cotton bushes.
It was here that I realised I had left my sunglasses in the restaurant.
.JPG) |
| I inspect the watered cotton |
Arriving in Hotan
around five, we met Khalil, our new guide, and checked into our hotel. We were
surprised, even shocked, when Hassan announced that he and the driver were
going straight back to Kashgar. We were relieved to have survived 500 km in
daylight; I would not have wanted to take the return trip at all, and
especially not in the dark with a narcoleptic driver. I hope they made it.
The Chinese Silk Road
Introduction: The Silk Road in China
Prelude: Shanghai
1 Xi'an
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