Kashgar (1), The Sunday Market and The Former British Consulate: The Chinese Silk Road Part 5

A Uigher City as Far West as China Goes

08-Aug-2008

Through the Tian Shan Mountains to the Edge of the Taklamakan Desert

China

The Tian Shan (Heavenly Mountains) form the northern rim of the great depression that is the Taklamakan desert. Crossing the final fringes of the Gobi, the line from Turpan ran west, north of the mountains and then, as the afternoon wore on, turned south and began to rise.

The train climbs into the snow capped Tian Shan

We climbed steadily through Alpine meadows and beside rushing streams. In an upland emptiness of austere beauty we passed few signs of human activity; just one lonely outbreak of industrial ugliness and the remains of a small town that had been entirely levelled.

An outbreak of industrial ugliness in the Tian Shan

We laboured to the top of the pass beneath snow-capped peaks and then, as the train breathed an almost audible sigh of relief, we rattled down the other side. An hour later, and with surprising suddenness, the mountains stopped and we emerged from a valley mouth into the vast emptiness of the Taklamakan.

Suddenly we emerge into the Taklamakan desert

Dusk fell as we turned south, skirting the desert via a succession of oasis towns. As we drew into the substantial city of Korla – what do 400,000 people do in this desert outpost? – the Olympics were starting in Beijing and the opening ceremony was broadcast over the in-train radio. We may still have been in China but we had now travelled so far west we were closer to Beirut than Beijing, though hardly very close to either.

9.30 in the evening and tomatoes are on their way to market in Korla

09-Aug-2008

We slept well. In the morning we were still rounding the desert; waves of sterile sand, their peaks encrusted with salt, rippled into the distance.

Kashgar (or Kashi) is as far west as you can go and still be in China

Arriving in Kashgar and Finding a Problem to Solve

Nearing Kashgar, the sand gave way to cultivation; vine draped trellises, pomegranate trees hung with deep red fruit, tomatoes, maize and cotton just coming into flower. Occasional level crossings took us across dusty lanes where donkey carts waited our passing. Twenty-two hours after boarding the train, we arrived at Kashgar, the end of the line and the most westerly city in China.

Market gardens on the approach to Kashgar

The train emptied. Several hundred people streamed from the station while behind the barriers, hundreds more called out greetings to friends and relatives. One lone lad held up a sign in Chinese, but no one seemed to be greeting us. We stood to the side of the barriers, waiting for the crush to subside and hoping the matter would resolve itself. In a very few minutes the crowd had evaporated, leaving only us, a few stragglers and the lad with the sign. Clearly, he was not our greeter, not only because his sign was in Chinese, but because even the dullest messenger could spot the only two westerners on the train.

Our choice was to phone the travel company’s local representative or take a taxi to the hotel. We decided to do both. As we were retrieving the appropriate phone number a policeman approached us with the sign-holding boy in tow. ‘Xinjiang University?’ he asked hopefully. We shook our heads. He looked unreasonably disappointed given the circumstances, but he meant well.

A Kind Man Offers Help While a Taxi Driver....

Our local contact was, we discovered, in Urumqi, twenty-four hours back the way we had come. We were discussing whether the number was worth calling when we were interrupted by a well-dressed, middle-aged Uigher man. ‘Can I help?’ he said.

We explained the situation and said we were about to take a taxi to our hotel. He looked at our piece of paper and said, ‘I used to work for a travel company and I know this person in Urumqi.’ With that, he pulled out his phone and dialled the number. There was no reply. Undaunted he went on ‘and I know who she usually works with in Kashgar.’ Another dialling was followed by a brief conversation in Uigher. ‘But unfortunately not on this occasion,’ he said apologetically.

We thanked him and made a move towards the waiting taxis. ‘I have time before my train, would you like me to accompany you to your hotel?’

We had taken up too much of his time already, and we were not helpless. We thanked him again and said it was unnecessary.

I sat in the taxi enjoying the warm glow that is kindled when complete strangers take time and trouble to rebuild your faith in human nature. Then I noticed the taxi driver had not cancelled the meter after his previous fare and was proposing to overcharge us by a factor of two, if not three. The glow diminished, but it was less than two pounds and he was a poor man so I said nothing.

Kashgar was, clearly, a different sort of city. The old centre sits on an easily defended mound, and parts of the city walls still cling to the slopes. Outer Kashgar has undergone some ‘Hanification’ but the extensive old town and the twists of the Tuman River confound any attempt to impose a grid pattern.

Modern(ish) Kashgar - not quite a grid pattern

The Problem Resolves Itself

Our hotel was on the edge of the historic area. Security demanded that the taxi stopped on the main road, so we got out and trundled our cases up the access road and across the courtyard. The lobby was crowded and checking-in laborious. As we finished, we were approached by a small Arab-looking man in early middle age. He identified himself as Mohammed Yusuf, the manager of the local travel company. He had learned about us, he said, when a friend phoned from the station. It seemed our anonymous benefactor had come up trumps with his third call. Mohammed apologised, said he had no idea why the guide had not turned up, and offered to buy us lunch in recompense. It sounded fair to me.

The ‘Best Uigher Restaurant in Kashgar’ was in the new town. It had the same polished wooden furniture, massive curving staircase and balcony as the restaurant in Turpan. The food was the same, too; mutton with rice, mutton with noodles and mutton with skewers. Like most Uigher restaurants, there was no beer but they did a pleasing line in floral scented tea.

The best Uigher Restaurant in Kashgar

After a terse phone call, we were joined by Sadeek, our hitherto invisible guide. ‘Oh well, it happened,’ he said, which seemed a less than fulsome apology. Mohammed Yusuf made it clear that Sadeek would reimburse the cost of the taxi himself, and that if he wanted lunch he could buy his own.

Aftrewards, walking back to our hotel with Sadeek, we passed some damaged trees supported by very new wooden trusses outside a small official building. This, we learned later, was the customs post where seventeen men had been killed in a knife and grenade attack the week before. It was not, as we had imagined out near the Kyrgyz border, but two hundred metres from our hotel.

Sadeek seemed keen to make amends for his earlier failings, so we agreed to go to the bar he owned the following evening and discuss what he might be able to do for us.

A Walk and a Dinner in Kashgar

Later, we crossed the broad four-laned main road and made our way into the old town. Crossing the road was easy; the traffic that was not donkey powered was largely two wheeled, the few cars were mostly green coloured taxis.

Finding our way through the narrow streets towards Id Kah Square was a trip into a different world. The dirty, dusty buildings housed all sorts of shops; there were bakers and jewellers, a small flock’s worth of carcasses hanging outside a butchers and a medieval looking carpet seller sitting cross-legged on the high wooden threshold of his darkened cavern. Kebab stalls and restaurants abounded. Men sat in the street threading pieces of sheep onto huge skewers while others fanned braziers. It is always kebab time in Kashgar.

Butcher's shop, Kashgar

The men wore shirts rather than t-shirts, often white, frequently long sleeved. They all wore hats - usually the four corner Uigher hat - or at least skullcaps. Women were in colourful, traditional dress. Most wore headscarves, though some were fully veiled and a few covered their head and shoulders with a rough chocolate brown towel; how they could see where they were going was a mystery.

Motorbikes and pushbikes jostled among the pedestrians and the occasional taxi barged through, the driver leaning hard on his horn.

Id Kah Mosque and Square, Kashgar

Kashgar - the streets round Id Kah Square

The entrance to Id Kah mosque is on the corner of the eponymous square. Although it is the largest mosque in China, the entrance, painted a dirty yellow, is neither particularly big nor well built. Beside it sits an ornate clock tower while on the opposite side of the square a huge television screen showed a Uigher soap opera.

Id Kah Msque, Kashgar

Chairman Mao

Turning right, we emerged onto the wider, more Chinese, streets by a gigantic statue of Chairman Mao. Rather over-dressed for the climate, he stood on a plinth apparently hailing a taxi. The size is the message: this might be a Uigher city, but China is in charge and do not forget it.

The Chairman hails a taxi, Kashgar

As we circumnavigated the chairman seeking out the best place for a photograph, a Uigher girl stopped her bicycle and asked if we needed help. Short of shifting the sun into a more convenient position there was little she could do, but she shared the attitude of our anonymous friend at the station. The Chinese might find the Uighers revolting (or, at least in revolt); we generally found them pleasant and helpful.

John's Café and the Olympics

After our walk, we discovered a branch of John’s Café in the courtyard behind our hotel. There are several of these backpackers’ retreats dotted around Xinjiang. They offer internet access, travel advice and ticketing, and food and drink. They also give away small laminated cards with useful destinations printed in English, Uigher and Chinese. We pocketed one for the next morning, but had a little more difficulty acquiring a cold beer as the waiter first had to be prised away from the television Olympic coverage.

John's café, Kashgar

Dinner in Kashgar

Later, after a shower and our own look at the Olympics, we set out to eat. In the hotel lobby, half the staff were gathered staring upwards at a television suspended from the ceiling, their body language urging the Chinese competitor towards a medal.

In Id Kah Square it was prayer time, and although we had heard no muezzin, men were making their way towards the mosque in substantial numbers. With intense looks on their faces they walked, alone or in small groups, with steady determined steps. The mosque is considered the centre of Uigher resistance to Chinese rule and there was a feeling of tension in the square. The big screen was obliviously blaring out another soap opera to a much smaller knot of worshippers. Uighers, whether religious or secular, seemed less concerned with Olympic success than the Chinese staff at John’s Café and our hotel.

The busy street beyond was packed with eating places, some permanent, some set up just for the evening. Here and there, rows of people sat on benches watching shop front televisions. Clearly, soap operas are important even to those who do not own a TV, though the Olympics were again conspicuous by their absence.

Watching the big screen television, Id Kah Square, Kashgar

The choice was not appealing. Neither cleanliness nor variety seemed to be huge priorities in Kashgar. There were bread shops and a hard-boiled egg stand, there was a man frying fish, and there were kebabs, kebabs and more kebabs.

We were hovering outside a restaurant that looked only moderately filthy when the young man in charge engaged us in conversation. ‘What’s that?’ I asked pointing at what looked like a meat and potato stew bubbling in a huge wok. ‘Corned beef,’ he said, though that clearly lost something in translation.

We ordered some ‘corned beef’, noodles, a naan and, because it seemed eccentric not to, half a dozen kebabs. The food was good, the sheepy kebabs were good and the ‘corned beef stew’ was nicely spiced and satisfying. The meat was tender and tasty, certainly not beef and probably not horse; maybe it was donkey, an animal with many functions in these parts.

We were charged the same minimal sum as the locals, which is always pleasing. ‘Xie xie,’ I said as the lad handed over my change. ‘But that is Chinese,’ he said, ‘I am Uigher.’ I am ashamed to say that my sole word of Uigher was ‘naan’, a word that was hardly new to me, or anyone else who has ever eaten in an Indian restaurant. I asked him the Uigher for ‘thank you’. ‘Rehmet sizge,’ he said. ‘Rehmet sizge’ I said back and resolved to use it more.

Back in Id Kah square discrete floodlights illuminated the front of the mosque. A small crowd sat or squatted to watch the news on the big screen, while others perched on low walls talking and smoking. Families strolled in the evening cool, children played with tops or chased each other across the square. The clock tower - official Beijing time - said it was half past ten, the real local time was probably about eight. Surrounded by Uigher buildings and several hundred people, none of whom were in western dress, we felt that we had finally arrived somewhere foreign and very alien to our normal experience. Globalisation makes it harder and harder to find such places, and we felt privileged to be there.

Id Kah Square, Kashgar

09-Aug-2008

Inside Id Kah Mosque

Next morning, before we set off for the Sunday market, we took a closer look at the Id Kah mosque. Our information was that it was open to non-Muslims provided it was not prayer time, though zealous locals sometimes shooed foreigners away. To maximise our chances of admittance Lynne wore a long sleeved blouse and carried a headscarf, I put on a long sleeved shirt. We need not have bothered. Chinese tour groups were wandering about in shorts and t-shirts, the only matter that concerned zealous locals was selling tickets.

Originally built in 1443, Id Kah is the oldest and most active mosque in China. It was never much of an architectural gem and has been refurbished so many times, somewhat extensively after the Cultural Revolution, that there is little sense of antiquity. Inside the walls is a pleasant rose garden, two outdoor pulpits and a large, very plain, central prayer hall rather spoiled as a place for meditation by the guardian playing tunes on his mobile phone. Ten thousand people regularly attend Friday prayers but Sunday morning was distinctly quiet.

Kashgar Sunday Markets

A little disappointed we returned to the hotel to change, hopped in a taxi and showed our laminated card from John’s Café.

The New Livestock Markets

The Kashgar Sunday Market is the region’s main attraction. Up to a hundred thousand people from a dozen ethnic groups come from cities, villages and nomad encampments to trade everything from a bull to a bolt of silk, from a tractor to a teacup. At least that is how it used to be. The authorities recently decided the market had outgrown its site, and banished all livestock to a new location outside the city.

Arriving at the Sunday Market, Kashgar

The split may have taken the edge off the excitement, but arriving at the animal market, it seemed like all the donkey carts in Asia were converging on this one place. There were carts of melons, carts of carrots and carts full of men dressed up for a day out. And there were sheep; all along the dual carriageway we passed lorries packed with dozens of them, donkey carts with four or five ewes strapped on the back, and men leading one or two on a leash.

Arriving at the Sunday Market, Kashgar

Our taxi dropped us at the entrance where would-be traders were dealing with the inevitable Chinese bureaucracy. Along the roadside, men sat in chairs, sheets round their necks, as a team of barbers wielded cutthroat razors.

Getting a shave, Kashgar Sunday Market

Threading our way through the crowd, we stood beside a mountain range of melons stretching into the middle distance.

Melon Mountain, Kashgar Sunday Market

Beside it, new carts were laid out for inspection, and a lad of about thirteen operated a makeshift smithy hammering out spare parts.

Smithy, Kashgar Sunday Market

There was a section for cattle, compact healthy looking animals, a section for donkeys, their braying audible half way to Beijing, but by far the largest area was given over to sheep. They were there in their thousands, standing side by side, tethered in long lines, with looks of patient resignation on their benign if not very intelligent sheepy faces. The local breed has no tail, but instead sports a large cuboid of fat on either buttock like woolly bookends.

Sheep, Kashgar Sunday Market

There was haggling and spitting, laughing and shouting, backslapping and, very probably, backstabbing. It was exclusively male, almost exclusively Uigher and not in the slightest Chinese

Kashgar Sunday Market

The authorities intended to separate off the livestock, but already there are vegetable and fruit stalls and kiosks selling the sort of gewgaws a farmer might take home for his children. Officialdom is no match for human nature, and it cannot be long before they discover they have not one market split in two, but two separate full-scale markets.

Vegetable stalls at Kashgar Sunday Livestock Market

The Original Market

Another taxi, another flash of John’s laminated card and we were at the original market site on a bend of the Tuman River. It is a sizeable river with a fair flow of water, all doomed to evaporate in the desert. Outside the permanent market, donkey carts were parked like cars outside Tesco’s, though in less orderly rows. Inside a huge crowd drifted along the alleys examining the produce.

Carts outside the original site of the Kashgar Sunday Market

Each trade had its own area. There was a row of spice stalls, a square of shoemakers and menders; there were areas for gold, silver, silk, jade, cheap clothes, expensive clothes, scrubbing brushes and washing powder. Whatever you needed there was a choice of vendors competing to sell it to you. There were women in this market, too. Housewives bought vegetables, veiled women haggled with stallholders, and some of the brown towels were now round their owner’s necks rather than over their heads and being used to wipe away sweat. How they ever managed to fit in a livestock market was a mystery.

Market stall, old Kashgar Sunday Market

Lunch at the former British Consulate

Our hotel which was built in the grounds of the former British Consulate where the redoubtable Sir George and Lady McCartney spent 28 years providing friendship and hospitality to the explorers, adventurers and antique thieves of the early twentieth century. They also kept a close watch on the Russian Consulate as the two mighty empires played the ‘Great Game’ of spying and manoeuvring, seeking to exert their influence over Chinese Turkestan, India and the ailing Ottoman Empire. The railway to Kashgar was completed in 1999 and the tarmacked road only twenty years earlier. One hundred years ago the city must have seemed fabulously remote.

The consulate building is still there, across the courtyard, through another wing of the hotel and into the garden at the back. The single storey house is now, somewhat prosaically, a Chinese Restaurant, and that was where we went after our morning at the bazaar.

We sat on the veranda where the great men of far eastern exploration had sipped their sundowners, and ate chilli chicken and drank Xinjiang beer. A group of four English women sat in the courtyard below, having a long and loud discussion with the waitress about the need to avoid anything too spicy, heedlessly undermining all our hard work on this subject. Under a tree, a group of well fleshed Chinese businessmen were working their way through a typical Sichuan dish that required them to hunt for little pieces of chicken in a huge mound of red chillies. They were involved in one of those Chinese competitions where each has to prove his wealth and generosity by buying more and bigger dishes than the others. They were true trenchermen, but for all they ate they left as much on the table, waiting to be thrown away.

Lunch at the former British Consulate, Kashgar

Sadeek's Bar

Later we ventured down to Sadeek’s Bar. Through another hotel courtyard, we found a small fenced off area with tables and chairs. At the end was a wooden hut with a sign saying ‘Sadeeks Bar’. It looked like a beach bar, though few places in the world are further from a beach.

Seven or eight people were clustered round a table where Sadeek held court. The other tables were empty, so we chose one and sat down. Sadeek brought some beers and sat with us for a while. A stocky character in his thirties with a baseball cap permanently clamped to his close-cropped head, he spoke excellent English and told us of how he had studied English at university and then become a primary school teacher. Finding that frustrating he had moved to Shanghai, where his Central Asian looks must have been as exotic as our pale western faces. He had returned home to marry, open a bar and do some guiding on the side. He suggested we might like to see a village market as a contrast to the big market today. We agreed a price for the trip and he arranged to pick us up at our hotel at nine o’clock the next day – Beijing time.

More Olympics and a Fish Supper

Back in the hotel, we caught up with the Olympics. A typical hotel television has some fifty channels; twelve from the national broadcaster, CTV, plus a mishmash of commercial and local, sometimes very local, stations. At any one time forty or more will be showing either a game show, a soap opera or a sword and sorcery epic – essentially a soap opera with costumes and magic. CTV9 is the English language channel, offering all the news they think you should hear, worthy but dull travelogues and the occasional studio discussion in which foreign experts are permitted mild criticism of the Chinese government, although the presenters quickly point out the errors of such thinking.

The Olympics sprawled across five of the CTV channels, though not CTV9 which, being an international station, was barred from Olympic broadcasting. The variety of sports covered was impressive, shooting, weight lifting, beach volleyball, in fact any sport in which a Chinese competitor was winning a medal. It was early days but the hosts were obviously doing well. We understood nothing of the regular Olympic round-ups, but we did notice that almost every sentence started with the words Zhong Guo – China – and clearly Zhong Guo was mighty pleased with itself.

Later we returned to the street beyond the square, although again nothing seemed particularly appealing. An old man with a dirty apron stood behind a table where chunky fillets of unidentified fish lay on a metal plate. Beside him a wok of boiling oil sat on a brazier. No bacteria could survive that seething cauldron, so we perched on his rickety wooden bench and indicated we would like some fish.

Two fillets disappeared into the oil and a few moments later reappeared on grubby metal plates being pushed in our direction. We ate with our fingers, picking out the bones and dropping them onto the pavement. It was a good, firm-fleshed river fish, not unlike Nile carp, and the oil had contained a judicious mixture of spices and seasonings.

We bought a couple of buns and strolled back to the square nibbling them. They were clearly baked the day before, or at least long enough ago to have become solid and unappealing.

We sat on a low wall in the square watching a young boy push his even younger sister in a pushchair. We suspected their parents were around, but could not see them. The lad looked at us, looked at our bread rolls, walked over and held out his hand. The smaller towns of the previous week had been almost entirely free of beggars, but Kashgar, like Xi’an and Shanghai had its compliment. This boy looked far too well dressed to be a beggar but we gave him the bun anyway. He ran off, looking remarkably pleased with something so unappetising.

The Chinese Silk Road

Introduction: The Silk Road in China
Prelude: Shanghai
1 Xi'an
2 Jiayuguan: A Total Eclipse and the Last Fortress under Heaven
3 Dunhuang: Dunes in the Gobi
4 Turpan: Ruined Cities of the Silk Road
5 Kashgar (1):  The Sunday Market and the Former British Consulate
6 Kashgar (2): Upal, Abakh Hoja and the Old Town
7 Hotan (or Khotan or Hetian): City in the Desert
8 Urumqi: A By-word for Remoteness
Postscript

Turpan, Ruined Cities of the Silk Road: The Chinese Silk Road Part 4

15 years ago we reached Turpan on our journey along the Chinese part of the Silk Road. Old posts were longer than those I write now; they covered a location rather than a single day. There is a lot in it, and I enjoyed re-reading it (if that is any recommendation).

The Turpan Oasis, the Hottest Place in China at the Hottest Time of Year

Dunhuang to Turpan

China

Sleep comes easily with the gentle rocking of a moving train, and vanishes as quickly when the rocking stops. Somewhere in the night we had a long halt in the wind-scoured desert. Then we were moving again, but this time in the opposite direction. This would have been mildly disconcerted had not the rocking lulled us back to sleep.

Sunset over the Gobi Desert

We had watched the sun set over flat and featureless desolation. Morning brought more of the same, but not quite so flat. Low cliffs trailed aimlessly through a landscape punctuated by odd heaps of grit, like a vast builder's yard abandoned at the dawn of time. Empty culverts channelled non-existent water away from the railway line and there were several outbreaks of nodding donkeys - there is oil and gas below the grit. The odd patch of greenery was accompanied by sad, neglected buildings, and twice, in the middle of nowhere, we passed huge industrial plants, their black smoke a sharp edged stain on the blue desert sky. We seemed to take forever to pass a distant wind farm

Wind Farm in the Gobi

08-Aug-2008

Arriving in Turpan

Despite feeling that we were going in the wrong direction, we duly arrived at Turpan station an hour or so later than scheduled.

Dragging our cases,we joined the crowd pushing past the ticket inspector and emerged into the small square of what seemed to be a frontier town. Around the perimeter stalls were being set up but despite this activity, there was a peculiar air of nothing happening.

We have just alighted from the overnight train from Dunhuang to Turpan

No one seemed to be there to meet us. Then we saw a man holding up the base of a cardboard box and staring at us with a worried expression. We walked towards him. Encouraged, he walked towards us. When we were right in front of him we could see our name, or some approximation to it, scrawled in ballpoint pen on the cardboard. We identified ourselves and the man looked relieved. He pulled a phone from his pocket, dialled a number and passed it to me.

“Hello, I’m Rana, your guide.” The voice had a distinct American twang. “My train has been delayed by high winds. I am sorry. I am still in Urumqi, but the driver will take you to your hotel. I hope to be able to join you for lunch.”

I returned the phone to the driver who pocketed it, smiled and took charge of our cases. “Our guide’s late,” I told Lynne, “wrong sort of sand on the tracks.”

Turpan station is, we discovered, a small settlement some thirty kilometres from the city itself. Beyond the square we drove through an area of industrial dereliction as ugly as any we have ever seen, and then we were crossing the desert grit on a straight and well-made road.

After twenty minutes, grit gave way to vineyards and we were in Turpan. Pleasantly bright and clean, it was big enough to be a city yet small enough for the feeling of being in an oasis to be ever present. The wide streets with a regular grid pattern were very Chinese, but among the usual buildings, others were of a very different design. Domes and arabesques reminded us we were now in Central Asia, well beyond the Chinese heartland. In the Xinjiang Autonomous Region the ethnic majority are Uighers, a Turkic people whose language is written in a modified Arabic script. They make up 80% of Turpan’s population and it was strange seeing Arabic signs jostling for space with the Chinese lanterns.

Turpan, the wide streets on a regular grid pattern are very Chinese

Our hotel and its courtyard occupied a whole block approached by a narrow road off one of the main thoroughfares and it was here we first encountered Xinjiang security. The driver was stopped and told to open the boot. Satisfied that it only contained suitcases we were waved through. At reception, the staff searched our cases before checking us in, though this was done with such polite embarrassment I doubt they would have troubled a genuine evil-doer. Apparently convinced we had not come to blow them up, they provided us with a pleasant ground floor room overlooking a garden, and a belated and much needed breakfast.

A City Stroll

Lynne had a rest and I took a walk round the city. After a cool morning, it was warming up and I moved slowly, observing the locals to see if I could tell Uigher from Han Chinese. Those wearing the distinctive four-cornered Uigher hat made it easy. There were many others whose faces and colouring were clearly not Chinese though they did not advertise the fact with their headgear. With the majority, however, I was unsure. If 80% of the people I was seeing considered themselves Uighers, then there must be plenty of Chinese looking Uighers and inter-marriage was common, and had been going on for a long time. The physical differences between Chinese and Uighers, I discovered, would become more pronounced as we travelled further west.

Qingnian Lu

Turpan oasis is famed across China for its grapes, and much of the land is covered with vineyards. A pedestrian street roofed with a vine-covered trellis covers a city centre stree called Qingnian Lu. It is pleasant to walk through China’s hottest city in the dappled shade of trailing vines. That, at least, is the theory and it so very nearly works. In late July the grapes were ripe - some two months earlier than in Europe – and in the fields the harvest was in full swing. In town only the birds were harvesting the trellised grapes and many inevitably fell to the floor. This was good news for the large and healthy gerbil population, but meant that the marble surface was uniformly sticky with grape juice. All progress along Qingnian Lu was accompanied by the sound of shoes tearing themselves from the pavement. It is, I am sure, preferable to chewing gum, but harder to avoid.

Qingnian Lu, Turpan

Cartloads of melons were stationed at road intersections, the donkeys and drivers waiting patiently for custom. Donkeys are easy to find in the countryside, but this was the first time I had seen donkey carts in urban China.

A Turpan melon donkey
(photographed that evening)

Lunch with Rana

When Rana arrived there was no doubting her ethnicity. A slim and very attractive girl in her early twenties; her skin was too brown, her eyes were too round and her shoulder length dark hair had too much body for anyone to think she was Chinese. Her American accent, she said, was due to an American teacher. Like all the other guides we met, she had never travelled outside China.

>We visited a Uigher restaurant for lunch. The heavy wooden furniture, staircase and balcony could not have been less Chinese. Rana asked, somewhat meekly, if she and the driver should eat with us. We said ‘yes’, aware that although it is normal for guides in the Middle East and North Africa to eat with their clients, the Chinese invariably disappear to a table on the far side of the restaurant. The food was different, too, as were the eating utensils. Chopsticks were available but most diners used metal spoons. The mutton pilaf, with a yoghurt accompaniment, was purely central Asian while the 'macaroni' dish[it was actually laghman, of which much more later, but I did not know that at the time] - also containing mutton – was a reminder that Marco Polo had passed this way. Mutton kebabs were already slightly too familiar, but here they were in their heartland, not the exotic dish of a minority community.

>Finding the pilaf a little dull I reached for a pot of what I took to be chilli pickle and dug in a spoon. “Stop!” Rana said urgently, almost shouting. “It’s chilli.” “I know,” I said, letting a dollop fall onto my rice. I mixed it in and was transferring a spoonful to my mouth when she said: “Perhaps you should try a little less.” I ignored her well-intentioned advice. She and the driver waited expectantly for an explosion that never came. It was actually not particularly hot, so I stirred in some more while the driver sat slack-jawed with amazement, shaking his head as though witnessing an event as rare and remarkable as the eclipse.

Jiaohe

In the afternoon we visited Jiaohe on the edge of the oasis some nine kilometres east of Turpan. Everywhere, grapes by the million were being packed into boxes for transport to market...

Grapes ready to go to market, Turpan

Turpan Raisons and Drying Houses

It is, however, not fresh grapes that make Turpan famous but raisins. Every road was lined with grape drying houses, single storey mud brick cubes with a lattice of missing bricks to allow circulating air to slowly shrivel the hanging bunches of grapes into intensely sweet green raisins.

Grape drying houses line the road,Turpan

Jiaohe City

The city of Jiaohe had a spectacular setting. Ten metre high cliffs at the confluence of two dry rivers provided a plateau with secure naturally defences on three sides, while a ditch protected the fourth. The city was founded around 100 BC as the capital of the Jushi Kingdom. Around 450 AD it became part of Tang dynasty China and remained so until the ninth century when it briefly became part of the Uigher Empire before being overrun by the Kyrgyz in 840. Being on the Silk Road ensured the city survived all these changes, but as the importance of the Silk Road waned Genghis Khan paid a visit, after which the Jiaohe was abandoned.

Jiaohe - a site with natural defences

Walking through the ruins the street plan is discernible - even where modern paths have not been laid - but the mud brick has spent seven hundred years reincorporating itself into the desert and the buildings are too far gone to work out what they were.

Walking the remains of Jiaohe's streets

The central Buddhist temple is obviously the remains of an important building and I circled it three times in a clockwise direction to show proper devotion and ensure our share of good luck.

The Buddhist temple, Jiaohe

Looking through the ruins and across the ravine to the grape drying houses beyond, it is easy to see that building methods have not changed that much. The sandy colours of the buildings ancient and modern blending so well that through half closed eyes it was impossible to tell which was which.

The old walls and the modern grape drying houses blend remarkably, Jiaohe

Karez Irrigation Canals

On our way back we stopped to see the karez underground irrigation channels. While Turpan hasfertile soil but minimal rainfall, water is plentiful in the snow-covered Tian Shan Mountains, so an underground canal was dug from the mountains to the city. They sank a series of vertical shafts, tunnelled from one to the next and so allowed gravity to deliver cool, clean water all the way from the mountains to the people, the gerbils and the vineyards they share. We descended the rocky steps into the cool interior and watched water flow from darkness, through the section lit for tourists then off into more darkness.

The longest canal in the Turpan area runs for over 30 kilometres and altogether there are almost a thousand with a total length of some 5000 kilometres. The earliest karez date from the second century BC and are similar to the qanats in Iran. The Chinese, reluctant as ever to give credit to anyone else, claim their system is entirely different. It is not, though the earlier Persian system was slightly more sophisticated; a combination of qanats and wind towers allowing them to maintain a supply of ice in the middle of the scorching desert. The concept, like so much else, moved along the Silk Road. It came east to China, spread west throughout the Middle East and was picked up by the Romans. They built qanat systems in North Africa, from where the Moors took the idea to Spain. The Spanish in their turn built qanats in South America. The water running cool and clear in Turpan to this day is testament to much visionary hard work many hundreds of years ago and to the importance of the Silk Road.

Karez underground irrigation system, Turpan

Wine Tasting and a Special, if Busty, Malt Whiskey

Although Uighers are Muslims, and China has no great wine making tradition, it would be contrary to human nature if this land of vineyards produced only table grapes and raisins. Outside the karez well, we sat at a large wooden table to taste three local wines.

Poured by a girl who looked Chinese but was, Rana assured us, Uigher, we first sipped a light fragrant red, like a red Muscat, then a wine labelled Cabernet Sauvignon, which tasted as if it might have been but probably was not, and finally a wine made from wind-dried grapes with more than a passing resemblance to Tuscan Vin Santo. Pleasantly surprised by the quality, I would have taken a bottle of the wind-dried wine home, had the open bottle not been the last they had. As it turned out this was a blessing though (see Khotan Airport Shenanigans), at the time, well disguised.

Later, while fruitlessly searching Turpan's poshest supermarket for 'wind-dried grape wine', my eye fell upon the familiar black label of a much-respected Irish whiskey. I was surprised to see it priced at 50 pence until I looked more closely. Perhaps 50p was indeed a reasonable price for a bottle of ‘Bushtits Single Malt Whiskey’. I was amused but did not buy any – a failure I have regretted ever since.

09-Aug-2008

Gaochang

The Flaming Hills

The following morning we drove through the Flaming Hills towards the ruined city of Gaochang. From afar the shimmering heat, reddish rocks and floating clouds give the impression that the hills are ablaze, whilst from the middle distance they resemble a sleeping red dragon. Well, that is what the Chinese tourist authorities want you to see. The less imaginative can easily observe a small range of very hot rocky hills.

The Flaming Hills, near Turpan

The sixteenth century epic ‘Journey to the West’ is a highly fictionalised account of the adventures of the seventh century monk Xuanzang and his companions on their quest to fetch Buddhist texts from India*. Once beyond the borders of China they meet all manner of grotesques, particularly in the Flaming Hills where flesh-eating demons were the least of their problems. We, on the other hand, drove through with remarkable ease, passing the ‘Journey to the West’ theme park on the way - if a fenced off rectangle of desert containing several camels and few statues can be called a theme park. Charitably, we decided it was a ‘work in progress’.

Nearing Gaochang, we ran into the first of the countless roadblocks that we would meet in Xinjiang. It proved one of the more difficult as our driver was not displaying a current insurance sticker. The policeman had him out of the car for a long, serious lecture. The necessary sticker was, it turned out, in the glove compartment and our driver sheepishly extracted it and stuck it on the window. After much finger-wagging we were allowed to proceed.

Gaochang City

The ruins of Gaochang date from the same period as Jiaohe and are similar, though without the dramatic setting. The advantage Gaochang does have, however, is a working public transport system. Beyond a corrugated iron gate in a corner of a vineyard, donkey carts were waiting to take visitors to the centre of town.

Riding into Gaochang on 'public transport'

We clopped along steadily, passing ruined walls, large and small, standing at all sorts of angles, making it impossible to discern streets or houses or much of a road plan.

Walls in Gaochang, though nobody has any idea what they were the walls of

Lacking Jiaohe’s natural defences, Gaochang has been vulnerable to military and non-military attack. Long ago the locals discovered that the stucco covered mud bricks made effective fertiliser and they have been ploughing them into the surrounding fields for generations. Ancient monument abuse is not a peculiarly Chinese idea - stones from Hadrian’s Wall are incorporated into many Northumberland farmhouses - and it stopped the instant they realised there was more money to be made out of muppets like us who come to see the monuments. Not that there were many, or indeed any, other such muppets the day we were at Gaochang. There is, of course, important archaeological and conservation work being done but judging from the rebuilding of the central hall and the scaffolding all over the Buddhist temple, the authorities seem more concerned with over-restoration than conservation.

Over-restored Buddhist temple, Gaochang

Ignoring the building work and walking slowly through the ruins we tried to recreate the city in our minds. The wind soughing gently through the shattered walls became the sound of long-dead merchants haggling in the bazaars. We imagined women making their way to the wells where now wild watermelons struggled in the parched soil, their fruits perfect miniatures of the cultivated plant....

Wild watermelons, Gaochang

...and lizards skittered in the sand. It was some time before we returned to our donkey who was waiting patiently to transport us back to the modern world.

Well camoflaged lizard, Gaochang

The Bezeklik Caves

Leaving Gaochang, we returned to the Flaming Hills, survived another roadblock and made our way to Bezeklik.

The Bezeklik Caves were hewn into a ledge below the lip of a steep valley. Like the caves at Mogao, they contained a treasury of Buddhist art from the great days of the Silk Road. Being a much smaller site, we were able to see most of the caves, but there was, sadly, little worth seeing. The arrival of Islam in the tenth century had moved religious fanatics to scratch out the face of every Buddha, angel and demon. The arrival of Europeans in the nineteenth century saw collecting fanatics spirit away any murals that might have survived the Muslims. The arrival of the Red Guards in the twentieth century inspired political fanatics to destroy anything that had survived the Muslims and the Europeans. We saw only sad hints of former glories.

The Bezeklik Caves

At the end of the terrace, an old man in a four-cornered Uigher hat sat with a rawap - a four stringed guitar-like instrument - on his knees. He needed little persuasion to play folk songs, and the only other visitor, who had obviously come from far less distant parts than us, sang along. The tune was central Asian, entirely unrelated in style to the singing of the porter in Huashan.

Rawap player, Bezeklik Caves

Returning towards the oasis we saw dozens of houses marching in straight lines across the desert. They had been built, we were told, to house people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam. Three years before we had watched the destruction of whole towns that would pose an obstruction to shipping when they were covered by the waters rising behind the newly completed dam. We were assured the Chinese government had gone to great lengths to house those displaced. Now we were looking at the promised replacements. They were all empty. The buildings are good, but who could possibly live here? Clearly not even the desperate.

Resettlement home near Turpan

The Emin Mosque

Amid the greenery on the edge of the city, the Emin Mosque was built in the eighteenth century by Prince Suleiman and named in honour of his father Emin Khoja. The region had recently been incorporated into China by the Qing dynasty, but they treated their empire with a light touch and encouraged their supporters in the building of the mosque. Uighers have been Muslims since the tenth century but after decades of communist repression, religious observance in Turpan is not overt. We walked round the elegant building and its well-tended grounds, the beneficiaries of much government cash.

The Emin Mosque, Turpan

Perhaps significantly, the building is no longer in use as a mosque. The huge pepper-pot minaret, at 44m the highest in China, was like nothing we had seen before, but photographs suggest it is a cousin to those in Samarkand and Bukhara.

Inside the Emin Mosque, Turpan

Back in the City

After lunch we walked out to a small artificial lake in the south of the town. According to Rana it was the place where everything happened, although obviously not in the heat of the afternoon. Olympic Rings sat in the centre of the lake and there was a promontory of decking with a gazebo. The music, blaring from loud speakers disguised as ornamental rocks in the flowerbeds, was turned off as we arrived. Empty tables were set out along the far side beyond the waterless fountains. We were almost the only people there. Walking round the lake, we found a family feeding not the ducks as they might in England, but the carp. The children squatted on the bank and the adults passed them titbits. The bright red carp beat the water to foam in their feeding frenzy.

Feeding the carp, Turpan

A little further on we came across a few people seated at tables set up outside a shop. The owner pointed to an empty table and we needed no second invitation. It was not a bar as such, but in true Chinese entrepreneurial style they were selling whatever customers needed, and on a hot afternoon a cold beer was exactly that. A telephone stood on a table outside the door. Few people have telephones at home and there are no public phones, but mobiles are so common that ‘phone shops’ have become hard to find in Beijing and Shanghai. They were, as we discovered, alive and well throughout Xinjiang.

Turpan Night Market

At nine o’clock the car park outside the posh supermarket was transformed into a night market with kebab cookers, sausage salesmen, chicken vendors and a beer stall. Mutton kebabs were, as ever, ubiquitous, but there was also other sheepy parts impaled on the scimitar like skewers. ‘Westerners don’t eat liver and kidneys,’ Rana told us when we discussed it the following morning. Fortunately, no one had told the man who sold them to us. The second night we had a chicken. Brought to the market ready cooked it was dismembered by the stall holders own fair hands and plonked on a bed of crisp but unrecognised salad vegetables before being covered with a thin cold sauce. It was good, if not without the risk of food poisoning.

Turpan night market

Full of chicken, we followed the crowd back to the lake which was almost unrecognisable from our earlier visit. Hundreds of people were milling around, some of them dressed in their finest. There were children on little rides, teenagers jumping in and out of the now gushing fountains and adults buying lottery tickets and sucking ice creams. The Chinese love of neon had been given full reign, the gazebo glowed purple and garish strips covered every edge and reflected in the rippling water. The Olympic rings, now in appropriate colours, revolved in the middle of the lake. Rana had been right, this was where everyone went.

They do like a bit of neon, Turpan

10-Aug-2008

Early Morning in Turpan

Happily unpoisoned, I went out next morning to buy supplies for our train journey. It was eight o’clock, but I seemed to have Turpan to myself. Strolling around in the cool, clean morning air I eventually came across a butcher taking delivery of his day’s meat, but could not buy even a bottle of water.

Delivery at the butcher's, Turpan

China is a vast country but has only one time zone, all clocks are set to Beijing time. We were now so far west that clock time and natural time were some two hours apart. Hence, the night market at Turpan started as those in Shanghai closed down, and the shops were closed when most Shanghainese would be going to work.

Returning to the hotel I found a baker had fired up his oven in the roadway leading to the entrance. Mrs Baker passed roundels of dough through the window and Mr Baker placed them on a moistened pad and pressed them into a mixture of onion and coriander before carefully leaning over and patting them onto the inside of his tandoor-like oven. Then he pulled out a half done loaf with a metal spike, moistened the other side and stuck it back. I joined the small crowd jostling against the oven’s concrete surround and waved a banknote. Five minutes later I was the proud owner of a Uigher naan, a 20cm disc of unleavened bread with a thick raised rim. I carried it back to Lynne in triumph, the sole product of my shopping expedition.

Breakfast at the hotel was interesting though not for the food. Every day we had two fried eggs and half a sausage, garnished with tomato and cucumber. It was the same ‘western’ breakfast for everybody and the places were laid with knives and forks. Although Lynne and I have become fairly proficient with chopsticks we have, over the years, provided amusement to fellow diners as we learned the art. I think, therefore, I am entitled to get my own back by enjoying the Chinese struggling with knives and forks. I had never realised there were so many different ways to hold them, and so many ways to attempt to transfer food from plate to face. Many were only partially successful; often leaving those attempting to look worldly and cosmopolitan with, quite literally, egg on their face.

Taking the Train from Turpan to Kashgar

We returned to the station at mid-morning and this time passed the X-ray inspection with ease. Inside, a large, ebullient woman who was clearly in charge checked our tickets and mother-henned us into seats in the appropriate waiting area.

As the time for the train approached, she took up her position on the gate to the platforms. The doors to the toilets were just to her right and poorly signed. I spotted a man inadvertently wandering into the woman’s toilet, and seconds later a woman beetled out and spoke to the Woman-in-Charge. She pointed at the errant pee-er, still hidden from the view of the waiting masses and started to give him a lecture. She made sure she was loud enough to attract everybody’s attention, and when the man re-emerged covered in confusion, eighty faces were pointing in his direction, most of them laughing. It was cruel, and he reddened dramatically, but seemed to take it in good part. Then the train arrived and we all surged through the gate and into the tunnel.

Possibly to prevent the recently humiliated from jumping, the Chinese are obsessed with allowing nobody onto the platform when a train is moving. Security guards held us all back at the tunnel exit as a goods train passed slowly through.

Everybody was searched as they boarded the train. Our two large cases posed a problem and the carriage attendant sent us to find our compartment with the promise that we would be searched later. She turned up twenty minutes into the journey when we had given up on her and stowed our cases. Never have I seen anyone go so meticulously through so much dirty laundry. Eventually, satisfied that we were not carrying a knicker-bomb, she left us in peace.

Sharing our four-berth compartment was a well-dressed official. He was clearly a man of some importance as he was travelling soft-sleeper class, but not important enough to use the Kashgar air link. The Chinese are often, sometimes unjustly, accused of being xenophobic. Our official was clearly terrified by two foreigners suddenly arriving to share his billet. He was also intelligent enough to realise that his fear was largely irrational. We watched him grit his teeth and try to carry on as normal. We smiled and tried to give him as much space as possible. He needed it.

The train approaches the Tian Shan Mountains

We spent some time perched on the folding seats in the corridor, which are fine except that you have to move every time somebody wants to walk past. We took pictures during the day and sipped Chinese vodka when it became dark. How I wished for some Bushtits Single Malt Whiskey.

* and, of course, the inspiration for Damon Albarn's Monkey: Journey to the West which premiered in 2007.

The Chinese Silk Road

Introduction: The Silk Road in China
Prelude: Shanghai
Xi'an
Jiayuguan: A Total Eclipse and the Last Fortress under Heaven
Dunhuang: Dunes in the Gobi
Turpan: Ruined Cities of the Silk Road
Kashgar (1): The Sunday Market and the Former British Consulate
Kashgar (2): Upal, Abakh Hoja and the Old Town
Hotan (or Khotan or Hetian): City in the Desert
Urumqi: A By-word for Remoteness
Postscript