KASHGAR (dpa) – A naked boy rides through a crowded Central Asian livestock market, guiding another horse into the dipping trough.
In the surrounding bazaar, craftsmen fashion copper pots by the roadside. Moslem women in headscarves or veils bargain for brightly patterned silk and cotton, while their children sample dried apricots, figs, dates and nuts.These scenes have changed little since ancient traders visited Kashgar, a giant oasis where two westward routes along the Silk Road converge after skirting the north and south of the Talklamakan Desert.Silk merchants, horse traders, knife grinders, carpet makers and itinerant dentists still flock to the city’s vast Sunday market, maintaining the traditions of the mainly Moslem Uighurs who form the bulk of the Kashgar’s population.An uncountable throng upwards of 100,000 converges every Sunday to buy and sell an amazing array of fruit and vegetables, tin or plastic household items, giant Argali sheep, camels, handmade rope, knives, pots and pans, musical instruments, while-you-wait ironmongery, and every imaginable variation on a skullcap.Many livestock traders take refuge in tea-tents away from the heat, bustle and hardest bargaining. “You must have bigger markets in London?” asked one young trader as he aired his scorched feet on a teahouse rug.Walking through the narrow streets of the main bazaar, it is hard to believe you are in China. Bearded men in long robes exchange greetings in their Turkic tongue as they amble past shops selling Arabic posters and texts.The bazaar adjoins a busy square dominated by the 500-year-old Id Kah mosque and surrounded by Uighur restaurants and shops. Promenading men and family groups buy fruit, shish kebabs, bagels and nans.In summer, farmers sell melons from their trucks until midnight, when the space in front of the mosque becomes a timber market. Stalls show Uighur-dubbed films from India or Central Asian countries, adding to the impression that you are not in China.Less than 1 kilometre away, Kashgar’s People’s Square is a usually quiet expanse of concrete slabs, enclosed grass and potted plants, overlooked by a statue of Mao Zedong and Communist Party slogans.Relatively affluent middle-aged Chinese women exercise in the space used for occasional military parades and government rallies. Young Chinese security guards perform their daily drill, as a few Uighurs sweep the slabs or sell fruit from handbaskets.To the east of People’s Square is a new, half-empty parade of shops run by Chinese migrants, a sign that, like so many places in fast-changing Asia, Kashgar is a city to see sooner rather than later.Its Mao statue was an early vanguard of what promises to be a tide of Chinese migrants, and perhaps tourists, now that Kashgar is linked to the national railway network.There even are rumours that a government determined to assimilate minorities into China’s mainstream culture may redevelop the entire area around the Id Kah mosque.Flanked by stunning desert and mountain scenery for hundreds of kilometres, the railway ends at the modern Kashgar station that symbolizes both economic development and Chinese control.The government plans to extend the line from southern Xinjiang’s most important city to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, making it a key part of the political and economic strategy to develop China’s remote western areas.The rail link removes the need for an arduous three-day bus journey or a crowded flight from Urumqi, capital of the vast Moslem-majority Xinjiang region, which borders countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.But when the railway opened in December 1999, many Uighurs feared an influx of migrants from central and eastern China.By the end of 2000, 17,200 new Chinese migrants settled in the city, taking the Chinese population to 74,000, or 22 per cent of Kashgar’s 340,000 people.Though most of the migrants are not rich, they are generally better off than the Uighurs, fuelling resentment and division.Kashgar lies marginally nearer to Beirut than Beijing, the Chinese capital 4,000 kilometres to the east. It was known as the crossroads of Asia during the “Great Game” of colonial powers jostling for Central Asian influence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Western countries still send spies to Kashgar, but these days they are often looking for evidence of human rights abuses in China’s crackdown on Uighur separatists.“We can’t speak out,” explained one pro-independence Uighur shopkeeper, using a Koranic metaphor: “They’ll cut out our tongues and gouge out our eyes.”
