Kashgar (or Kashi in Chinese) is actually a quite pleasant city and I stayed there (with an interruption of the 3 days I was touring the Katakorum Highway, see separate post) for a week. It was the first place in China, after crossing the border from Kyrgyzstan over the Torurgat pass (see separate post). While it is certainly not a typically Chinese city as it is in the Uyghur autonomous province and the majority of inhabitants are Muslim Uyghur (despite all the efforts of the central government to settle Han-Chinese people to counter-balance...). But still, it was a new country, with many new impressions, which is reflected in the number of photos I have uploaded (new record: 99 for one chapter!! Sorry for this, but believe me, I have deleted soo many already...)...
I particularly liked the old town and it busy commercial life (notably the daily night market with its numerous foo stalls). The atmosphere there was very special at dawn, when the locals break the fast they observe during this month of Ramadan. All of a sudden, people start eating everywhere, and some stands hand out bread and watermelon for free during the first minutes. Also, the kind of food on offer is special and fascinating for me as a European... a particular delicacy is cooked goat head (served in a broth or in pieces), but also all kind of other parts of goats and sheep (intestines, testicles...) While at my first visit at the night market I was quite "conservative" in my food choices (meaning I stayed away from the more exotic stuff while still trying the soup prepared on the basis of a goat head, but without the meet..), I became more daring the following days and tried some of the intestines (which I also like to eat when in Europe - "vivent les tripes!") as well as various liver dishes (grilled kebap or cooked in a hotpot) ad everything was delicious, except the kind if strange yellow jelly-like stuff in one of the dishes served in a small bowl (see picture). I later on read that it is the pure far of the "fat-tail-sheep".... :-(
But the Sunday market and the Sunday livestock / animal market were also very interesting and i just wandered around, tried to soak in the atmosphere and took photos... I really enjoyed that day... Finding transport back from the animal market (which had been transferred recently from a place relatively central to the far-away outskirts of Kashgar) was not that easy. I met Jens, a German guy I had met in the Old Town Youth Hostel there (who stopped his marketing career several years ago and started travelling the world instead and now earns some money as a photographer...) and we finally got a lift in a little motor-scooter, together with the proud new owner of a well-nourished sheep, which he purchased for the price of 100 Yuan (about 12 €!!!) The trip was not so comfortable and took ages... And as the sheep just did not want to turn around and liked to push its behind against our legs / knees) we were in constant risk of - well, how shall I say this - getting blessed with liquid or solid sheep "products"... We were lucky though that the sheep was very well educated (in German we would say "stubenrein"), the proof being that as soon as it got off the scooter, it "emitted" (sorry, the use of this word is a "déformation professionelle", but i thought in this context appropriate) considerable amounts of little black "bullets" on the street and started to empty its bladder. ;-)
The old city of Kashgar with its mud-brick houses and is small alleys is also very nice, but not much of it actually remains. As seen notably in Uzbekistan, also the Chinese government has a major policy to "clean up" the old parts of the cities, which basically means destroying everything and building new, but then mostly ugly and tall concrete buildings. The amount of destruction work i witnessed here was really amazing (see some of the photos). If the government actually recognised the value on the traditional old town, I am sure there would be other ways of renovating, in a responsible way and respectful of the local tradition. But that is probably too much to ask.. Instead, they will probably just open another kind of small theme park, where you have to pay an entry fee to see some fake reconstructions of how it all once looked like...
It was not that easy to actually find some relatively intact parts of the old town, but was nice to stroll through the small streets there and observe the activities going on there... ;-)
And, of course, one of the highlights here in Kashgar was the final of the soccer World Cup, which I finally watched in my hotel room as I could not motivate myself to go to the Old Town Youth Hostel in the middle on the night. It was really a nerve-wrecking match, especially as there were two about 5-minute long power cuts ... Both times very long 5 minutes I thought... But in the end, I did not miss anything, it was still 0:0 afterwards... ;-)
Photos at: https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A6GRMtznsjNeP
Other first impressions from China / Xinjiang:
- Supermarket: the price relations are extremely different from those in Europe: whereas you spend 1 euro for 30 eggs, a litre of the cheapest fruit nectar (not even juice) costs 2€. As I have seen in a report on TV a while ago (and as a consequence of several dioxin in Chinese milk scandals), there are actually a variety of German milk products, the cheapest litre of German milk being at 2,50€!! All the local vegetables are very cheap.
- Ramadan: as this is the Uyghur (Muslim) part of China, eating is not that easy during the day as we are currently during Ramadan. Most food stands in the Uyghur-dominated old town are closed and I am desperately waiting for the sun to set so that I can go to the night-market just opposite from the square in front of the mosque where I am sitting right now, observing the people.
- Despite the "warnings" in the lonely planet and the fact that Kashgar seems to be a quite strict Muslim city, I have not yet seen any woman fully veiled. On the contrary, there are many Uyghur women which are not covered at all.
- scooters: in contrast to what I had experienced in Vietnam a number of years ago, the scooters here are also plentiful, but are all (and I mean ALL!) electric: so they do not make noise and they do not (at least not directly... of course if electricity is produced from coal, then it is a different story...) contribute to pollution. Also, I was prepared for much worse in terms of pollution... At least here in Kashgar, it does not seem that bad... But that is perhaps also because there is lots of wind today...
I particularly liked the old town and it busy commercial life (notably the daily night market with its numerous foo stalls). The atmosphere there was very special at dawn, when the locals break the fast they observe during this month of Ramadan. All of a sudden, people start eating everywhere, and some stands hand out bread and watermelon for free during the first minutes. Also, the kind of food on offer is special and fascinating for me as a European... a particular delicacy is cooked goat head (served in a broth or in pieces), but also all kind of other parts of goats and sheep (intestines, testicles...) While at my first visit at the night market I was quite "conservative" in my food choices (meaning I stayed away from the more exotic stuff while still trying the soup prepared on the basis of a goat head, but without the meet..), I became more daring the following days and tried some of the intestines (which I also like to eat when in Europe - "vivent les tripes!") as well as various liver dishes (grilled kebap or cooked in a hotpot) ad everything was delicious, except the kind if strange yellow jelly-like stuff in one of the dishes served in a small bowl (see picture). I later on read that it is the pure far of the "fat-tail-sheep".... :-(
But the Sunday market and the Sunday livestock / animal market were also very interesting and i just wandered around, tried to soak in the atmosphere and took photos... I really enjoyed that day... Finding transport back from the animal market (which had been transferred recently from a place relatively central to the far-away outskirts of Kashgar) was not that easy. I met Jens, a German guy I had met in the Old Town Youth Hostel there (who stopped his marketing career several years ago and started travelling the world instead and now earns some money as a photographer...) and we finally got a lift in a little motor-scooter, together with the proud new owner of a well-nourished sheep, which he purchased for the price of 100 Yuan (about 12 €!!!) The trip was not so comfortable and took ages... And as the sheep just did not want to turn around and liked to push its behind against our legs / knees) we were in constant risk of - well, how shall I say this - getting blessed with liquid or solid sheep "products"... We were lucky though that the sheep was very well educated (in German we would say "stubenrein"), the proof being that as soon as it got off the scooter, it "emitted" (sorry, the use of this word is a "déformation professionelle", but i thought in this context appropriate) considerable amounts of little black "bullets" on the street and started to empty its bladder. ;-)
The old city of Kashgar with its mud-brick houses and is small alleys is also very nice, but not much of it actually remains. As seen notably in Uzbekistan, also the Chinese government has a major policy to "clean up" the old parts of the cities, which basically means destroying everything and building new, but then mostly ugly and tall concrete buildings. The amount of destruction work i witnessed here was really amazing (see some of the photos). If the government actually recognised the value on the traditional old town, I am sure there would be other ways of renovating, in a responsible way and respectful of the local tradition. But that is probably too much to ask.. Instead, they will probably just open another kind of small theme park, where you have to pay an entry fee to see some fake reconstructions of how it all once looked like...
It was not that easy to actually find some relatively intact parts of the old town, but was nice to stroll through the small streets there and observe the activities going on there... ;-)
And, of course, one of the highlights here in Kashgar was the final of the soccer World Cup, which I finally watched in my hotel room as I could not motivate myself to go to the Old Town Youth Hostel in the middle on the night. It was really a nerve-wrecking match, especially as there were two about 5-minute long power cuts ... Both times very long 5 minutes I thought... But in the end, I did not miss anything, it was still 0:0 afterwards... ;-)
Photos at: https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A6GRMtznsjNeP
Other first impressions from China / Xinjiang:
- Supermarket: the price relations are extremely different from those in Europe: whereas you spend 1 euro for 30 eggs, a litre of the cheapest fruit nectar (not even juice) costs 2€. As I have seen in a report on TV a while ago (and as a consequence of several dioxin in Chinese milk scandals), there are actually a variety of German milk products, the cheapest litre of German milk being at 2,50€!! All the local vegetables are very cheap.
- Ramadan: as this is the Uyghur (Muslim) part of China, eating is not that easy during the day as we are currently during Ramadan. Most food stands in the Uyghur-dominated old town are closed and I am desperately waiting for the sun to set so that I can go to the night-market just opposite from the square in front of the mosque where I am sitting right now, observing the people.
- Despite the "warnings" in the lonely planet and the fact that Kashgar seems to be a quite strict Muslim city, I have not yet seen any woman fully veiled. On the contrary, there are many Uyghur women which are not covered at all.
- scooters: in contrast to what I had experienced in Vietnam a number of years ago, the scooters here are also plentiful, but are all (and I mean ALL!) electric: so they do not make noise and they do not (at least not directly... of course if electricity is produced from coal, then it is a different story...) contribute to pollution. Also, I was prepared for much worse in terms of pollution... At least here in Kashgar, it does not seem that bad... But that is perhaps also because there is lots of wind today...
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