China: Great Dragon Rising - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 302

Figure 11-6
This man is clearly not Chinese. In fact, he is a
Uyghur and speaks a T Turkic language. Uyghurs
are one of China' s largest minority groups and
dominate in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
I took this photo at the Sunday market in Kashgar .
Photograph courtesy of B. A. Weightman.

forms of dissent. The government insists on enforc-
ing a “harmonious society .'”
The Chinese began the transformation of the Silk
Route city of Kashgar in the 1990s. Kashgar was fa-
mous for its Sunday bazaar when people came from
all over the countryside with their various products
and services. When I was there in 1992, you could
buy such things as giant, juicy yellow figs, twisted
buns filled with spicy lamb, richly decorated golden-
colored horses, fat-tailed sheep, and copies of the
Koran. Women sold brightly painted baby cribs and
wardrobes along with wildly striped cloth. Animal-
drawn carts pressed through the crowds with drivers
yelling “Posh! Posh!” Sitting in the dirt were barbers,
shoe-repair men, traditional medicine herbalists, and
a dentist who ran his drill with a foot-pedaled cable.
There were loudspeakers playing American rock
music and posters of Rambo, Muhammed Ali, and
Madonna. Men and women mix as they drink chai
(tea) and eat nan (flat bread) under plastic sheets or
tarpaulins that define chai hanas (tea houses). Here,
TVs scream Indian films for entertainment.
The Uygers of Kashgar live in mud brick (adobe)
houses that are clustered along carefully swept nar-
row , stone-lined alleys. Houses have elaborately
carved wooden doors. Women wear colorful se-
quined hats, and dresses of the striped material sold
in the market. Others wear scarves to cover their hair
in a show of Muslim modesty . Then there are those
that cover their entire head with a blanket, leaving in

question how they can see anything. Many men also
wear embroidered hats and some wear fur ones and
long, wooly , overcoats and boots, even in summer
when temperatures reach 130 o F (39 o C).
The Uyghur way of life is disappearing. The old
market has been replaced by Chinese shops and
“Jewellery Street”—a boring round building that few
show interest in. In a traditional residential neighbor-
hood, a huge “Wenzhou Mall” is looking for vendors.
Chinese authorities claim that the old buildings are
dangerous and therefore must go. In their place are
high-rise apartments designed for ethnic Chinese.
Decent housing and services will draw even more
Chinese into the city and the Uyghurs will continue
to be sidelined. The fact that Kashgar is a popular
tourist attraction apparently is of no account.
In 1992, the capital of Urumqi was decreed a
port and given tax incentives like other port cities
such as Shanghai. This is interesting because
Urumqi is one of the most landlocked cities in the
world. However, joint-venture economic develop-
ment makes sense in light of the fact that Xinjiang
gained three new (and nearby) trading partners
with the collapse of the Soviet Union: Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Joint markets and facto-
ries have emerged along these borders.
Because of its dry climate, Xinjiang relies al-
most entirely on irrigation for cultivation. Both
spring and summer wheat are grown, along with
corn, rice, cotton, millet, and kaoliang (sorghum).