From here to the west and south, there’s only desert, steppe and the mountains along the Karakoram Highway, a few Tajik and Kyrgyz nomads living in yurts, and the There’s not a single Han Chinese face in this bazaar.
But here, everybody is guided by Xinjiang local time. We are more than 4,000 kilometers from Beijing, and two hours behind Beijing time which is supposed to apply to the whole of China. Most women wear multicolored scarves, but quite a few wear a chador or a thick brown cloth thrown over their heads. The music, still on audio cassettes, is gecekondu arabesk, Turkish pop. The cast of characters – with their long, pointed beards, decorated hats, dark cloaks and black boots – are all Uighurs: an ethnic subdivision of the Turks who dominated Mongolia in the 8th and 9th centuries. Multitudes gather in front of karaoke-TVs.
Solemn barbers with long sharp knives perform in the street. One hundred thousand nomads and villagers converge every week on this anthropological delirium, the Kashgar Sunday market. Sandy alleys bear the conspicuous accumulation of carpets from Hotan, mountains of spices, laminated dowry boxes, bits and pieces of dead animals, very much alive chickens and ducks, the famous Yengisar knives, hats in all shapes and colors, pots and pans, fruits, vegetables, riding boots, prehistoric transistor radios, Pakistani silk stockings, any imaginable agricultural tool hand-made from wood or steel, and the usual paraphernalia of items available in any self-respecting Oriental souk. The food is delicious – from bread sprinkled with poppy or sesame seeds to lahgman – noodles topped with mutton and vegetables from jiger (liver) kebab to girde nan – Uighur bagels. KASHGAR and URUMQI, Xinjiang – At the Mother of All Bazaars, the atmosphere still evokes Marco Polo’s Travels. A monumental traffic jam of donkey carts coils around the muddy borders of the Tuman River – trespassed by horses, Bactrian camels, acres of melancholic sheep and elders brandishing sickles and testing horseshoes, saddles and whips.
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