Kashgar Part 2

I'm back in Harbin now, and in no mood to do homework, so here I am! I still have more to say about Kashgar and the tour we took...

Like I said before, our tour guide was incredibly obliging, and did his best to answer every question I put to him. He took us first to Yengisar, a town famous for knife production. There isn't much to see there, apparently, besides knife factories, but the work they do in those shops is beautiful. They use very simple tools to produce their knives, but these knives are famous throughout China for both their appearance and their quality. Most Uighur men, it seems, own at least one.

After that we continued on through seemingly endless expanses of desert to Yarkand, another ancient Silk Road through-city. There much of the old Uighur craftsmanship is still alive, and I even had a chance to see the handmade Uighur string instruments that I'd seen on the Discovery Channel last fall, and which got me interested in Xinjiang in the first place. We also visited the tombs of a couple of khans that once ruled this part of Central Asia. One of them, Abakh Hoja Khan, was a very popular ruler, and the site is now a pilgrimage destination for many of the faithful. The tomb is also incidentally the burial site of XiangFei, one of China's four great beauties (I think-Posy will have to confirm!) and a beloved concubine of a Qing dynasty ruler. This Abdul did not find interesting enough to tell me, and so this information is pieced together from the Lonely Planet and from four older ladies I met on the train, and who, incidentally, happened to be historical archivists on their way back to Urumqi from a meeting in Kashgar.

According to Abdul, most of the people in Xinjiang are Shiite Muslims (In fact, in Yarkand, I was privileged enough to see an imam riding a bike. Not that I thought that was outside of the realm of possibility, but that just wasn't my image of an imam...). I'd guessed Sunni, but I was wrong. Apparently there are in fact Sunnis living there, but Abdul says that unlike in Iraq, there are no conflicts. He said that the terrorists are the Sufis, who are well-represented in Yarkand. He vehemently condemned violence n the name of Islam (as has every Muslim I've chanced to meet in or out of the US) and cited a violent attack that occurred not long ago outside of Kashgar that killed many innocent people. The language barrier wouldn't permit anymore details than that, but he insisted the Sufis were behind it. I had thought Sufis were harmless mystics, but I guess things are different from place to place.

After leaving Yarkand, we set off on the next leg of our journey, an hour long trip to the edge of the desert. We'd passed plenty of desert already, but hadn't yet seen the "shifting sands." The terrain is really interested aong the way, especially as you get closer to the Taklimakan. Fields growing cotton and vegetables alternate with patches of sand and barren land, making me wonder how on earth they manage to prevent the desert from taking over entirely. Speaking of cotton, Abdul said it is one of the main crops not only in Kashgar, but in much of Xinjiang's drier areas. Makes sense, as it's probably one of the few plants that could tolerate the climate and soil. If Abdul understood my question, the cotton grown in Xinjiang (and other similar places, like Shaanxi) almost completely meets the needs of China's textile industry. I think he said that none was imported at all, but I think we may have run into a misunderstanding when I started talking about imports. Something to investigate.

Along the way I also asked about the hats they wear in Xinjiang-many different kinds, but most predominant is an attractive multi-colored four pointed little one they perch on the tops of their heads. I was theorizing from my oh-so-educated standpoint about the different explanations that might be behind the different colors-green for those who'd been to Mecca, white for maybe a different sect, fur for...old guys? grin. But Abdul set me straight. Fur is for winter, white is for simplicity's sake, and color is up to the wearer. Did that ever burst my bubble. He also told me that depending on where in Xinjiang you are from might mean you don't even where one. Abdul, who was from Ili, does not wear one.

We did finally make it to the desert, which was fascinating in and of itself. Didn't live up to my expectations of vast expanses of burnt sienna (the crayon color I could never figure out as a child) colored sand, like in Aladdin, and there were too many patches of crabgrass, but it was still interesting to see rolling hills of nothing but sand stretching off into the distance. I'm putting a trek through the Sahara by camel on my list of things to do in life now.

I ran into a bunch of other interesting facts along the way as well, for instance, there are Tajiks living in China. We passed a settlement in the middle of nowhere that looked like a pretty prison camp (for CET students, think Acheng) and when I asked, Abdul said it was for Tajiks. I at first thougt they were actual foreign national refugees, but as it turns out they're mostly from Tashkurgan, but the Chinese government determined that their living conditions were too dangerous/impoverished/etc, and moved them here.

The Uighurs also used to use an English script, Abdul said they had used it for centuries (I think we understood each other, though I found that startling) but within the last couple decades, the Chinese government changed it to Arabic. Abdul said that the English script was much better, made it easier to learn English (funny, echoed exactly what the Lonely Planet said about the switch!), but that China made the rules. I tried to use that to lead into an inquiry about how he felt about the Chinese presence in Xinjiang, but I was unsurprisingly artfully deflected, and decided it wouldn't be prudent to push the question. He was however very proud to say every time we went through a remote city that it was nearly all Uighur, with very few Han Chinese.

Well, I suppose that even if I'm not interested in my homework, I should at least try to give some order to the chaos that rules my bed after I exploded my backpack on it after coming home this morning...

Kashgar: Last outpost of the Silk Road

My hotmail's not working on this virus-laden computer, so in a fit of sheer desperation to communicate (after it showed me I had eleven messages, then closed the window for the fourth time) I'm going to make a blog.

I'll start by briefly introducing Kashgar. Kashgar in and of itself is a fairly tame place, though it was once an important stop along the Silk Road, as a desert oasis where caravans could resupply and where a significant ammount of trade took place. We arrived here on Tuesday after a grueling bus ride that was supposed to be 24 hours but ended up being 32. We are taking the train back to Urumqi.

Our trip actually happened to coincide with Bodrum, the "sugar festival" that comes after Ramadan, if I remember correctly. So on Tuesday there were all kinds of festivities, singing and dancing in the square near the mosque, and lights and fireworks. People are still on holiday now, but there is little sign of it except than many workshops are closed.

Kashgar is about 70 to 80% Uighur, one of the highest percentages in Xinjiang. As a result, most people here speak extremely basic Chinese. As I laughingly commented to Vince, this is the first place in China where my Chinese is better than that of the Chinese. A very comforting reality. In fact, the language is really fascinating. I've been on a mission to discover exactly how similar it is to Turkish, and it was right away apparent that the numbers are the same, as are grammar particles like "yok" "var" "siz" etc. etc. Our tour guide from today humored me as I threw Turkish words at him for about fifteen minutes, and I was pleased to come to the conclusion that there are enough similarities to make the languages mutually intelligible, with a few vocabulary departures or variations on basic root words. For example, salt in Turkish is tuz, in Uighur it's something like tuzlorp (terribly butchered). I also asked him if he'd ever had a Turk come to Kashgar, and he said yes, once, and that they had managed to communicate fairly well. Fascinating how far spread out this language family is....



Today was an action-packed day in Xinjiang. I gave up the chance to be an extra in the Mark Forster-directed movie "Kite Runner" (an amazing book, I couldn't believe it when I saw they were filming in Kashgar-can't wait for that to come out!) and booked a tour upon arriving at this hotel yesterday to go check out the second largest shifting sand desert in the world after the Sahara (that was the tagline)-the Taklimakan Desert. We were promised camels as well, and I guess I'll give away the end: there were no camels for us to ride, at least not at the desert part. But it blew my mind to see camel after camel after camel pulling carts of Ghengis Khan's descendants to and fro between the villages that looked like they had been constructed after the style of times immemorial, the color of the desert and shaded by rows of poplar trees.

This trip was truly one of the most fascinating experiences I've had in China. Once we got out of Kashgar, which has definitely been changed by the arrival of the Han Chinese immigrant flood starting after 1949ish, the entire atmosphere shifted. Cars disappeared from the streets, to be replaced by hundreds of donkey-pulled carts and three-wheeled motorized vehicles piled with people. I plied our guide with question after question and...it's really late and I'm about to be kicked out of the internet cafe, so I guess I'll finish this another time...I have so much to tell!

The Quest for a Good Mooncake (月饼）

China's Mid-Autumn Festival is fast approaching: On Friday, people all over the country will gaze at the moon and eat pretty little pastries called mooncakes, which are now being sold on every street corner. In fact, mooncakes are really what this whole thing seems to be about.
I have just one beef with this festival. Mooncakes, as inviting and beautiful as they may be, are, nearly without exception, truly disgusting.
I've been in the process of conducting ongoing gastronomical research for the last three weeks, part of a stubborn personal campaign to understand why Chinese people make such a fuss over mooncakes. I don't know what's kept me buying them-they're more expensive than your average food item, and I always take one or two bites, and then throw them away because they're too sticky/heavy/sweet/etc, etc. A complete waste of five to ten yuan. And the egg ones are on a whole level of horrible all their own; I nearly yammied when I bit into that one on the suggestion of a smiling salesgirl. You'd think I'd learn after this many failures. I did find one, however, that kept my hope alive in the middle of all this. It was coconut filled, and I thought it was decent, if not something I would want to eat everyday. I ate exactly half of that one (and Andy ate the other half, he liked it too). A small coconut oasis in a vast desert of traumatic mooncake experiences.
But the true reason for tonight's blog is not to bash mooncakes. I'm writing because today I finally discovered the perfect mooncake. I'd been discussing my plight with the expat Korean woman who owns the coffee shop that I frequent on Wednsdays, and she nodded sagely, saying that it took her a long time to learn to like moncakes, too. She suggested that I try the Maky Bakery brand of mooncake, because it is considered to be quite good. (I'd always stayed away from anything from the Maky Bakery because the name drives me crazy...not only does it lack an E where I feel it should have one, but also sounds like a brand name for a pink toy oven).
As it happens, on my way home from the coffee shop, I got off at a different bus stop to shake things up a bit, and lo and behold, there was a Maky Bakery right in front of me. I gritted my teeth and braced myself for another stomach-turning experience, and once again went through my routine of asking for a recommendation on what flavor I should try. The girl suggested the red bean filling (tried that one before, didn't like it, but this mooncake did not look like other mooncakes, and she swore it sold well) and black sesame seed filling (this mooncake looked like other mooncakes, but I'd never had that kind before, and she said it was a most traditional filling). I bought my cakes, and walked out of the store swinging my plastic bag.
When I bit into the red bean one, I was stunned: I wanted to eat the whole thing and go back and buy more. Same thing with the black sesame seed one. Folks, this is unprecedented. I was convinced I was hopelessly Western, and unable to enjoy one of China's most time-honored holiday foods. Essentially the equivalent of eating Thanksgiving dinner and hating the turkey with stuffing and the pumpkin pie 'n' whipped cream.
I'm both pleased and relieved to report that my quest, which I once feared was purely quixotic and self-destructive, has finally come to a successful conclusion at the doors of of the (wincing) Maky Bakery.