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Magazine
EXPERIENCE
Ancient rhythms
PALLAVI AIYAR
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Kashgar, once at the intersection of inter-continental trade routes, still retains its peculiar bazaar culture despite the onslaught of modernity in China.
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These are faces that know no borders, unconstrained by the usual determinants of geography and nationality. They belong, instead, to a crossroads...
Photos: Pallavi Aiyar
A riot of colours and a variety of goods: The Sunday market at Kashgar.
The stamping of a thousand hooves sends bursts of grit and dust floating into the air. The noise is deafening, the braying of donkeys clashing with the more phlegmatic “baahing” of the flotillas of sheep that fill the marketplace. Recalci
trant cows are roughly pushed off the backs of trucks and, in a far corner, powerful horses neigh and whinny, tossing their manes with imperious impatience.
The elemental drama of buying and selling unfolds everywhere with arguments breaking out as the haggling gets heated. Prospective buyers test-drive donkeys and lift the tails of sheep to inspect their private parts. The sour odour of animal breath hangs heavy over the scenes.
But, for me, it’s the faces of the traders rather than those of the animals that exert the greatest pull at this livestock market. Aquiline noses reminiscent of Iranian nobility adorn Mongolian-looking, wide-cheeked visages. In the faces here, accents of Istanbul mix with hints of Central Asia, making for a melange of colours and features.
Beyond borders
These are faces that know no borders, unconstrained by the usual determinants of geography and nationality. They belong, instead, to a crossroads and it is thus fitting that they are to be found in this oasis town of Kashgar — the western most city in China and inheritor of the cultural fluidity facilitated by the ancient Silk Road that for centuries was the main trade route across the Asian continent, connecting Antioch in the West to Chang’an (today’s Xi’an) in the East. In the modern era of planes and container ships, the importance of the Silk Road as a conduit of international trade might have decreased but Kashgar’s bazaar culture continues to thrive. Even today, every Sunday the desert city’s streets are swollen with human traffic from as far away as across the Pamir Mountains.
Kashgar is part of China’s Xinjiang province, a vast area comprising some one-sixth of the country’s land mass and long settled by a Muslim population of Turkic origin called Uighurs. Surrounded by the Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountains on three sides and the formidable Taklamakan desert on the fourth, Kashgar is not the most easily accessible of places. Yet, its strategic location, at the point at which the southern and northern routes of the Silk Road converged after skirting the Taklamakan, has kept the traders coming.
On this particular Sunday, I watch them come in on donkey carts, on buses that traverse the Karakoram highway, on tractors and on foot. One young man sporting a characteristic Uighur skull-cap vrooms up on a motorbike. Straddling his lap is a large goat, chin tilted upwards to meet the wind, eyes half-shut in seeming contentment.
Essentially unchanged
On offer for sale at Kashgar’s Sunday market are an array of goods, many of which remain unchanged from the days of the great camel trains: rustling silks, pungent spices, finely-sculpted jade ornaments, richly-coloured carpets and aromatic teas.
However, there is much that has changed as well, the inexorable “modernity” typical of Chinese cities having finally caught up with even this remote bastion of tradition.
Large parts of the old city have thus been razed to the ground, replaced by concrete blocks adorned with white bathroom tiles. The Sunday market itself has been “organised”, split into three different locations with the livestock and bird market moved to the outskirts of town. The site of the original bazaar is now housed indoors and is open for tourists every day of the week. It may be cleaner and more logically ordered than before (with separate sections for different categories of products clearly demarcated); however, much of the spontaneity and bustle associated with the original free-wheeling market has also been lost.
Moreover, competition from gargantuan wholesale markets in China’s booming southern provinces like Yiwu and Shaoxing have exacted their toll on the Kashgar bazaar. The traders with the deepest pockets have forsaken the oasis town for the cheaper products and greater variety of the marketplaces of the Yangstse river delta.
But this also means that despite modernity’s onslaught, Kashgar has been able to retain a more medieval timbre than its counterpart cities elsewhere in China. In the warren of streets that surround the Id Kah Mosque, Kashgar’s main place of worship, there are no fake Gucci bags, Nike knock-offs or one dollar DVDs for sale
Instead, on offer are trolleys-full of fruit: dazzlingly red pomegranates, their insides shining like jewels; honey dew melons oozing with sweetness; purple grapes heavy with juice; and trays full of walnuts, figs and dates, sending whorls of intoxicating scent up into the streets.
Elsewhere there are butchers cutting into bloody hunks of meat, metal workers beating out sheets of copper and aluminium, bakers fishing out freshly made naan from tandoors and traditional-medicine doctors hawking lizard and snake skins. There is cinnamon in the air and a hint of cardamom.
I buy some saffron, golden red and fresh. “Pakistan? Moslem?” the salesman inquires. “Hindustan,” I reply. “Ah, Kajol! Shah Rukh Khan!” comes the response.
On the streets I catch the occasional riff of Urdu. Direct buses connect Kashgar with the northern areas of Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir across the Khunjerab pass that breaches the formidable Karakoram mountain range. Security considerations springing from border disputes with both China and Pakistan in the areas adjoining Xinjiang however, mean that India’s long, historical links with Kashgar have been broken off.
Severed links
This was once a city that was not only one of the main trading conduits between India, China and Central Asia but was also the gateway for the spread of Buddhism from India to the Middle Kingdom.
“You are the first Indian woman I’ve ever met,” says the travel agent who helps arrange my travel logistics. This is an observation I encounter with monotonous regularity through the day. It makes me sad. For India to have been cut off from Kashgar’s mosaic of Asian cultures drives home the visceral unnaturalness of modern borders.
The sun begins to set, casting a glow over the mud and brick homes of the old city. Officially it is 9:30 at night since Kashgar, like all of China, is forced to follow Beijing time. However, the locals live their lives to an unofficial local time, two hours behind that of Beijing. Most clocks thus show the time as 7:30 p.m.
I sip a cup of pomegranate juice, bought off a street vendor and savouring the rich flavour think about dinner. Should I eat at Beijing time or local time? I opt for the latter. After all, Kashgar has always ticked to its own rhythm.
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