By Shao Zongwei
TOURISTS to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region commonly expect to see something very different from those parts of China where the Han people live. There is no better place for this than Kashgar.
After nearly 21 hours of travelling on a train from Turpan, a city in the northern part of Xinjiang known for its scorching heat and juicy grapes, we finally stepped into an exotic land where more than 80 per cent of the population were Uygur.
It was a Sunday, so after putting down our backpacks in the Seman Hotel (highly recommended on the Internet and in guidebooks for its reasonable prices and prestige as the former office and residence of the Russian consulate), we went out to see the famous Sunday Bazaar.
Bazaar buzz
Kashgar was already an important Central Asian trade centre on the Silk Road 2,000 years ago. Today, the scale and energy of its bazaars may still remind visitors of the city's past glory. Bazaars are held every day of the week at different places in Kashgar, but the Sunday Bazaar is attended by the largest crowd and is where the most animation can be found.
The section near the gate of the indoor market obviously catered more to tourists than to local people. We found stalls selling Uygur musical instruments of all sizes, traditional garments and crafts. Upon seeing us, stall owners hawked in heavily-accented Mandarin for their commodities. Those in the business of musical instruments improvised merry rhythms on their tambourines, while sellers of Yingisar knives chopped on the brim of their iron cabinets to demonstrate the sharpness of their knives. Once you showed any interest in their products and started to bargain, chances were they wouldn't let you walk away without buying something.
But a version of the bazaar more oriented to ordinary people actually took place in the open. It was rather random and a bit chaotic - bicycles, carts pulled by donkeys or even ragged carpets became makeshift stalls lining the roads and alleys near the indoor market, where a wide spectrum of commodities ranging from fruit and vegetables to shoes and cooking utensils were piled for sale.
Bazaars still provide a major location for shopping for the Ugyur people. At the Sunday Bazaar we saw women in veils and headscarves shopping with family members. While young women would venture to wear bright-coloured dresses, their elders still seemed to opt for loosely fitting garments or dark blue robes.
Another interesting thing for tourists was the bargaining. Some guidebooks say that in the domestic animal market, local people would bargain with hand signs half hidden in the sleeves of their robes.
Old town
The street opposite the Seman Hotel was dotted with small shabby restaurants offering simple Uygur cuisine. Before setting out for another day of sightseeing, we decided to have a Uygur breakfast and each ended up ordering a bowl of shouzhuafan (rice served with bare hands) and a serving of local yogurt. The minute our food was on the table, I knew from the size of the bowls that I could never finish it.
Shouzhuafan was made with rice cooked in lamb oil and mingled with carrots. All that was topped with a generous piece of lamb. Shouzhuafan is served only for breakfast, and could keep one from feeling hungry the whole day. But my personal favourite was the local yogurt, which was much more dense than the yogurt we have in Shanghai and was covered by an inviting layer of cream. When it was combined with honey or sugar, the natural sour taste was neutralized and it was just delicious.
After brief visits to the Abakh Khoja Tomb - the 17th century family cemetery of Kashgar's Islamic leader - and the tomb of Yusuf Has Hajip, a Uygur poet, scholar and thinker, we headed towards the old town in the areas surrounding the Id Gah Mosque.
We had already trekked several dusty roads and begun to doubt whether we could ever find this place known for its typical Uygur lifestyle and culture when an ordinary nameplate announced one of our destination alleys from a street corner.
There was nothing fancy about this place, except for quite a number of small shops selling crafts and camera-crazy children who had obviously seen a lot of curious picture-snapping outsiders.
Yet it had an appeal that still lingered after we returned home. Roaming among the narrow alleys flanked with simple brick houses and suffused with the aroma of lamb and buns, we saw a picture of Uygur people's lives quietly unfolding before us.
Pious old Muslims greeted each other on their way out of mosques after afternoon prayers. A young woman sewed attentively at a window, paying no attention to what was happening outside. An old Uygur man read in his little shop even though noisy passers-by like us came and went. Bun-makers put flour pasta into the stove and skillfully fetched out the well-baked ones with a long iron stick. Children who could not speak Mandarin came up to us, smiling and posing at the sight of our cameras. When we showed them the just-taken pictures on our digital cameras, they smiled shyly, excitement in their eyes.
The best part of our experiences in the old town was that nobody really cared about us - there was neither curiosity nor overflow of hospitality, even though our non-stop picture-taking had betrayed our identities the minute we stepped in. Tired of the commercialization in many tourist attractions, the old town in Kashgar made us feel at home in an environment that was complete foreign to us.
