Kashgar - follow Marco Polo's footsteps
(Shenzhen Daily)
Updated: 2006-06-07 09:59  Kashgar's Sunday market operates seven days a week, but Sunday is the
most crowded. Alas, it's been modernized - moved inside with orderly rows of
stalls, but it's still an exotic cornucopia. Women are bargaining over flashy
rayon fabrics and traditional Uygur designs. Men are trying to find just the
right hat. Traditional instruments are for sale. Tart and spicy freshly squeezed
pomegranate juice, sold outside the market, is one of Kashgar's finest products.
At the edge of the market, up a flight of stairs is Mohammed Ali's rug store,
the largest in Kashgar. He also has a branch outside the Chini Bagh Hotel and
seems to pop up everywhere, ready to find just the red and blue pomegranate
carpet you're in search of.
If the Sunday market seems a bit overly modernized, the Sunday livestock
market at the edge of the city offers a glimpse of the past, with intense buying
and selling of lambs, donkeys, goats and the occasional camel. Food vendors and
craftsmen line the edges of the market. Chinese officials are stationed at the
exits to make sure sales tax is paid. The best time to visit is after 11 a.m.
since farmers come from great distances and don't arrive much earlier. The road
to the market is lined with people arriving in their tractors, trucks and
horse-drawn vehicles.
The Upal market, also best from late morning, offers the outdoor naturalness
gone from Kashgar's mega-market. Livestock are in one area; produce, an outdoor
barbershop and handmade goods are in another section; and manufactured suits and
shoes in a third section. Red tarps under poplar trees provide protection from
the elements.
Back in Kashgar, the small streets ending at the back of the Idkah Mosque are
filled with shops selling copperware, samovars, musical instruments, gold
jewelry and telephones. East of the mosque lies the old city - a jumble of
streets with men streaming out of tiny mosques and craftsmen at work in their
storefronts in a neighborhood where time seems to stand still.
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