By Chris O'Brien
Updated: 2007-07-20 10:05

The knife is sharp. He has just proved it by seizing my right arm, turning it veins up and dragging the blade across my skin. At the sight of a three sqcm bald patch in my arm hair, I agree to pay only RMB 10 less than his initial asking price.

Bargaining at the Sunday market in Kashgar, the westernmost city in China, was never going to be easy, given the town's long-standing trade experience.

A major hub on the old Silk Road 1,000 years ago, the oasis was an important bartering point between the Taklamakan Desert to the east and the Pamir and Karakoram mountain ranges to the west. Modern transport links may have nullified its role in European-Orient relations but it remains an important weekly meeting place for thousands of traders from all over Central Asia. Silk rugs and saffron are brought from Iran and Pakistani salesmen brood in the Pakistan Café on Saturday nights like boxers in their pre-fight
dressing rooms.

The animal market now lies on the outskirts of town, after an unpopular decision to separate it from the main bazaar. Impromptu farms springing up all around the city streets every Sunday did not concur with China's efforts to modernize. The trade area is a large rectangle of dusty earth bordered by a brick wall and metal poles form shopping aisles. The tourist's role as observer has never been so accentuated; you are not a customer unless you are planning to slaughter your own dinner.

The sale of livestock is a man's business. The few women present sit in the shade of their carts and wait for decisions. A huddle of six men, in prayer hats and flat caps, discuss the hind quarters of a small herd of cows. A teenager is excluded from the circle and strains to hear valuable tips for his future career. The cows guzzle greens as if it is their last supper.

Away from the scuffles between buyers and the bought is the test-drive track. Donkeys are ridden up and down a stony strip as drivers trial their responses to a meter-long cane. This is far from Shanghai, and the distinctive faces all belong to the Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs, of who there are eight million living in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

At the main market area, the Yekshenba Bazaar, red pomegranates wait to be squeezed over glass tumblers. A steel roof covers stalls of rugs, children's suits and cassette ghetto blasters. The structure was recently built to introduce order to proceedings, a move unappreciated by travelers, as the surrounding clogged streets are much more interesting. Here a man in white gloves holds a car boot, roof and bonnet sale of unidentifiable dried objects in the name of traditional medicine. He lures customers by whispering miraculous tales into a microphone as the snake around his neck uses his shirt to hide its head from the crowd.

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