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Kashgar
Entry 3 of 44 | show all | print this entry |
well kashgar did not disappoint. the plane coming in was brown, empty plains and dusty mountains as far as the eye could see, really, really remote. on the street here very few people look chinese. so, thus far kashgar has been exactly what I was expecting.. and hoping for. I know a lot of people set out to see the west of china and wind up only going to urumuqi, which I'm sure would be a disappointment.. like everywhere else in china, you walk in to a new city to find its quite generic.. same buildings, same planning, same stores. unfortunately, kashgar will almost certainly be that way in a few years from now, the brands are already arriving, new buildings and shopping malls are arriving, and there is already a lot of chinese influence. ...but for the time being, you can walk around with people who look like they came from 4 centuries ago. I walked around the old town today - mud buildings - and watched blacksmiths work, heavily veiled women buying vegetables, a man making a barrel with wood, a fire, and his bare hands. so the old silk road city is still here...for now.
on another note, I have been really, really surprised at how much I have been able to use mandarin here. I expected to get off the plane and find chinese to be useless out here. sure enough I have been getting things done and having a lot of conversations with people. I don't know why it's so interesting to me, as I am still in china, but it feels completely new, like I arrived in a brand new culture, instantly being able to interact with the people and understand what they're saying to each other. whatever the reason, it feels great.
another interesting thing here is the time. as you probably know there are no time zones in china - everything runs on beijing time. Here nobody seems to pay attention to it. Sure enough, before 8am beijing time it is still black, the street lights are on, and nobody is on the road. So you have to quote all arrangements in both times - local and beijing time.
Tomorrow is the famous sunday market and the animal market, where people come from all over the place to buy god knows what. its rumored to be the biggest market in the world. they're supposed to sell camels, but someone last night told me that, as of last week, they were not "in season". so hopefully the camel season will start tomorrow.
Trying to make onward arrangements to pakistan... that's my fun for the day.
Latest Comments (1)
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camel (reply)
Sep 5, 2006 09:58 EST by jaw
if you don't buy a camel, im going to be very dissapointed in you. How did this market compare to the weekend market in Bangkok?
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