At breakfast, Victoria cheerily asked me if I was cold last night. “Very, very cold” I scolded. “I did not sleep at all.” But there was no apology or explanation forthcoming, and so we continued to gum our oatmeal in silence. Me, simmering in anger, and they? I don’t know what they were thinking, because they made no effort to set things right. Not that they could have.
At eight thirty we loaded up the Land Rover and drove back out onto the gravel road toward the border. The morning was crisp and cold, and the wind blew our billowing trail of dust sideways under a cloudless sky. After about an hour we reached the first Kyrgyz checkpoint. It was little more than a guard tower, a couple of huts, a gate, and two Russian soldiers in winter clothes, trying to fend off the biting wind. They signaled us to stop and slung their AK-47s over their shoulders as they gave our passports a cursory glance, and then waved us on.
We were in the militarized zone now, and the road was lined with a high double fence, that had once been electrified, but I could see the wires drooping to the ground in many places. About fifteen minutes later we pulled up to the Kyrgyz border post, and we stopped and fought through a stinging wind into a large concrete building. I carried my bags into the main room filled with waiting Kyrgyz and few Westerners. There I filled out a customs form, and waited for about five minutes until the customs agent called me. He asked a few questions, where had I been, where was I going, what was I carrying, etc., but didn’t bother to check my bags. Then he waved us on, and we walked briskly back to the Land Rover. So far, so good.
On the way out some European travelers collared us, and begged to allow them to ride with us to the Chinese border post. They told us they were stuck there, and needed some help getting across the border.
In order to be allowed into the no-mans land between the Kyrgyz and Chinese borders, the Kyrgyz border police must see some proof of continuing transportation, or they won’t let you travel any further. It’s not so much that it matters to them what happens to you once you leave Kyrgyzstan. It’s just that the Chinese won’t take you if there’s no one waiting for you on their side, and the Kyrgyz don’t want a bunch of aimless back-packers wandering around in the no-man’s land between border posts.
And these poor souls evidently had shown up without the requisite magic papers, and were stuck in this freezing, wind-blown hell-hole, with only one option, to return to Bishkek and attempt to make contact with a Chinese driver who would agree to meet them at the border. I felt sorry for them, but my papers specified that I was traveling alone, and it would have done them no good to come with me; the Chinese border guards would have sent them (and possibly me) right back. Victoria explained this to them, and they glumly thanked her and went back inside the border post to wait for a miracle. I would have hated to be in their position, but they obviously hadn't done their homework.
So we drove the last half-mile to a small brick archway, which is the border proper. On the far side was a tiny hut manned by Chinese soldiers, and next to it, a red flag with golden stars flapped violently in the wind. I was on the threshold, but my Chinese driver was not there, so we had to sit and wait for him to show up before we could go any farther.
Kyrgyz-Chinese Border
The appointed hour of twelve o’clock came and went, and still no sign of him. I could see the Chinese border post a mile and a half down the dirt road on the other side, but I wouldn’t get there until my new driver showed. Two other groups drove up, and we all sat there behind the archway, temporarily (we hoped) in limbo. I wandered over to the arch to examine the graffiti scratched into the bricks on the Kyrgyz side. Some disgruntled traveler had scratched “FUCK CHINA” in large letters. Coming, or going, I wondered.
Finally, after a forty-five minute wait, a white Land Cruiser inched up the dusty track and stopped on the Chinese side. I walked through the arch with my bags, and Mohammed, my Uighur contact stepped out to greet me, and helped me load my stuff. I had been debating whether to stiff Victoria and Denis because of the yurt disaster, but in the end I gave them a decent tip and told them to split it. They finally apologized, and we parted with no bad feelings. But I had had my fill of Russians by then, and was eager to see what other sorts of people would have me at their mercy in the weeks ahead.
Mohammed and his driver helped me through the first Chinese checkpoint, and these border police were serious. One of them disappeared with my passport and visa, and three others crawled through the car and tore into my luggage with glee. Every little pouch and tube was examined, books were rifled through, and anything that seemed strange to them (almost everything) was questioned. Oddly, my little zippered pouch that contained all of the telephone adapters and modem cables for my computer was left unopened. This was a bit of a relief, since I had expected that it would raise a flag with these guys.
Mohammed stuck right next to me during the search, and was apparently trying his best to urge them to hurry it along. But they weren’t going to move any faster than they had to. All around me, scores of other western travelers and local traders were having their belongings gone over on the dusty roadside. In the strong wind, it looked like an airplane had crashed here, with luggage and clothes strewn about all over the yard. If any smugglers came through this pass, they’d have to have balls of brass.
Mine were not, and they found nothing, of course, and so reluctantly gave me back my passport, granting one more foreign devil access to the Middle Kingdom. I packed everything back up, and tossed my bags in the back of the Land Cruiser. Just before we drove off, a guard requested a ride down with us, and Mohammed asked if it was OK with me. Not wanting to seem ungracious, I acquiesced, and this young Chinese guy in street clothes hopped in the back with Mohammed.
For sixty miles, up to the Chinese customs post, we followed a dusty track alongside a dry riverbed, passing a few Kyrgyz villages and isolated yurts. Mohammed clued me in on the local ethnic breakdown, saying that the southern part of Xinjiang province was 92 percent Uighur, a Turkic tribe closely related to the Uzbeks, but that some Kyrgyz and Tajiks live in the mountainous border areas. The rest were Hui, or Muslim Chinese, and Han, the more recent Chinese arrivals from the east.
I had heard about tensions between the Han and Uighur, and asked Mohammed about this, but he said, “Oh, it’s fine, really.” This surprised me, given that as recently as 1995, there had been a Muslim uprising in Yining, in northern Xinjiang, and two recent bus bombings in Beijing had been blamed on Muslim separatists. Then it dawned on me. We had a Han border guard in the car with us, and though he probably couldn’t speak English, Mohammed was being careful. Duh. I said no more to him about the subject.
We reached the final customs check after two hours of billowing dust, and exited the car to go through another grilling. This time they didn’t need to see the contents of my bags, but my passport and visa were passed back and forth between three or four uniformed border guards. They didn’t like the look of my visa, it seemed, and told Mohammed to ask me where I got it. Since I had been asked this at the frontier, he told them it was from the Chinese Embassy in San Francisco. This really set one of them off, and he shouted at Mohammed to ask me the question, not answer it himself. So I repeated Mohammed’s answer, which seemed to calm the guard down, but he still eyed me with suspicion. In the end, though, they couldn’t find anything wrong enough with my papers, and waved me through.
We got back in the car, and drove off, leaving our Han passenger behind. When I asked Mohammed about him, he said that he had told them that I didn’t want the guy along anymore, and grinned, “I hate those Chinks, they told me that they’d remember me the next time I come through, but I don’t care.”
It was then that he began to spill his true feelings about Han/Uighur relations. He told me that the Han control all the moneymaking businesses in Xinjiang, and that as soon as any Uighur starts doing too well, he is squeezed out and some Han bigwig puts his son or nephew in charge of the operation. Every year, Mohammed has to take a test to certify his ability as a tour guide, and must show proficiency in all areas of Chinese history, geography and politics. But some Hans who work with him in the same office, and who can barely speak any other language, don’t have to take this test. And yet they receive the plum jobs and are promoted above the Uighur employees. Only when returning tours leaders specifically request Mohammed or one of his Uighur associates, do they get to have any of the better assignments.
His bitterness and resentment was clear, as he gave example after example of Han high-handedness. He also claimed that the situation was much worse in northern Xinjiang, where, with the completion of the railroad to Urumqi, Xinjiang’s largest city, China has embarked on a massive emigration scheme to move more Han into the area. Within a few years, Mohammed said, the railroad will be linked to Kashgar, and he feared that the same fate as Urumqi’s awaited his home city. I had seen just a few minutes of Han/Uighur interaction, but it seemed clear that the tension here made the Russian/Uzbek or Russian/Kyrgyz problems pale in comparison.
Within an hour we were entering the outskirts of Kashgar. In the clear air I could see the peaks of the snow-capped Pamir Mountains to the south. Mohammed told me I was lucky to see them; the smog in the Tarim basin was usually so thick, it obscured the nearby mountains.
We drove up to my hotel and Mohammed helped me into my room, and then gave me a quick tour of the hotel’s restaurant and facilities, including the long-distance telephone office. Then he asked if there was anything else he could do for me, and after I declined, he left me on my own, promising to be available, should I need anything. I tipped him handsomely.
The room was the best I had had so far, and I looked forward to finally sleeping on a decent mattress again. I took a long shower, and while shaving discovered that the shower and sink both drain into a hole in the corner of the bathroom. There is no drainpipe for the sink. The television in my room has six channels, all Chinese, of course, but one which gives a continuous reading of the stock ticker. How China has changed!
The whole country is in one time zone; Beijing time. So dinner time out here is at ten o’clock, just as the sun is setting. I went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, and was surprised to find the place empty, save for the four waitresses and cook lounging around at a couple of the tables. And they seemed equally surprised to see me. I motioned to my watch in effort to inquire if I was early. But no, they showed me a table and brought a menu in English. I ordered a stir-fry Chicken with rice and tea, and sat alone in the middle of the huge dining room to wait for it.
The cook was sent off to the kitchen to prepare my meal, and I heard much shouting and banging of pots from behind the door. I began to suspect that having a customer is a rare and unwelcome experience in this restaurant.
The chicken was quite good, but a plate of cold rice accompanied it. Not knowing if this is customary, I didn’t complain, but it seemed a little odd. So, I just mixed the stir-fry into the rice, which warmed it a little, and enjoyed the meal in this echoing hall.
My waitress kept my glass of tea filled, and after finishing the meal, I paid the bill and snuck out. Not another soul had poked his head in while I dined, and I decided to seek another restaurant for dinner the next day. But it was a relief to be finally allowed to order some food of my own choosing, and not to be at the mercy of a bunch of well-meaning Russians intent on fattening me for winter.
At eleven local time, I headed off to the telephone office to try to call Vilma. It would be eight in the morning back home, and I figured she’d be awake by then. The call went through instantly, and the line was remarkably clear. We talked for about five minutes and then were inexplicably cut off. I asked the receptionist what had happened, but she had no idea, so I just redialed and got reconnected. Vilma clued me in on all the happenings at home, and I got her up to date on my continuing adventure, making much of my stomach and yurt problems, and received the commensurate sympathy. All was well again.
But after I hung up about twenty minutes later, I received a bill for $81! I had only changed $50 into Yuan, and had to go to the hotel receptionist to get more money in order to pay the phone bill. Next time, I’m going to check the per minute charges before I start gabbing on about my intestinal disorders.
So I went back up to the room, and put my tired body on that firm mattress, and slept like a baby.
Exploring
The dining room was completely empty again in the morning, save for me. And I soon found out why. Breakfast consisted of a collection of plates filled with pickled vegetables, a boiled egg, and a couple of pieces of some sort of fried dough. Not your typical continental breakfast, and one which having experienced once, I will forgo for the remainder of my days here. Even if it is free.
Having a decent bed and a warm shower in the morning did wonders for my disposition, though, which the strange breakfast couldn’t spoil. And I left the cavernous dining room to explore the city on foot.
My first stop was the CITS (China International Tourist Service) office near the Chini Bagh hotel. There I hoped to secure information about getting a car and driver for the trip of Pakistan. Mohammed had told me that it would be no problem to arrange this, once the road reopened, and sure enough, a friendly man named Kamil claimed that I could get a Land Cruiser and driver for a one-day sprint for the border for $400. But finding other passengers to share the ride (and expense) was up to me.
On the bulletin board at a cafe across the street from my hotel, someone had left a note asking for riders leaving for Pakistan on Monday, the day I wanted to leave, and said to contact them at the Chini Bagh, room 216. So my next stop was room 216. I knocked, but a Pakistani man who apparently knew nothing of the people who had left the note answered the door. Temporarily stumped, I decided to begin my exploration of the old town section of Kashgar.
My guidebook has a very basic map of the city, and I relied on this absolutely, since what street signs there were, and there were very few, were in Chinese characters or Arabic script. It was early, and shopkeepers were still opening up, and as I walked by them, they stopped what they were doing and gaped at me. The Uighurs evidently feel no compunction at all about staring at Westerners, as everywhere I went, many pairs of eyes were glued on me. It was a bit disconcerting at first, but I got used to it after a while. They didn’t seem to be threatening stares, after all, just intensely curious ones.
Kashgar Dentist Office
The old town was about half a mile from the Chini Bagh, and as soon as I entered it, I felt transported back in time about ten centuries. The streets narrowed, and little side alleys wound off into dark warrens every hundred feet or so. Old men and women sat on their doorsteps and eyed me, while small children followed me closely, shouting, “Allo” and “bye-bye.”
Several of the streets seemed to be devoted to particular crafts. There was a street of metal workers, a street of butchers, a street of bread makers, and a street of tailors and (curiously) dentists. Only the children spoke to me, but all paused in their work and stared at me slack-jawed. It was as if I was the first foreigner they had ever seen, something I presumed not to be the case. Though Kashgar is not on the main tourist routes, groups do come here regularly, and in my hotel I had already seen a few camera-toting Westerners in their khaki shorts and Tilley hats.
I looked into several shops, hoping to find items to buy as gifts for friends and family, but this was not a tourist bazaar. All the items for sale here were intended for local use. Of course, someone back home might have made use of a hoe, or a coal-burning stove, but the novelty of having one from Kashgar didn’t seem sufficient reason to buy one.
So I continued to stroll around, soaking in the atmosphere, and trying to get an idea of daily life. I saw very few Chinese faces. Virtually everyone was Uighur, and the radios and televisions blaring from some of the shops and old houses were all tuned to Uighur-speaking stations. It was hard to tell that I was even in China, the place reminded me so much of Uzbekistan. Though separated from their brethren on the other side of the Tien Shan, it was easy to see why this area had been part of what once was called Turkestan.
Eventually my feet got tired, and I tried to find my way back to the hotel. Easier said than done. I managed to leave the old town, and found a landmark that appeared in my guidebook, the Id Kah mosque. It’s a 15th century mosque of unremarkable design, but sits to the side of a large square, where local people gather. I tried to blend into the crowd on one side of the square in order to take some pictures, but soon drew a crowd of men who huddled around me, all talking at me in Uighur. I just smiled and tried to extricate myself gracefully, when suddenly, on a signal from one of them, the crowed grew silent and dispersed. A PSB (People’s Security Bureau) officer had arrived, and was giving me a stern looking over, trying to see what I had been doing to attract the crowd. But the others had melted away, and I was left there, smiling innocently at the PSB man. He gave me a hard stare, and then turned and left.
It seemed prudent to move along at that point, so I chose a street which seemed to going in the correct direction, and continued my quest for the hotel. The street wound along past more shops and houses, and soon the direction I had hoped to go was not the direction the street wanted to follow. So at the next likely intersection, I tried to redirect myself. And again at the next intersection. Soon I was completely lost.
By retracing my steps, I made it back to the mosque, and this time I tried another street. The same thing happened, but for some reason I could sense that I was closer to the hotel than I had been during my previous attempt. So after making a few exploratory stabs in various directions, I finally made it back. Though I had spent the good part of the morning lost in Kashgar, I figured my aimless wandering would help me the next day, when I would try to walk to the Sunday market on the other side of the old town.
After washing the dust off of me in my room, I ambled over to the cafe across the street to see if I might get a bite of lunch, and find some likely travelers to go with me to Pakistan. I had a tasty lunch of stir-fried beef, and as luck would have it, while I was paying my bill, struck up a conversation with one of the guys who had left the note on the bulletin board. His name was Robbie, and he was hoping, as was I, to leave on Monday, but his finances were a bit tighter than mine, and he was willing to wait until he could find enough people to bring the cost down.
I sat down with him and his friend Max, both Germans with excellent command of English, and we decided to see if we could scare up a few people on Sunday at the market, and then meet again Sunday afternoon to see what to do next.
I whiled away the rest of the afternoon typing away at my journal, and then crossed the street again for a quick dinner.
Since the phone line to the States the previous evening had been so clear, I decided to try to check my e-mail too. But the woman at the business center wanted nothing to do with me, once she saw what I had in mind, and suggested I try across the street at the cafe. John Hu, the owner of the cafe, and local raconteur, provides everything from food, tours, drivers and camping equipment to phone service. He seems to be making quite a decent living at this, and I found him contentedly smoking a Chinese cigarette in a big chair at the entrance to his cafe. I introduced myself and explained to him what I wanted to do. He said that I was the second guy to try to do this on his phone, and that the guy last year had failed. But if I’d pay for the time I used his phone, he’d let me take a stab at it.
So we went to his office, where I plugged everything in, his phone having a standard RJ-11 plug on the back, to which I connected my phone line splitter. When I had everything hooked up, I tried to let the modem dial the number in Beijing. To my utter surprise, I got connected on the first try, and began typing the necessary codes to navigate over to the CompuServe network. But for some reason, I got an error code, which said: network identification number error. This had happened to me in Tashkent, when I had input the wrong code, so I disconnected and tried again. This time I double-checked to see that what I was typing was the right information, but again I got the same error message. Several more attempts all brought the same result. I was so close, and obviously had a very clean line, but something was wrong, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was extremely frustrating.
Since the line to the US was so clean the night before, I decided to try the number at home, and just pay whatever it would cost for the time I was connected. I figured I could get on and off in just a couple of minutes at most, so it didn’t figure to cost too much. But for some reason, perhaps it was the delay between transmission and reception, the connection didn’t work. Finally I just had to throw in the towel, pay Mr. Hu for the use of his phone, and retreat back to hotel in defeat.
The Sunday Market
After breakfast, I loaded up my shoulder bag with cameras and drinking water, and started walking in the general direction of the Kashgar Sunday market. This event, which I had been reading about since I first started researching this adventure, is one of the main attractions of Central Asia. Every Sunday, the population of Kashgar swells by about 100,000, as farmers, herders, and craftsmen from all over the region descend on a four-acre plot on the east side of town, and buy and sell just about everything from horses and camels, to soap and matches.
A few tourist groups are flown in just for the market, and the evening before, the western population at my hotel had increased noticeably. It’s a spectacle not to be missed, all the guidebooks claimed, so I sure wasn’t going to miss it.
There were a number of options for getting the two miles across town, including renting one of those funky, one-speed Chinese bicycles, riding in the free hotel shuttle bus, or even taking a donkey cart. But I decided to walk, since the show really begins when the vendors start streaming into the market area, jostling and pushing, making their way through the crowds with shouts of “boisht, boisht!” (Coming through!).
So I hoofed it through the old town, by now a little bit familiar to me, and on the other side I just had to allow myself to be swept along with the sheep, vegetable carts, motorcycles and other pedestrians, all heading in one direction.
The atmosphere as we neared the marketplace was already charged. Very few locals stopped to stare at me along the way, and all seemed intent on getting there as quickly as possible. The closer we got, the more the noise and excitement grew, as vendors who had positioned themselves on the outskirts began hawking their goods, shouting and gesturing at us. Most of them here were vegetable and meat sellers, and piles of melons, peppers, onions, and slabs of meat on hooks, some swarming with yellow jackets, were on display.
Sunday Market
It was already difficult to keep moving in one direction, as I was jostled by crowds of Uighurs, or found myself leaping out of the way of their rumbling pushcarts. The colors and smells assaulted my senses. I seemed to be in some sort of pungent kaleidoscope, being tumbled along with the moving masses. My sensory overload meter was nearing the red zone.
Trying to head toward the center of the market, I bulled my way through the crowd, past braying donkeys and shouting vendors, stopping whenever I could to snap a picture of the swirling scene. Every direction I turned there were pictures worth capturing, as Uighurs haggled and argued at a fever pitch. Here, in the middle of communist China, was the biggest capitalistic free-for-all I had ever witnessed.
In the center of this mass of humanity was the permanent market, where the more established vendors had set up covered booths, and everything from pencils and electrical appliances, tools, clothing, hats, medicinal concoctions, spices, carpets, and knives were for sale. The pace of selling here was a little less frantic, but the sheer number of people crammed into the enclosed space made it seem like a hyper blue-light special at Kmart. Not a place for the timid shopper.
Sunday Market
There were some unique items for sale, like dried lizards and snakes; evidently for some sort of medicine. And the colorful spices delighted both my eyes and nose. Unfortunately for me, though, there was nothing I saw that interested me enough to buy it. It would have been fun to bargain for something, though I’m sure I would have been like a pigeon in a fox’s den among these seasoned traders. But this was a market for the local Uighur people, not for the few tourists here; who were easily outnumbered a thousand to one.
I spent about three hours being swept around the place, but by then I was getting a little tired of the madhouse scene, and eventually made my way back out the way I had come. People were still coming in as I left, and the old town had also sprung to life, as fevered commerce overflowed into the rest of the town. The guidebooks were right; this had been something not to be missed.
After washing off the dust and sweat back at the hotel, I sat down at John’s cafe across the street to wait for Robbie and Max. They showed up a little later and said that they’d managed to find a couple of people to join us for the trip to Pakistan, but that the two new passengers wanted to wait until Tuesday to make the trip. Though I was all for getting out on Monday, it seemed that I was the only one who felt strongly about that, and it was far cheaper for me to wait the extra day than to hire the car myself. So we agreed to continue looking for another person to share the ride, and then make the drive to Pakistan on Tuesday.
We agreed to meet again the next day for lunch and finalize the arrangements, and I retired to the hotel to take a nap.
I knew I’d have to pay for another night at my hotel, so on my way down to dinner, I stopped off at the reception to tell them of my plans. It was then that the girl behind the counter informed me that I had not paid for my third night there, much less the extra night I was planing to pay for. I tried to argue that I had paid my travel agent in Seattle for three nights, and that the hotel should take up the problem with CITS, my agent’s representative here in Kashgar. But that didn’t seem to impress her much, and she insisted that I pay for the night and then hassle with CITS myself in the morning. Reluctantly, I paid the 280 Yuan, and made her write out a receipt, which I could take with me the next day. I had no intention of paying twice, so CITS was just going to have to set things right before I left. Or so I hoped.
At dinner, Robbie and Max told me that the cafe made a pretty decent gin and tonic, so I bought a round while I sipped my very spicy hot and sour soup, and then we had two more while we swapped traveler’s war stories. They were right, the gin and tonics weren’t that bad. And Kashgar was pretty much the last place on this trip I had expected to get one—except for teetotaling Pakistan, of course—so I was feeling pretty good about this turn of events.
At around midnight, I told them I’d had my fill of this day, and leaving them to continue the festivities without me, retired to my very fully paid for room to get some sleep.
Waiting
The next day I rose late, got the room situation straightened out with CITS, met Robbie and Max to make arrangements for the car, bought a couple of gifts and some food for the road, and then had three gin and tonics over dinner (with Robbie and Max again), where we met Hanna, the Finnish/Australian woman who will accompany us on the trip to Pakistan. She seems a bit of an odd bird, with the strangest accent I think I’ve ever heard. When she told us what sort of work she does, I had to make her repeat it three times before I could understand what she was saying. It sounded like she was saying “vahmin,” and after I practically had to have her spell it out for me, I finally figured out that she was saying “environmental scientist.” It should be an interesting drive.