ここも中国！西のはずれのオアシスの街

　About two thousand years ago, when the Silk Road was becoming an important trading vector, many small oasis and watering holes were developed into desert towns.

　Some of these new centers of wealth became feudal kingdoms. Kashgar, China's most westerly city and growing out of the sands of the Taklamakan Desert, was one such place.

　Until as recently as the 1930s, it took several months for travelers to cover the journey from Beijing to this old center of Chinese Turkestan. Coming in the opposite direction, from Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, Kashgar was, and is, the first Silk Road city visitors see. Its fascination for travelers has not dimmed over time.

　Though there is a growing modern Chinese city beside the medieval one, there is still a local feel to Kashgar. There is also a very real sense that you are at the end of the world, or at least the Chinese world. Even today, your taxi driver is more likely to know the location of the tomb of an Islamic saint than the address of your hotel.

　Kashgar is best known for its great Sunday market, the most animated commercial event in Xinjiang province. The market is counted, along with the markets at Kano in Nigeria and Fez in Morocco, as one of the world's most fascinating.

　"Trading is in our blood," a silk merchant who gave his first name as Ahmed, said. "It's what we've always done. My grandparents were in the same business."

　Selling silk along the Silk Road seemed to me a wonderfully original thing to be doing, but over the next few hours I found that there were many people in the market like Ahmed.

　Though the greatest pleasure staying in Kashgar is simply watching the daily life of its people, there are several worthwhile sights. On my second day in the city, I hired a taxi to take me out to the ruins of Ha Noi, where a seventh-century pagoda can still be seen.The twisted skeletons of camels lay alongside the road to the ruins, a little visited site standing in the middle of the desert.

　The Tomb of the Perfumed Princess, on the northern edge of the town, is a better-known site. It's the resting place of Abakh Khoja, one of Kashgar's most popular rulers, whose granddaughter led a rebellion against the Chinese Emperor Qianlong.

　Defeated, she ended up as his concubine. Her tomb was lost to me among a room of other tombs, all covered in colorful silk drapes to soften the hardness of stone and death. A camel with a cynical face sat outside the tomb, its sole job to stand up and be photographed by the occasional, passing tourist.

中東のようなたたずまい

　In Kashgar's medieval town, with its narrow lanes, and adobe and brick houses, I was reminded more of the Middle East, Yemen or Tunisia, than China. Young women in sequined veils walk along these corridors of shade and light.

　Older women wear brown veils that look like rough tablecloths or sack material, concealing their entire face, even their eyes. The men, with their strong Turkic features, similarly represent a blend of Eastern and nomadic cultures. This is seen in their long beards, prayer caps and turbans, high cheekbones and hooked noses.

　The winding streets, some with overhead passages connecting to opposite houses, create pleasant, shady walks. Earthen homes have thick wooden doors, bolted and studded with large iron buttons. Tap the house surfaces and they ring with the sound and texture of the local bread ― hard on the outside, hollow on the inside.

　The main streets through the old town are seldom wide. Just large enough to take a donkey cart going one way, a pickup truck the other. Many trades, practiced for countless generations, are visible in the open workshops and sidewalks along the streets.

　It is still possible to see men polishing jade and gold with sand, carving inkstones for calligraphy, or grinding knives on whetstones. Stalls also lined these streets, selling dried figs, grapes, spices, freshly baked flatbread, and lamb shish kebabs, the savory smoke from the charcoal grills attracting passers-by.

　There was a pharmacy selling traditional medicines and cures under the same canvas roof. A closer look revealed shelves of snakeskin, dried roots, powdered armadillo, bat wings and lizards floating in jars of oil. The owner told me that the stock was very valuable.

　"That's why my nephew over there sleeps here every night to guard everything," he said, pointing to a young man rolling out a blanket.

　I bought a small bottle of rose petals mixed with sugar, which the owner assured me would keep me fit during the rest of my journey.