It was a relief to finally be able to leave Khotan and make our way to Yarkand. The recently ropey road that went east of Kashgar, linking the towns we are no passing through, is now a lightly used motorway. Its mere existence is something of a triumph over the desert. All the way along since we hit Ruoqiang and the start of where the 315 meets the southern ridge of the Taklamakan Desert, you can see the attempts to hold it back with gridded plantings of poplars (at least locally authentic) and what looks like just dried straw, spread around 30m each way astride the road.
The best place to go and see in Yarkand is the tomb of their historic kings from the 16th and 17th century. It is calm and cool, carapaced by large spreading trees and surrounded by high white walls. It adjoins the mosque and the newly created “Culture Square”. The mosque is very Bukhara-style, with its mud brick walls and delicately pillared colonnades – but it is time of evening prayer and it does not anyway seem to be open to non-believers. Instead we sort of potter round the edges. The tomb complex is rather splendid but looks heavily made-up – some more authentic looking tombs in crumbling mud brick indicate how it must have looked pre its restoration and addition of a fancy pavilion.
Our tickets also show they give access to the “Kings’ Palace”. This explains what is happening across the road, where a massive section of the old city has been razed and from it has now arisen a crenellated concrete edifice about 120m square, with small moorish windows. It looks like an unpainted version of the Doge’s Palace. In time it will be covered in dun coloured plaster and have red and white umbrellas scattered through its large internal courtyard and along its battlements where the imminent hordes of thirsty tourists will be refreshed.
The tourists are yet to arrive in real numbers however. It seems Xinjiang’s now widespread reputation for violence (at least in the southern part if not so much Urumqi and points north) has meant that Han Chinese have stayed away more so than they have for say, Lhasa.
Yarkand is a much smaller town than Hetian but also has a proportionately less prominent Chinese presence. It does not have the militarised feeling of Hetian (nor does it have the long history of anti-Chinese violence that Hetian does – e.g. its massacre of a Chinese garrison to which it granted safe passage, shortly before Peter Fleming’s arrival in the city in the early 1930s) but it still feels like a Uyghur town rather than an occupied town. Its streets are largely unrecognisable from nine years ago but it is a small place with a very limited Han presence. It is actually a lot nicer place to spend time and to wander around.
The old town in particular has survived in parts and walking around it, or any old town (of which there are few now) is one of Xinjiang’s main attractions. Khaki houses broken by wooden lintels form semi-straight lines along sand or mud lanes through which many more playing children pass than cars. Schools get out at 7pm Beijing time (5pm local time) and so an evening stroll is a lively one.
A group of older chaps do not seem that impressed (in almost unrecognisably accented Mandarin) by the destruction that has reduced the traditional town’s size dramatically in favour of Chinese style apartment blocks; nor are they by the dress code of Chinese visitors (nor, even, by beards it seems). They have, for now, a lot more to remind them of their real way of living than their counterparts in other towns, and it makes it is a great place to be a flaneur.
Flashmen 