MCLC: Kashgar on the move

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Kashgar on the move
***********************************************************

Source: The Diplomat (10/14/13):
http://thediplomat.com/2013/10/14/kashgar-on-the-move/

Kashgar on the Move
By Alessandro Rippa

China’s westernmost city, Kashgar lies at the edge of the Taklamakan
Desert, closer to Bagdad than Beijing. For travellers and traders coming
from Central Asia and Pakistan, the city offers a first glimpse of China.
Yet, in most cases, Kashgar strikes them for its similarities to the
countries they have just left. Coming from inner China, on the other hand,
Kashgar often leaves the impression of entering another country,
particularly as one walks through the narrow alleys of the old town, or
watches the crowd at the dusty livestock market on a Sunday morning.
Kashgar’s old town, not long ago, was used as a set for the movie The Kite
Runner, based on Khaled Hosseini’s homonymous novel, to represent Kabul
prior to the Soviet invasion. Today, asked about the movie as they drink
cups of milk tea in one of the few Pakistani restaurants in town, Afghan
traders admit that the city somewhat reminds them of the Kabul of their
youth.

This is not, however, the reason they are there, and the scenic old town
does not seem to interest them at all. As a Pakistani moneylender who
spends most of the year in Kashgar tells me, “If you look at the city, you
will see that Kashgar is more developed than our capital, Islamabad. We
don’t have such tall buildings in Islamabad, and this is like a small town
in China!” A Tajik truck driver, enjoying a bottle of Chinese baijiu with
his fellow countrymen, points to the quality of the roads as a sign of
Chinese progress: “Everything is new, roads are broad and well paved. If
you come to Tajikistan, you’ll see the difference with our roads.”

Kashgar’s links to the Central Asian world – geographic and cultural – are
thus not only a feature of its much-discussed “old town,” which at any
rate is being transformed in a massive process of renovation. Central Asia
is also an important part of the city’s future plans for development. This
future, far from the artisans and mosques of the old town, is reflected in
the current construction of the new Special Economic District.

The district will represent the core of Kashgar’s Special Economic Zone
(SEZ), as the city was classified in May 2010. Kashgar’s model is
Shenzhen, transformed in thirty years from a small fishing village into a
large city that is one of China’s wealthiest. If Shenzhen was chosen for
its proximity to Hong Kong, Kashgar lies within a day’s ride of four
different countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan (though the
border at the Wakhjir Pass is not an official border crossing point and it
is not served by a road) and Pakistan.

China is not hiding these ambitious plans for its westernmost city. Quite
the contrary. Between the end of June and the beginning of July, as
foreign journalists in China were busy covering the most recent spate of
attacks in Xinjiang, an important four-day fair in Kashgar went almost
unnoticed. It was the ninth edition of the Kashgar Central & South Asia
Commodity Fair 
<http://news.tj/en/news/tajikistan-participates-9th-kashgar-central-south-a
sia-commodity-fair>, an important attraction for Central and South Asian
traders. The main avenue was the impressive Kashgar International
Convention and Exhibition Center, situated not far from the recently
constructed Eastern Lake – a major attraction for Chinese tourists.
Meanwhile, for the first time in 2013 the China Kashgar-Guangzhou
Commodity Fair has been held as part of the main fair
<http://english.gz.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/gzgoven/s4171/2013
05/2416210.html>, though in a different location: the Guangzhou New City,
a exposition complex in the South-Western part of town, on the Karakoram
Highway, newly opened for the occasion.

One of the main sections in the International Convention and Exhibition
Center was dedicated to the new Special Economic District, the core of
Kashgar’s SEZ. Here posters and brochures showed the modern look of the
new Kashgar, while young hostesses explained the project while pointing at
the impressive plastic model of the two “Development Twin Towers.” They
say the two towers should be completed in three years, and with their 280
meters they will be the highest in Xinjiang. One of them will host the
Kashgar Hilton Hotel, while the other will provide space for “high-end”
offices. Next to this display, I was shown the model of a four-floor
tax-free shopping mall, expected to open by the end of the year with
brands such as Prada, Valentino and Louis Vuitton. On the walls, maps and
posters showed Kashgar’s favorable location in Eurasia, underlying its
proximity to the various capitals of the Central Asian “stans,” as well as
Kabul, Islamabad and Delhi.

A few days after the fair I tried to visit the area where the new Special
Economic District will be located. To get there, I had to cross Century
Avenue, running down from the train station, and the railway itself.
Contrary to what I was expecting, I found myself in the middle of the
countryside. I first followed an old, narrow road, flanked by two lines of
poplar trees and a water channel. Such roads are a quite common sight in
Xinjiang’s numerous oases, but in this case I was expecting a busy
construction site. After a while, I found what I was looking for in the
form of a road of another kind: a modern six-lane highway, cutting
straight through the fields. Han Chinese workers were asphalting it, while
Uyghur kids rode their bikes and played on the unpaved sections. Following
this road, I eventually found myself on the edge of a small lake, which I
realize was just the northern section of the much bigger and partially
artificial lake that will lie beside the two Development Twin Towers.

As I continued my exploration, I noticed that the busiest site was further
south, where a few buildings were already completed and others looked
nearly finished. From a distance, I compared this dusty image with the
posters and plastic model I have seen at the fair. I tried to picture the
finished project in my mind, with neon lights, fountains and shopping
malls, but on the hot and dusty construction site my imagination failed
me. One of the workers told me that I was not allowed to go closer: “for
your own safety.” I thus turned back toward the city center, stopping at a
small restaurant along the way to eat some noodles in the shade of a
veranda covered with grape leaves.

I felt a little disappointed, as actual work at the Special Economic
District was nowhere near as advanced as I had been told it was at the
fair. Still, I thought, part of the fair’s purpose was to impress its
visitors, and in that respect it had largely succeeded. Central Asian
traders would point to Kashgar’s new, modern buildings, to praise China’s
power and development. Pakistanis, on the other hand, seemed impressed by
the peaceful crowd of buyers and sellers. “Here we don’t have to worry
about anything,” Ahmed, a gemstone trader from the Swat Valley, tells me.
“And people have a lot of money. It’s good for business.”

Pakistanis were, in fact, by far the most numerous foreign traders at the
fair. With more than 200 stands, they alone outnumbered representatives
from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan combined. Many were
familiar with Xinjiang, owning businesses in Tashkurgan, Kashgar and
Urumqi. They sold gemstones, marble, rugs and other handicrafts imported
from Karachi via the Karakoram Highway. This year, they told me, has not
been a very good one thus far. Recurrent violence in Xinjiang is severely
affecting domestic Chinese tourism in the region, their major source of
business. “Even the fair, this year, is not as crowded as it used to be,”
says Karim, a businessmen from the Hunza valley who owns different shops
in Xinjiang. “But we are optimistic, it will get better in the future.”

Most of the Pakistani delegation comprised occasional traders. They visit
Xinjiang only twice each year, for the Central and South Asia Commodity
Fair in Kashgar and for the bigger China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi
<http://en.caeexpo.org/>. Most are from Gilgit-Baltistan, a region in the
north of Pakistan where tourism has been hard hit since 9/11, forcing them
to seek out new business opportunities. China is, by far, the main game,
and Kashgar represents for them the gateway to its growing market.

And Kashgar seems ready to fulfill its role as a major hub between China,
Central and South Asia. The fair itself represents an important investment
in this direction. Many Pakistani traders, for instance, had all their
expenses covered for the four days of the fair: from the expositive space,
to the travel expenses, to the custom duties and hotel. They were put up
at the new Chini Bagh Hotel, another symbol of Kashgar’s enchantment with
its future and detachment from its past. The newly opened four‐star
facility, in fact, hides a historical building: the old Chini Bagh, former
residence of the British consulate in Kashgar between 1890 and 1918. The
building is unknown to most visitors, hidden behind crumbling sections of
the hotel, and today houses a decrepit Chinese restaurant. An almost
unreadable sign, in Mandarin, English and Uyghur, briefly illustrates the
historical importance of the building, but barely anybody seems to pay
attention to it, and most locals are unaware it even exists. During my
first visit to Kashgar, in 2009, I was able to visit the chambers on the
second floor, and even enjoy a view of the old town from the roof of the
little tower. Today, that’s no longer possible, and this important section
of Kashgar’s past is all but lost. With the city’s focus on the future,
it’s a loss that will pass largely unremarked.

Alessandro Rippa is a Ph.D. student in Social Anthropology at the
University of Aberdeen. He recently concluded a year of ethnographic
research on the Karakoram Highway between Xinjiang and Pakistan. You can
follow Alessandro on Twitter @AlessandroRippa
<https://twitter.com/AlessandroRippa>.