the five loves of the uyghurs

hats. the easiest way for us to tell if an area of a city is more han chinese or uyghur is the number of hats. since uyghurs are muslim, every man has his head covered with some kind of hat. they range from baseball hats (rare) to white or decorated skull caps, to 1920s-era newsboy caps. some of them are very detailed and have many colors in the patterns, while others are a simple white.


knives. for sale everywhere and really well decorated, knives are found on the belts of almost every adult male. they are used a lot too, since there is so much bread, fruit and meat that needs cutting. they are mostly handmade and really intricate.


meat. always lamb, but always good. due to the large amount of grassland around the desert areas, there is a large supply of lamb in xinjiang. the lamb is put into bread pockets, diced and mixed with noodles, eaten as kebabs, served on top of rice and hung all over city streets like flags.


watermelon. as i've said before, the desert is very hot. while the locals drink the tapwater, since there aren't too many industrial polutants, we cannot for fear of stomach bugs. since the locals don't drink bottled water, it's a rather pricey commodity. the best way around this problem is to eat your water in the form of one of the millions of melons for sale in every market. often, there will be a crowd of people buying melon by the slice rather than taking it home. thanks to the abundance of knives, we were able to enoy melon in the street and at the hotel.


bread. large flat breads the size of tires, bagels, herb and garlic bread, plain, stuffed with lamb, several inches thick and as big around as a dinner plate. given the lack of bread in the rest of china, western china's abundance of it is amazing and the carts are never lacking for business.