hao bazaar

first of all, thanks for the birthday greetings!! i had a nice calm birthday on the train. lindsey, duff, and i went out for a western breakfast at the fabulously luxurious xin jiang hotel. we needed it. there was coffee and bacon, as well as lots of fruit and cereal. uigur food is largely noodles and mutton. not that this is bad, we love this, but coming from han china, where we eat about 10 heaping plates of vegetables a day, nomad food is a big change. tonight, even, we have stepped back into the chinese district of kashgar to have chinese food. a girl can only eat so much lamb! and....lindsay, i have no idea how you did the chinese, but thanks. shockingly, duff and i could read the message. is this official? i can read basic chinese now? it was fabulously exciting.

today we spent the day at the sunday market in kashgar, one of the most famous markets in all of asia. it was amazing and completely lived up to our expectations. in our daily lives, we normally see only han chinese people, no other foreigners or minorities. today, we saw no han chinese. the diversity of people at the market made my head spin, and since they were pushy and shoved quite hard, my body spun as well.

to get to the market we walked through the old quarter of kashi (kashgar, in chinese). having just arrived, we were shy to use our cameras, but after the market we are more bold. we'll go back tomorrow and fill up a memory card or two. the old town seemed like it must have been in the middle ages. we saw carpenters and blacksmiths. we saw an old man pounding out donkey shoes (we have only seen 2 horses, but everyone has a beautiful long eared donkey with a soft grey nose). since i suspect we will go back tomorrow, i will leave the description until then.

we got to the market early, and so we weren't totally sure we were in the thick of it. we crossed a little river and passed piles of animal parts on the sidewalk. carts drove by piled high with fresh, and i mean fresh, skins from goats and sheep. there were goat heads, and lots and lots of feet. i guess hoves... but not the rest of the animal, we say them further in. the market sold everything. millions of food vendors vied for the attentions of buyers with sellers of knives, rat poision, brooms, wodden pitchforks, fabric, paper, beauty products, carpets, utensils (metal blacksmited spoons...), hair adornments....it goes on and on. at the end of one road there were people selling dogs and cats, but in no way did it compare to the pet markets of yunnan. then, after purchasing a cat, the people carried the sweltering cats around in bags. food was everywhere, especially piles of all kinds of melons. i have no idea how central asian people get their vegetable allowance, but the eat melons. we had a slice of some of the best watermelon! there are lots of peaches and cherries, apricots and nectarines. we saw piles of huge red peppers, as long as my forearm. in wuhan we have tiny little red peppers. there were sheep carcasses hanging everywhere, and men hacking at them with knives. hacking. we stuffed ourselves with the lamb and onion puffs, which duff claims are so good because they dip the meat and onion mixture in blood before they wrap it in the bread shell and toss it in the oven. there are bbq stands every ten feet with lamb kabobs and congealed blood. we had rice for lunch, like pilau. it had strips of some yellow vegetable and a hunk of lamb the size of my fist so tender it could be cut with a spoon. the street vendors also sold milk, which the had in a huge basin with a giant block of ice. they ladled the milk over the ice to keep it cool. we also had amazing yogurt with bagels. we stick out a little from the other foreign tourists. we hunkered down on the curb under a tree and used the bread to scoop curd into our mouths. not that we think this is odd at all, but we drew a crowd.

we didn't buy much, other than food, we mostly walked around and gaped. prices were high, and didn't lower quite enough in spite of our proclimations that we are teaches from wuhan. throwing in that we live in wuhan always works to get a few more kuai of discount. it is widely know for being a rather shoddy city. we bought three pillows that fit just under your neck that we hope will bring us 36 hours of relative comfort on the bus from golmud to tibet. duff and i each got a knife. mine is little itty bitty and will be great for slicing apples and the like in india.

things we will take away from the kashgar sunday market: everyone in their traditional clothing, and all the styles. the scarves and headcoverings, robes and birkas, caps, beards, really elabroate eye makeup, high heels, men with green eyes and sharp knives, a little girl riding a sheep, smiling old women, the watermelon seller who chased a yellowjacket away from me, the crouched women selling curd out of big pots, the nut and dried fruit sellers, three men holding up a giant bad of cheese, goat heads, the heat, the variety, the crowds, the smells.....pictures will come.