Earlier this year I posted an entry in this blog about my visit to the old city of Kashgar, and remarked that the ancient mud-brick town was still in remarkably good shape.

It seems my optimism was premature. The local government in Kashgar has formulated a plan to replace all the existing mud-brick dwellings with modern brick structures. This will eliminate at a stroke what is possibly the only surviving, virtually complete medieval Muslim walled settlement left within China's borders.

The issues of destruction of cultural heritage and loss of history, memory and place that this raises are highlighted in an article by Jim Stent and He Shuzhong of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, that appears in this month's edition of Orientations Magazine (October 2009), and also on the CHP's own website.

The pictures at left show a medieval doorway in Kashgar that I photographed during my trip earlier this year. Whilst this particular entry way might not seem very significant, it does contain clues to the great age of the old town. In particular the degree to which the kerbstone of the doorway lies below the current street level (it is "sunken" around 30cm) suggests that it is several centuries old. Over time the ground level of traditional towns rises slowly, as footpaths are re-made with new material. Sunken doorways are a common feature of traditional settlements across the world, and have even been used by urban archaeologists to make a rough estimate the ages of dwellings within such towns.

The other striking feature of this doorway is the carved lintel above it, with its carved vine motif. This is a classical Silk Road design, present on carved wood excavated from even earlier times than the old town at Kashgar. The lintel was probably painted at one time, but the paint is now entirely gone. The lintel might have been carved at the time the doorway was made, or it might be an even older piece that has been re-used from another structure.

Aside from the loss of a unique architectural gem, the re-building of the town is a potential economic loss to Kashgar. It is unlikely that foreign tourists will journey to Kashgar to see a Disney-fied version of the town. I urge those involved with this to re-consider before much is lost that will never be replaced.

On Sunday 8th April 2009 Sotheby's will sell the "Bei Gu Cang" collection of Chinese furniture in Hong Kong. They have put an excellent downloadable catalogue (in pdf form) of the furniture on their website (link at the bottom of this page): it is perhaps the best free book on Chinese furniture that we are likely to be offered this year, with superb illustrations. It also provides an interesting alternative perspective on Chinese classical furniture, re-focusing attention on lacquered furniture and counterbalancing a bias in most published works that feature mainly hardwood pieces.

The collection consists of classically styled furniture finished in red and black lacquer, both plain and inlaid with stone and mother of pearl or finished with flecks of mother of pearl. Some of the shapes will be familiar to furniture collectors, but many of the finishes and decoration will be a revelation. The catalogue includes informative essays by Jerry JI Chen on lacquered furniture, highlighting a Ming Imperial preference for red lacquer, later replaced by Qing taste that seems to have preferred black pieces, by Hajni Elias on the refurbishment of the Forbidden City after a major fire in 1597, and Imperial lacquered pieces by Palace Museum specialist Hu Desheng.

It may come as a surprise to those who associate "Ming" furniture with huanghuali and other hardwoods to find that these types are not mentioned in the early and mid-Ming descriptions of interior furnishings mentioned in these essays: instead lacquer reigns supreme in these periods, and still appears to have been the finish of choice in the late Ming (Wanli) period, from which most of the items in this catalogue appear to date. This is not a new finding: it has been well understood by furniture scholars for some time and referred to in publications by Sarah Handler and Craig Clunas for example, but with a few exceptions most of the pieces illustrated in books by those writers and others have been hardwood, while this catalogue provides solid evidence of a different taste. The items range from simple tables with plain red and black finishes, to sumptuous cabinets with inlaid or painted decoration in gold.

The reason for the bias towards hardwoods in present-day collections and publications is principally because lacquer finishes are not durable, and they are exceedingly tricky to restore. A western taste for polished hardwood may also have directly or indirectly influenced the antique furniture trade in China: why spend time and money restoring a softwood piece with a lacquer finish when it can be stripped, stained and sold much more readily as "faux-hardwood"? The tastes of the foreign clientele who bought restored Chinese furniture from the 1930s onwards may have unwittingly distorted the entire history of Chinese traditional furniture.

In the mid-1990s I lived in South China, in a region where much of the furniture trade maintained warehouses for the collection of old furniture, prior to restoration and shipment to Hong Kong. I recall looking at great piles of unrestored furniture and being struck by the quantities of decayed lacquer, mostly destined to be sanded off and stained brown prior to sale. The only items where lacquered finishes were frequently preserved were large cabinets with genre scenes painted on the front faces. This is perhaps because large flat surfaces held onto their lacquer coats better than other types of furniture, but also because furniture dealers (perhaps) sensed value in the attractive paintings on these items. There are still nice pieces to be had (occasionally) in furniture warehouses, but watch out for repainting and re-gilding.

The fact is that lacquer, particularly the kind applied thickly on top of a base of cloth impregnated with clay, does crack with age. This feature was in fact expected and celebrated by Chinese furniture connoisseurs from the early Ming: the crackle on furniture was admired and compared to the patterns on the backs of turtle shells. After this period tastes changed, and celebration of the ephemeral aspects of life amongst the literati of the Ming was replaced by the aristocratic showiness of the Qing period. The increasing importation of hardwoods from southeast Asia from the 1700s onwards also provided new interests, though lacquered furniture continued to be popular through the 18th and 19th centuries. The true inheritors of the early Ming and pre-Ming tastes (as in so many other aspects) are perhaps the Japanese, where lacquered finishes designed to crackle, wear and decay in interesting ways are still made to this day.

While most of us will not be bidding on these items on the 8th April (estimated prices running from the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the millions), this catalogue is nevertheless worth downloading and studying by anyone with a more than superficial interest in Chinese furniture. The shapes and decoration of such pieces, used by the Chinese court and by noble families, provided the prototypes for the countless thousands of pieces of Chinese furniture, both from town and country, that came after.

To download the sale catalogue follow this link, click on "Ming Imperial Furniture"  and then on "view catalogue" at the bottom of the page. It's 38Mb so will take a little while to download.

There are some general tips on shopping for Chinese antiques, including furniture on my website, where as a bonus you can also gaze enviously at my own Ningbo lacquered cabinet.

Kashgar is one of the westernmost outposts along the part of the Silk Road in China. It's the point where the two main routes across the Taklamakan desert converge, and it's been an oasis town and a trading post for two millenia, perhaps more.

I've been traveling through this region looking for carpets and textiles for years, and first visited in 1996, but in recent times I've mostly passed through on my way to other destinations and not stopped there. On my most recent trip I decided to spend some time there and to see if things have changed. The result is this blog, some photographs, as well as a haul of textiles from the oasis towns in Xinjiang.

Photographs and Textiles
From this weekend (28th March) I have put some of the textiles from this recent trip in our Torana Shunyi store, including carpets, kilims and embroideries. The finds include an interesting (and rare) Uighur kilim, a Kazak decorative appliqué, Kirgiz flatwoven carpets and a remarkable silk robe. I have also put up a set of large format photographic prints on the photowall at the Shunyi store, mostly of the old town in Kashgar. For the impatient, I have put some of them on Facebook at this link.

Kashgar Time
This is a very distant spot from Beijing, a distance which is brought home by discovering that the sun rises here two hours later than in Beijing, and that Kashgar operates its own (unofficial) time, which runs two hours behind official Beijing standard time. Inevitably the two are confused, providing everyone in the town with a perfect and enduring alibi for missed appointments.

Many Kashgar people speak worse Mandarin than I do. This made me feel strangely warm towards them.

Warlord Days
In keeping with its remote location, imperial rule has been intermittent and sometimes absent over the centuries. Towards the end of the 19th century the town and surrounding region were the fiefdom of the famous warlord Yakub Beg, who brought a brief independence at the price (it is said) of destroying the economy. In the bazaar I bought an ancient robe made of purple silk with gold thread that I like to think might have been worn by an official from this period, perhaps in the presence of the old warrior himself.


Sunday Market
On my first visit to Kashgar in '96 I went to the famous Sunday market, and on this trip I went back for a second look.

Traders, farmers and animal dealers from the surrounding area set off on mule-drawn carts in the pre-dawn twilight and arrive in Kashgar around midday, local time, so the market only really gets going in the afternoon.

I can't tell you if the price of a camel is still the same as it was in '96, but the market still looks much as it did then and provides fine entertainment. Dealers bid on animals in secret, passing offers via taps of the fingers, concealed within the sleeves of their robes. The trade is therefore mostly conducted silently, despite the hubbub around. Horses are put through their paces on a short track, with constant danger of colliding with the buyers and sellers. It is crowded, noisy, dirty, smelly and delightful.

Street food is still one of the highlights of Kashgar. My favorite items are fried fish and melon by the slice. Traders stand in the street with a melon, a knife and sell pieces for 1RMB each. I asked one if it was Hami melon (that's the only kind I know from Xinjiang) and he seemed insulted and told me it was Kashgar melon. I decided not to ask whether the fish was Atlantic cod.

The most common street food is the ubiquitous pilaf rice (rice, yellow pepper, mutton). Greasy, with a smell of elderly sheep that seems to linger and follow you around town. I avoided pilaf at the street stalls because I've seen local restaurant hygiene at close hand (there isn't any), opting instead for street foods that are not allowed to linger in a lukewarm state before being sold. Rice parcels with syrup and toffee walnuts are excellent.


Uighur Lite
Has the town changed? Yes, the modern town has certainly seen some changes. There are a good many recent buildings. There's a new architectural style that consists of a concrete structure with brown tiles and minarets stuck on the outside. I call it "Uighur Lite". It's better than it sounds.

There's a nice irony that much local architecture from the '30s onwards seemed to consist of putting some contemporary touches to a basically Uighur building style, and now we have the opposite.

Uighur Cuisine
The most welcome change is the string of new restaurants serving Uighur cuisine that have opened since my last visit. The best of these might be the huge and rather fancy Entizar Altun Orda on the north-western extension of Ren Min Xi Lu. This palatial establishment is decorated inside and outside with about as much carving and decorative tilework that a structure of this type could support, and then some. This is the place to try the pilaf. It is superb, and it is 12RMB. Good pilaf comes laden with dried fruit as well as the mutton.

Also worth trying are the yoghurt and the roast pigeon: beaten flat, impaled on two sticks and barbecued to perfection.

Kittens, Egg Tarts
The following evening I am at a more modest restaurant in the old part of town, eating laghman, the other Uighur staple besides pilaf. This is lamb ragout (lukewarm) served on hand-pulled noodles (also lukewarm). At the everyday restaurants I think it beats the pilaf. This restaurant has deep liver-colored decor edged in cream. There is a poster on the wall of a kitten, seemingly about to pounce on some egg tarts. I check the menu, but there is no sign of this special dish.

Markets
Aside from the Sunday market, the market streets that wind through the older part of the town are also fascinating, and as far as I can see, they look precisely the same as when I was last here. The stalls have an edge-of-the-desert, edge-of-civilization feel. Brick tea (camel logo), rose petals, black cardamoms, rock sugar, sulfur. Spice stalls sell every spice I have ever seen and more, and they smell, like spice stalls everywhere ... of cumin. Just cumin. There's a hat stall next door. It smells of cumin too. And so does the hat seller.

The Id Khar mosque in the center of town seems to have been given the pre-Olympic treatment. Painted canary yellow, it has been tarted up considerably since I saw it last, at least at the grand entrance. The square in front of the mosque has also been remodeled. Gone is the street that idled its way just in front of the mosque entrance, and in its place is a large ampitheater-like public space, with Olympic-sized tv screen at the side. A former covered food street near the mosque with old fashioned tea-houses is gone, and there is a two-story shopping center in its place. Nevertheless, the public space in front of the mosque is still there, and the street photographers (your head emerging from a red rose, you and your lover, re-duplicated, crystallized, kaleidoscope fashion) still have their stalls in the same places.

Inside the mosque there is a calm and pretty prayer gallery, green columns against red prayer rugs. The carpets interest me: they are Khotan rugs from the 1950s-70s (photo above). They have kept their rich red by the shaded inside walls of the gallery, but the sun has faded them to pinkish hues near the outside.


The Old Town
I was apprehensive about re-visiting the old town. Surely most of its mud brick walls must have been swept away by now? I need not have worried. Yes, the margins have been nibbled at, but the bulk of the old town, on a promontory overlooking the Sunday market area, is just as I had remembered it. A sign in a street opposite the Id Kah mosque announces "Kashgar Old Town" and visitors are supposed to buy a ticket to enter, but in March there was no-one around to collect tickets. The old town is anyway much more extensive than the tourist regulated part.

The old town is of wood framed houses, with walls of compacted mud and straw: here and there brick is replacing the mud. Uighur life is conducted behind the walls, hidden from gaze in cool and sheltered courtyards. Doorways are open but protected by billowing sheets of printed cotton, here and there giving glimpses of life inside. It's hard to judge the age of the buildings: mud and straw look the same after 500 years as they do after 5. In one place though I found a doorway with an entrance sunken about a foot below street level, generally taken by urban archaeologists as sign of great age. Above the doorway a lintel carved with a floral vine, worn and nearly illegible. Carved for this doorway five centuries ago, or pulled out of the sand from a far earlier time?

In mid afternoon a breeze was beginning to pick up dust from the surrounding desert, filming the old city in yellow dust. Kids were tumbling out of the schools, collected by grandmothers. Four girls played a skipping game with an elasticated rope. Surely this is the exact same incomprehensible game played by small girls in English schoolyards? The dust filters the light and the colors of the old town are condensed to tones of yellow and ochre. An tall man of indeterminate age and wearing an indeterminate felt hat strides down the alley, gathering his cloak against the wind. It might be 2009, or 1809. A shameless seeker after nostalgia, I am rewarded five, ten, fifty-fold by the old town at Kashgar.




Photographs and Textiles from the Silk Road
By Chris Buckley
28th March - end April 2009
Torana Carpet Center, Shunyi, Beijing
Location map and contact details at this link.

Travel Notes
Kashgar can be reached in one day from Beijing, via a connection in Urumqi, but for the return trip it is necessary to overnight at Urumqi: I stayed at the Airport Hotel there and it was fine.

The best known hotel in Kashgar for overseas visitors is the Seman Hotel, and the rooms in the old Russian consulate inside the Seman grounds make for an interesting (if rather pricey) stay. There are lots of other hotels in town: on this trip I stayed in the nondescript but friendly Qian Hai Hotel for 188RMB a night.

Travel onwards from Kashgar to other parts of the Silk Road is mostly by road.