Kashgar is China’s most western city and thanks to the status of Special Economic Zone is developing into a typical Chinese boomtown,
including the familiar high rise residential areas.
Since 2009 large sections of the old town have been cleared and replaced by concrete
buildings because the old mud brick buildings were suddenly considered too earthquake-prone. For the tourists a part was rebuild as
a copy of the original.
Despite a recent influx of Han Chinese, 70% of Kashgari are still ethnic Uyghurs. Racial and religious tensions
are tense and sometimes turn bloody, like the 2011 Kashgar attack and the killing of the imam in 2014. The Chinese reaction has
been swift and severe.
When we visited in October 2003, the old town was still intact and thriving like it had for the last 2000 years.
Kashgar was one of the few places that look and feel really different. Not because of the heavily polluted air, but
the way people lived in a for us medieval setting, which was probably not much different from when Marco Polo was here in 1273.