Kashgar’s Old City – The Old Becomes New
It’s no secret that the local government in Xinjiang has been systematically getting rid of Kashgar’s Old City over the past few years. Many parts are being completely demolished while others will be receiving a “face lift”.
What’s not very well known is how they plan to rebuild Kashgar’s iconic city centre.
While flying from Xinjiang to Beijing a little while back, I ran across an article in the China Southern in-flight magazine that addressed this very topic. The author obviously put a positive spin on all the changes, but what caught my attention the most were the following two photos:
This first picture was taken back in 2009, well before the majority of the demolition had occurred. Mud homes and tight alleys dominate the space with a hint of modern Chinese architecture in the background.
This second picture, however, is an interesting look into China’s view of Kashgar’s future.
What are your thoughts? Would you still be interested to travel to Kashgar if this is what awaited your arrival?
Very depressing. I know the hotel that picture was taken from. I’ve stayed in it and have almost exactly the same photo. I loved to get up early in the morning and watch the old city come to life.
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Dave says: January 21st, 2012 at 11:04 am
It’s really sad. I was there last spring and some newly-constructed apartment buildings adjacent to the old center was already peeling, and they looked really ugly and out of place there. Not sure about Kashgar but as a Beijing native I only visited the new Qianmen once since its redevelopment in 2004.
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I would answer your question this way. When I moved to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, back in 2004, the city was just starting its development. Most of the buildings were designed and built by the French. Saigon was beautiful and green.
After Vietnam ascended into the World Trade Organization, development started to increase in Saigon. Many of the French buildings have been replaced by skyscrapers, many considered eye sores since they do not match the architecture of Old Saigon. Each month new construction starts, more historical buildings get torned down. Pollution has increased significantly.
Today I met a Vietnamese from Australia who was raised in Saigon that stated Saigon was no longer a beautiful city. I tend to agree with her. The people here are starting to miss their Old Saigon (I never used this term until reading this blog post) but now it is too late. I am considering moving to another Vietnamese city or another SE Asian country.
Regardless of what is going on with development here, tourists visits to Saigon keeps increasing each year. Nobody seems to care but the locals.
Hence if Old Kashgar is replaced, I may not visit it but tourists would still visit regardless and the Chinese authorities know it.
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*sigh* I don’t care for the “face lift”. They always seem to miss the point that it should be preservation and restoration. The second picture is pretty and all, but there’s no history behind it. It’s just sad to see the government demolish historical sites one after another and not realizing it’s current value.
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I’ve been to Kashgar many times. The old section near the Mosque has already been partially replaced. The true picture can be gathered from local residents. If they trust you, you can get a real opinion. Otherwise, they will simply say ‘it not convenient to talk’. The mud homes that are several hundred years old had withstood earthquakes and other natural disasters. If you manage to walk through the neighborhood, it’s like going back in time and able to see the simplicity of life that it once was. Very regrettable if picture number 2 becomes a reality.
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Hi, firstly, I don’t believe that the visualization will come completely true. Anyone who traveled in China must know how much they charge for entrance to whatever site, so I expect part of the old city to be preserved as some kind of museum (of course, walled with tourniquets and equipped with lots of gift shops) so some good money would be raised once the site is added onto the itinerary of chinese groups.
Second, people have right for development (although they sometimes don’t know it). And today you don’t regard Spanish less for what they did to Mayas, which is pretty much the same as is happening in xinjiang or tibet. Let’s face it, chinese are extremely competitive and innovative whereas uighurs or tibetans extremely backward. And once you are on the track, you cannot stop or go back just because you want to have some place to travel to.
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Western tourists want the Old City to remain as it is for their travelling experience. Chinese officials want to renovate the city to suit their “we-are-here-to-bring-these-backward-people-into-modernity” policy.
And just as usual, Uyghur inhabitants are pushed the decision down their throats.
A breakthrough woudl be that Uyghurs have their say on their fate someday. Noone knows better what is good for them.
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EMA says: January 22nd, 2012 at 8:52 pm
Yes, exactly. I think we miss some very significant things if we continue to mourn for Kashgar as an ancient place for Western (and other) tourists to have an “authentic” experience. Let’s be honest: that’s really what it’s about for most people. The desire for an authentic tourist experience is the source of this false mourning.
The real tragedy in all of this is that Uyghurs were forcibly removed from their homes, ripped out of the daily rhythms of likely the only life they’d ever known, and made to move into supposedly “earthquake-proof” and “climate-controlled” high-rise apartments that come nowhere near to approximating the physical space of an old home. I doubt most people care about the “authenticity” of their image in living day-to-day life–instead, they’re just trying to get by. Now imagine doing that in a home space that is physically very different than the only one you’ve known.
I lived in Kashgar in 2007, an informal language student trying to put to practice the Uyghur I’d learned in the U.S. in the previous year. All I’d ever heard about Kashgar was its “ancient”ness. I remember vividly one day walking across a foot bridge over a street near Seman Yoli. I stopped in the middle to look out over the wide, newly-paved and -painted street below: bright green taxis and modern, tiled high-rises in every direction, as far as my eyes could see. This was the ancient city of Kashgar? No and yes. No, insofar as it obviously represented a tremendous amount of demolition followed by rebuilding in a radically new style–a project that has been happening for decades now. Yes, insofar as the city is still Kashgar and still marked by things, events, and people that even we cannot see. Kashgar will continue to be Kashgar, regardless of what it looks like. Uyghurs will adapt to life in their apartments (Urumchi is a great example of how this can happen). But we should never forget that real, living, breathing people make their lives in Kashgar. If anything, the radically changing façade of the city is more reason to visit, to inquire, to seek out the relationships and the disconnects between past, present, and future.
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@Michal: I think a lot of people blame the Spanish for what they did to indigenous people of Central and South America, just as we continue to blame the current regimes there for denying their right to cultural and political self-determination. The same goes for North America. And furthermore, there’s absolutely no basis for saying that the Uyghurs or Tibetans are any more “backwards” than any other people. What exactly is the yardstick for backwardness? Is there an objective historical trajectory for civilization? These are all Marxist historiographical conventions which stem from earlier Continental European ideas about racial superiority/inferiority; both these ideological trends have been largely abandoned by most people, not simply because they were found lacking in terms of a firm basis in reality, but because they tend to enforce societal structures of oppression and intolerance. If the immediate political predecessors of the Uyghurs and Tibetans had had the international economic and political capital that the People’s Republic inherited from their Republican and previously Qing dynastic predecessors, there’s nothing to say they wouldn’t have been able to develop their urban infrastructures in ways that most societies have begun to do over the past half a century.
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I liked the old Kashgar City as it is. It is part of its long history and should remains as it is. Renovation or modernization as we called it–it is still a way to erase a civilisation and a revisionist’s view of history and what Kashgar should be. Who are we to say that the Uyghurs are “backward”. It is the same said of the Chinese in the west!
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[...] Xinjiang : Far West China - Josh bemoans the destruction of Kashgar’s Old City. [...]
[...] from Xinjiang far west China blogs about the future transformation of Kashgar city in Xinjiang. The old city's traditional mud home would be turned into modern buildings [...]
It is unfortunate that (Han) Chinese authorities are deliberately discarding such unique and rich ethnic and cultural heritage with cookie-cutter modern banal urban development, all in the name of economic prosperity and progress which, in my mind, has no appeal.
I think 2 reasons are accountable for this: 1. To have total control over any ethinic, cultural, societal or political entity that could potentially be against the ethos of the Communist regime 2. Due to having limited economic prosperity for decades, the people are so eager to replace old buildings and towns which represent the country’s impoverished side, often a significant element of its historical and cultural rich heritage.
China has an abundance of natural beauty and ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity which I considered to be a great asset. However, these factors may be some of the reasons accountable for economic disparity and discrimination; in a homogeneous society people are more likely to have similar sense of values and customs which results in an economically egalitarian society.
Factors such as not having the right to transfer their registered domicile will keep some who live in urban areas to have access to the modern conveniences and jobs while keeping those who live in poor regions remain poor. A country
facing overpopulation cannot afford to allow its people to transfer their registered domicile for it could potentially create overpopulated and over-concentrated urban
areas and scarcely populated remote areas.
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To add, it is interesting to see when it suits their needs, the Chinese will preserve their ethnic and cultural heritage i. e. Forbidden City, Terracotta Warriors,
Shangri-La (Western Sichuan): These places do not pose any threat or nuisance to the Communist Regime and draw economic prosperity surrounding tourism and its related businesses. Not only that, but they are undoubtedly magnificent in their history, beauty or grandeur, if not all of them.
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The owner of this website deleted my comment. The truth hurts. My comment is that I don’t understand why people object to this modernization. They are moving people out of houses made from straw and mud, and putting them into modern apartments with flush toilets, hot showers, electricity, and central heating. These people used to shit in a bucket and carry it out every day. Of course they don’t want change at first, but I doubt they will want to go back to their mud houses after living in modern aparments. Outside people have no rights to complain if they don’t live there and understand the situation. If you care about freedom of speech, do not delete this comment.
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Josh says: January 30th, 2013 at 11:32 pm
Thanks for your comment, James. It wasn’t deleted, just moderated. There’s a difference.
I think you’re missing the point, though – and in so doing becoming the product of your own criticism. Sure there are some people who object to “modernization”, but those who truly care about the situation lament the fact that it wasn’t a voluntary decision to be modernized. In the same way you accuse some people of judging when they don’t “understand the situation”, I would content that you are doing the same thing.
Centuries of history, heritage and tradition are being demolished, and I can tell you that there are quite a few Uyghur who aren’t exactly excited about that. Will they like having plumbing? Perhaps. I’m sure they’d rather keep that lifestyle than be forced into those crappy concrete buildings they were relocated to.
The bottom line, James: if your government forced you out of the home your family had lived in for over a century, relocated you, and then demolished that home – all without giving you any option or recourse – are you telling me you would run back and thank them?
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FarWestChina is a website dedicated to opening the door to Xinjiang, China's most mysterious province.
My name is Josh Summers and I have an unexplained passion for this region. Although I now reside in the US, I spent almost 4 years living and traveling in the region and I continue to research the history and stories Xinjiang has to tell. If you're interested there's plenty to read about Xinjiang on this website, or learn about me on my about page.
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