Today it's gonna be a long day in Kashger. To get all the pictures on
the homepage, we'll make most probably 2 of them for just one day,
let's see. First thing in the morning we saw some worker at our hotel.
What exactly they were doing we didn't find out, but the extension cord
architecture made an impression on us.
First stop today is the Apak Hoja Tomb. The entrance gate to the tomb
area is decorated with different hand made tiles. Some of them are
missing and unfortunately nobody knows nowadays, how to manufacture
these kind of tiles. So the missing ones will not be replaced.
Uuuups, maybe you wanna know some of the history. Sure, no problem.
Build in 1640 for the father of Apak Hoja it should be named after him:
Yussuf Hoja tomb. But Apak was later on the more prominent king and
religion leader, so they changed the name to Apak Hoja. Quite simple.
The whole area is around 29 ha, so there is plenty of space for some
buildings, a mosque, a study house and some ways for walks.
But enough for the prologue, let's get to the tomb.
In the tomb it's forbidden to take photographs. All in all there should
be 72 persons buried, out of 5 generations but it's only 58. Where the
rest is? No clue. But there is also the body of the concubine of the
chinese empower Quing Long buried. Quing Long? The Quing Long? Boy,
that's really unbelievable, this guy had really fun in his life. It's
the same who was quite often in Suzhou and also in Hangzhou, we wrote a
lot of his stories already here. The world is just a village,
especially here in China.
The cupola is the biggest one in Xinjiang and meassures 35 x 29 meters
at 10m height.So, now you know also this detail. Next to the tomb is
the graveyard for all the other people. If you imagine the cupola over
this graveyard it's exactly how it looks like inside the tomb.
Some steps further the ways we found the study hall which is currently
under renovation. In this hall all the Hojas preached their
interpretation of slam. What a pity, we couldn't get in and touch the
holy stone with the white and green sparkles. This stone heals all
deceases and the one who are not ill stays longer healthy. Again, what
a pity.
Some more meters away there is the Juma mosque. Sure, you can't have a
tomb without one.
The mosque is around 100m in length. The whole roof is carried by 62
wooden pillars with individual carvings in each. If they now would take
a little care of the carvings and maybe do some renovation work......
Two last pictures from the area and we're off to the animal market. We
don't think that we find the same peacefulness there like here.
Since roughly a year they move the animal market from downtown to a
special place a bit out of town. The traffic chaos was just too big
downtown. Not only the cars but also the animals are more or less on
the road.
Wow, this market is big. They're trading mostly sheeps and donkeys but
also some cows, horses, goats, chicken, donkey cars, screws and parts,
shoes, vegetables, well, just everything which has something in common
with farming.
Everywhere animals are checked out, discussions, negotiations, barging,
selling, buying, laughing, gossiping everywhere. We double checked with
Tudajim, if we're really really still in China or if we passed some
borders without recognizing it.
There is a constant flow of animals coming and going, the traffic is
not stopping for one second. Some animals don't want to walk like
they're supposed to. And others don't want to let go of their sheep at
all.
Really great is the market for 2nd (or maybe 8th) tools and screws.
It's a paradise to search for hours just to find the one screw you're
looking for. Also the repair man is a cool thing. There is nothing he's
not gonna fix. Even without Silicone or Tape....
I heard quite often, the longer people are living with their animals,
the more they look like each other. Well, judge your self.
The market is a man area, no question about it. But sometimes you can
see also a woman, but they're buying lambs or chickens at the most.
In Xinjiang the number one transport vehicle is the donkey car. The
guys are quite good in driving the donkeys, they are better in parking
than some people I saw here in Suzhou with the car.
You'll not imagine, how many photographs we took, and don't ask
about the sorting out for the homepage. Here just 6 of them but be
sure, a picture collection will follow.
But not only portraits of people, also the main attraction get
pictured: the sheeps.
That much work leads to hunger. There is plenty of food booths
around the market selling food, e.g. the sheep dumplings fresh out of
the stone oven. Yummy.
Ok, some last portraits of the people before we leave the market:
After purchasing some animals or stuff somehow its needed to
transported it home. We could have stared for hours, no problem
As a single example, here the documentation, how to transport a living
sheep on a e-bike. There's no "animals rights organisation" or
something like this in China.....
What a start in the day. And it's barely noon. So let's have some lunch
at a uygur family, after that we visit the handcraft street, the
Idha mosque and at last the Sunday market.
How we'll manage all of this is a completely other story, told here
later on......
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Camels...
....and a "take a picture here" sign. The real mixture of
China and Uygur......
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