At 10:30 every morning, except Mondays, a crowd packs the square outside the east gate of what the signs now call the Kashgar Ancient City. Drums start. The gate swings open. Dancers in Uyghur costume perform to welcome actors playing Zhang Qian and Ban Chao, the Han dynasty…
For as long as Kashgar has been a city, it has been a market. Traders came from Samarkand, Kabul, Lahore and Xi'an, and Marco Polo passed through in…
Mahmud al-Kashgari, born near Kashgar in the 11th century, wrote the first great dictionary of the Turkic languages and drew the first known map of…
Twice a day at the East Gate of Kashgar's Old City, actors in costume stage an opening ceremony. There's narration about the Silk Road, a Han envoy…
