Deconstructing Kashgar

Someday, the entire world will be a uniform strip mall.  Except for a few areas, designated as historical theme parks, preserved (or created) for the benefit of the tourist trade.  The Disneyfication of Planet Earth.

In a post last fall, I expessed my disappointment with my visits to Samarkand and Tashkent.  "Disappointment" is a bit of an exaggeration.  I was in a foreign country, immersed in a foreign culture, which was fascinating.  But I was disappointed to some extent with the physical aspect of the two cities.

As I described in my post, these two historic Silk Road cities have been heavily modernized under Soviet -- and then, even more, under Uzbek --  city planning.  The historic mosques, madrassas, and squares are dazzling in their beauty -- but they have been heavily reconstructed and renovated within the past few decades.   More disturbing still, the cities surrounding the landmark buildings are no longer the warrens of small streets and crowded markets of the Silk Road past.  They have been modernized physically to the point that a Southern Californian would feel quite at home strolling their streets.

In an effort to experience the Silk Road before it's been completely modernized into a "Polyester Road," I've signed up for a trip through China's Xinjiang province in August.  Xinjiang is historically a Muslim region, home of the Uighur people and allied culturally to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, nations lying just on the other side of the Tian Shan mountain range.  My trip will end up in Kashgar, the capital of Xinjiang, and the western-most Chinese city.

Wikipedia describes Kashgar as "the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in Central Asia," but notes that "it is currently being largely razed by the authorities to make way for 'modern development'."

I'm not even sure my visit in August will be early enough to see much of the Old City, other than rubble.  In a story today, the New York Times reports on the on-going devastation, and notes that:

What remains of the Old City is rapidly being turned into an ethnic theme park, with a $5 admission charge.

The remnants are being marketed as a "living Uighur folk museum."

Right.  Not that we can complain, without displaying some hypocrisy.  Gentrification of our own American cities often has an unstated -- at times, perhaps unconscious -- political motive.  We all recall the sarcastic slogan: "Urban renewal means Negro removal."

Similarly, China is fighting strong Uighur separatist feelings.  As in Tibet, members of the Han majority have been encouraged to move to Xinjiang province, and now constitute approximately half the residents of Kashgar.  Destruction of the Old City is just one more step in that campaign.

For many Uighurs, the demolition of Kashgar's Old City is a physical symbol of the Chinese govenment's efforts to destroy their cultural identity.

Yes, the new buildings are cleaner, and better equipped with modern utilities.  Yes, they are designed to look superficially "old."  Yes, the Old City is now becoming occupied by the "right sort" of people, folks with money -- Han Chinese and prosperous Uighurs who aren't apt to rock the political boat.  Every large housing block in every city in the world has resulted in better housing for those who lived in it.

But such improvements come at a large, if less tangible, cost.

As the New York Times article describes at the beginning:

Visitors walking through the mud-brick rubble and yawning craters where close-packed houses and bazaars once stood could be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar had been irrevocably lost to the wrecking ball.

I hope some parts of the city won't yet have met that wrecking ball when I arrive in August.