Hotan: the carpet factory, silk workshop, and desert tombs in one easy day

The overnight bus I took from Kashgar to Hotan had the most convenient hours and the cheapest price—86 yuan versus the 115 I paid to get to Kashgar from Hotan—but the 30 yuan discount was the result of the bus lacking air conditioning. In practice this really wasn't the problem you might expect, as the window of the bus opened and I felt perfectly fine with my head sitting next to the open road as I slept (although I had this somewhat irrational fear of falling out of the bus through contortionate sleeping).

My plan for the day was basically to visit the tomb of the four imams after first visiting the other sights en route: the jade market (again), the carpet factory (again), and the silk workshop. Other than that, simply soaking up the local atmosphere and wandering around town would be enough for me.

To get to the silk workshop or the tomb of the four imams, take a bus to Jiya, which will be marked only in Chinese with "吉亚乡." You can catch this bus from the East Bus Station, or from just north of the underpass that's just north of the carpet workshop. On the map below, the stops are: the carpet workshop; where you can catch the bus to Jiya; the Atlas silk workshop (tell the driver, but also keep an eye out on the right); and the tomb of the four imams (Asim Imam), which is a few kilometers past the end of the Jiya bus line. Although Google might tell you that bus 10 runs all the way to the carpet factory, in my experience it always follows the route below but turns around a couple of blocks before the river.

Carpet Factory

On this visit to the carpet factory there were a lot more weavers about, and I was able to wander around and view more of the buildings. You could see the facilities where they washed and dyed the yarn, where they washed the carpets, as well as a shop where they displayed completed carpets. All of these rooms and buildings were completely empty, however (even the shop/storeroom), and I get the sense that they really only gear things up and staff the shop when they have a tour group coming through. That's fine with me, as it was nice to be able to simply wander around.

Two weavers working on a small carpet.

On larger carpets, more weavers work.

Watching them work, it's evident how huge an investment in time hand-knotting carpets is. The fact that they're even somewhat affordable is a testament to how underpaid the weavers/knotters are, and it's no surprise that child slavery is used in South Asia or that many carpets are made by women who are culturally unable to work outside of their home.

They say that weavers can tie about 10,000 knots per day. Assume a knot density of 200 knots per square inch on this rug (which would be considered very good, but far from the 600+ found in ultra-fine rugs) and that's only 50 square inches, or about 2 inches of vertical per day on this carpet being woven by 6 women. If this carpet is 20 feet long, it will take 6 women 120 days of weaving to complete it. This kind of puts the price in perspective.

Camels grazing by the side of the White Jade river. It looks like camels can eat anything.

Is that camel on the left super-pregnant, or what? I don't know, because other camels were still nursing their young. It appears they don't wean their calves until they're up to 2 years old, though.

Mother and child.

I think I like camels more than horses. They seem to have distinct and readily-apparent personalities in way that horses do not, which makes them easier to relate to or understand—even if their personality frequently manifests itself in surliness.

Atlas Silk Workshop

From the carpet workshop, you turn right along the road as you exit and walk north for a while until you pass under another large road (this is the road that the buses to Jiya take). Keep walking north until you get to the petrol station and truck stop on the right, as the buses to Jiya will stop here if you flag them down. Probably any small buses that passes here is on its way to Jiya, but look for the Chinese "吉亚乡" to be sure. Tell the driver you want to go to the Atlas silk workshop (they tend to recognize "Atlas"), but keep your eyes peeled because my driver forgot about it while talking to passengers. Atlas is the Uyghur word for the Ikat dyeing process, as is commonly seen in women's dress in Xinjiang.

When open, the silk factory is interesting, and you might be able to see all aspects of the Ikat-manufacturing process, from the raw silk cocoons to the boiling and spinning of the yarn, to the tying and dyeing process, to the weaving of the fabric. Of course, there's a shop in the center of the facility (the production buildings ring the central courtyard), but there's also no pressure of any sort and you're free to just wander around.

The workshop was quite interesting. If you're headed to Margilon, Uzbekistan, there's a silk workshop there, too, which you can also visit. The Margilon workshop is perhaps a bit more comprehensive and organized, and you'll be escorted by a guide as well as have the opportunity to see commercial weaving machines in operation.

Raw silk cocoons stored outside.

The cocoons are heated and softened, then strands of silk are teased from them, gathered, and collected on a spinning wheel.

Spinning silk on a bicycle wheel.

The silk is prepared for dyeing by running silk thread over a stand, looping the thread back and forth, and then gathering them into bundles. These bundles are then tied (or taped) together in geometric patterns, and the dyed: the taped areas resist the dyes. This is then repeated until you get the desired coloration, with the lightest dyes being applied first.

The pre-dyed warp threads on the loom, while the weaver throws the weft shuttle back and forth.

The loom setup: a ball of dyed yarn runs to the stone weight, which provides tension to the loom. There the yarns are split up and arranged into matching geometric bundles which are run over the loom.

A lot of work goes into a $10 scarf. Either that or the $10 scarves are not hand made.

A male weaver! He invited me to throw the shuttle a few times. I would make a lousy weaver.

There's a scene in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia where the police, who are searching for a body in a back-water village in Turkey, happen upon an outrageously attractive girl who serves them tea at an otherwise unprepossessing teahouse. Everythng in the films stops at that moment, as all the characters are stunned into silence by her beauty, yet none of the comment on it.

Something similar happened at the workshop's showroom. There was this young Uyghur girl, maybe 17, dressed in a gorgeous light green and tan silk dress and scarf, with light green eyes and a pale complexion. She looked something like the famous green-eyed girl on the cover of National Geographic, but less wild and more European. Stunning. As with the Hui girl in Dunhuang, she was someone I would have loved to take a picture of, but there's no way I could do so without feeling somehow intrusive or pervy about it.

Tomb of the Four Imams (Asim Imam)

Sometimes I wonder if Lonely Planet writers really visit the places they write about. I mean, I already know from my time in Kharkhorin that Michael Kohn researched things by reading other people's blogs, but when reading what he had to say about Asim Imam I really had to question if he had even visited it. He simply writes that it has "an interesting cemetery" and is a good place to "slide down the sand dunes." I'm not sure what kind of image that paints in your mind, but it certainly didn't suggest to me what I actually saw. Sure, there are dunes, but they're hardly of the height you would slide down (unlike in Dunhuang, where there are actual toboggan and inner-tube slides), and to say that it is an interesting cemetery is a bit like saying an ossuary or a catacomb is an interesting cemetery. In reality, Asim Imam is unlike any "cemetery" you are likely to see in China or Central Asia, as the graves or tombs are flag-festooned poles in the desert. These structures strongly resemble Mongolian ovoo and Tibetan latse, and it's unlikely a coincidence that the tombs commemorate a Muslim general who turned the region towards Islam and away from Buddhism with his conquests. As with the ovoo and the latse, these structures seem rather shamanistic when compared to mainline Islam burials, and the fact that local women make wishes and puncture the bark of nearby trees to see if their wishes will be granted (if sap runs, they will) is another telling sign of this.

Tombs in the desert, unlike any Muslim tomb you're likely to see again.

Uyghur on a pilgrimage.

The walk to the mosque is littered with tombs.

Dunes with the mosque dome in the background.

The minaret towers over the grape vines that provide shade.

The tomb of Asim Imam.

Looking at the minaret through raisins curing on the vine.

Looks pretty similar to a Tibetan latse to me.

Giant slabs of coal next to the irrigation canal, on the road through Jiya.

Corn fields beyond the poplar-lined street.

I think of this road often, as it was about 20 kilometers of poplar-lined tarmac filled with the warm and friendly faces of traditional Uyghur. It's everything I had hoped I would be able to find in Central Asia, with the real surprise being that I found it in China.

Motorcycles and trikes for the Uyghur. In Han China proper cars would be more typical.

Call to prayer near the carpet factory.

There's absolutely nothing unusual about this scene in Hotan.

I wound up my time in Hotan by walking around and looking at some of the more modern shops around the city center. They're not nearly as interesting as the Uyghur sections and the traditional market, but probably a sign of what's to come.

I then went back to Marco's Dream Cafe—the owner was surprised to see me since she knew I was only staying for the day the last time I was there—where I repaid my debt to her travel binder by adding my own note about how to get to all the sights in and around Jiya. Hopefully future visitors to her cafe will buy more than I did (her Malaysian food is quite good and would be a nice reprieve for those wanting a change from Uyghur and Chinese food).

Budget

August 28, 2012: 178 yuan

• Bus to Kashgar: 115 yuan
• Polo: 4 yuan
• Drinks: 19 yuan
• City bus: 5 yuan
• Dinner: 18 yuan
• Drinks, fruit and snacks for bus: 17 yuan

Kashgar, take one

After being in Mongolia, I had learned the importance of getting a jump on things if you want to plan on booking a cheap tour or sharing expenses, so I had two early priorities in Kashgar: one, to figure out how much time I had left on my visa, and if I was limited to 30 days since my last entry (most Chinese visas stipulate that you are only allowed to stay for 30 days, and if you want to stay longer you need an extension, while my visa didn't specify a length of stay limitation); and two, how much it would cost to enter Kyrgyzstan via the Torugart Pass (which requires both a permit and private transportation on both sides of the border) and Irkeshtam Pass.

Thus, after checking into the Pamir Hostel, I made my way to John's Cafe. The Uyghur operators there were pretty helpful, but said that it would cost $400 if you did the Torugart Pass solo, dropping to $150 if you shared with three or more people. This was more than I wanted to spend, so the next step was to find out how much the international bus to Osh would cost and when it left. I went to the international bus station, but the lineups were incredible, so I figured I would come back at a different time when hopefully it would be less busy (it's always busy, from what I can tell, and talking to someone would involve waiting for hours).

I then made it to Kashgar's PSB (public security bureau) office to enquire about my visa status. Althoug htey weren't open to actually do any processing, I managed to get the officer working there to take a look at my visa and let me know if I needed an extension if I wanted to stay for more than 30 days. He took a look, and said that since it didn't explicitly say I was limited to 30 days per entry, I could stay until the expiration of my visa. This was a relief, but it also came a bit too late, because I had essentially rushed my way through Xinjiang in order to make sure I would be able to exit the country if I had been limited to 30 days—had I knew I had more time in advance, I might have stayed a day or so longer in Tashkuragan and Karakul, as well as possibly spent more time on the edges of the Taklamakan desert.

I saw this young Uyghur couple fighting in public, on a busy street near John's Cafe. This was really the first example of public violence I saw in China, and I stopped and looked to make sure it didn't escalate, taking a picture or two in the hope it would defuse the situation. She started pushing him and then he grabbed her neck, and then I stepped in to take his hand away from her neck. I'm not sure I would have done this in all places, but by now I think I had gotten a good enough idea of China to understand that this wouldn't be tolerated and that nothing would really happen to me for intervening. After the couple had calmed down, I was walking away and a older American approached me and asked if I was the Uyghur guy's friend, which he had somehow thought I was (I guess I can pass for Uyghur in an American's eyes).

Is this simply a ripe bitter melon? You can eat the flesh around the seeds, but it was nothing special other than how it looked.

Looking east from the Yingbin Road bridge over the Tuman river; the international bus station is just to the northwest of the bridge.

Modern Uyghur family, walking south over the bridge.

One of my first glimpses of the old city, from a major throroughfare below.

I wasn't sure how accessible the old city would be, since I had read that some places charge admission, so I climbed a tree to get this shot. Locals looked at me like I was crazy. In about 15 minutes I would be just outside that house, talking with kids who lived there.

Mother and child watching the sunset from their roof.

Tashkurgan and the Chinese Karakorum Highway

I arrived at the Kashgar bus station before dawn, and briefly looked outside the station. The only people up and about were the odd taxi driver and the morning street sweepers. I went back inside to check the schedules to Tashkurgan, and decided that since I was already up and at the bus station, I might as well immediately take the bus there.

The bus stops in Upal for breakfast, where I bought some naan and took a picture of the tandoor in which they (and samsas) are cooked. The baker will periodically season the inside of the tandoor by throwing fistfuls of salty water against the interior, which sizzles and leaves the salt coating on the interior. Sometimes you get a chunk of salt on the bottom of your naan. Apparently the government is giving incentives to have bakers switch to electric tandoors, instead of these inefficient coal-fired ovens.

I had an aisle seat, so I wasn't able to take pictures through the window, and could only take pictures when we stopped. This is at the checkpoint at the head of the Ghez river. The Ghez river valley is a wide, stony plain that fills with melt water in the spring and summer, lined with mountains that range from grey to deep red.

Dusty shopfront at the checkpoint.

After the checkpoint the road becomes steeper, and we do most of our climbing. At the end of the climb we arrive on a broad mountain valley—or pamir—at an altitude of about 3,500 meters. The first thing you see on entering the pamir is Bulungkol lake whose opposite shores are formed by sand-dune mountains.

After the sand-dune mountains, the next major place of interest is Karakul lake. The bus will stop here, since it is a major tourist destination, and a few people will get off and maybe someone will get on. I was able to run away and take some pictures while we stopped, but the driver was annoyed because I ended up being the last one back on board and he had to wait a couple of minutes for me.

Tourist yurts on the shores of Lake Karakul, elevation 3,600 meters.

Looking south over the silty, aquamarine lake.

A camel-herder bringing camels to the tourist area for rides.

Hotan: a lesson in why you shouldn't trust Lonely Planet

Even though it was a sleeper bus, we arrived in Hotan before midnight. Although there were no hostels in Hotan, there were a few places that were supposed to be reasonably cheap, one of which was the Transport Hotel (most bus stations have attached hotels). They wouldn't sell me a room for less than 160 yuan, however. I then set out for the other cheapish hotel listed for Hotan, but the horrible maps and terrible directions for Hotan meant it took me about an hour to find where the hotel was supposed to be, only to discover from a security guard that it wasn't there. After a couple of hours of looking for cheap places that could accept foreigners, I ended up sleeping out in front of the bus station—next to the snack vendors also sleeping beside their stalls—for a couple of hours that night, and checking my bag at the station's bag storage in the morning.

Breakfast was a bowl of polo—rice pilaf—with carrots (but without any mutton) from a street vendor. Cost: 4 yuan.

Big wok of polo.

Mao shakes the hand of Kurban Tulum, a grateful Uygher farmer who traveled a long way by donkey cart to bring him some local fruit. Thanks, Mao! Kurban is seen by many Uyghur as an Uncle Tom figure.

The Hotan museum had been closed for a while, but had recently reopened when I was there. It's an older museum & building, but it's still pretty decent and has a couple of mummies as its highlights.

This one is really well preserved, and much more Han looking than the more famous ones—like the Loulan Beauty—in Urumqi. Perhaps that's why they allow photography here, and not in Urumqi?

Kuche and the cross-Taklamakan highway

Kuche/Kuqa is a small city about halfway between Urumqi and Kashgar along the northern silk road, which skirts the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert.

Although there are trains that run between Urumqi and Kashgar, stopping in Kuche, the train takes 14 hours and there's only one night train, arriving just after noon. I instead decided to take a night bus, which is quicker as it takes a more direct route instead of going through Turpan, and arrives early in the morning.

Since there's no cheap place for foreigners to stay in Kuche, and not a lot to see in the city proper, I decided to only stay the day and to take a night bus to Hotan, on the south side of the Taklamakan (there's a new highway that cuts through the middle of the desert, connecting the north and south sides). Unfortunately, this bus leaves at 2:30 pm (Xinjiang time), meaning I wouldn't have too much time in Kuche.

As usual for the Xinjiang section of Lonely Planet, the practical information isn't as helpful as you one would like. Kuche, like many Chinese towns, is split into an old town (mainly Uyghur) and a new town (where the Han live). The bus station is in the new town, while the old town is some four kilometers east of the old town, which lies on the western side of the Kuche river. Between the bus station and the old town are the ruins of the Qiuci ancient city, which were closed for restoration and construction when I was there, but which looked like a less impressive version of Jiaohe crossed with the unrestored Great Wall at Jiayuguan: the vague remains of rammed-earth walls, but not much more. Perhaps that has changed.

The road west to old Kuche splits in two before the Qiuci ruins, and I took the northern path, which passes by the ruins before crossing the river and running along a stretch of Qing-era city walls.

Xinghua park, across from the Qiuci ancient city, is Chinese in concept, with the typical pond and weeping trees, but the spaces around the pond are very dusty and scraggly, unlike your typically grassy Chinese park.

A stretch of the old rammed-earth city walls.

The transition from old city wall to (relatively) modern buildings is remarkably abrupt.

Moderately-restored wall, unrestored wall, and typical Uyghur buildings.

Colourful house-fronts along the main street in the old town.

Shops with their goods displayed in the street.

Urumqi and Xinjiang—Han colonialism and Uyghur resistance

Urumqi offers little for the traveler. Its a large and relatively anonymous Han-dominated Chinese city, full of modern buildings. Although there is a substantial Uyghur population, traditional Uyghers live in what are effectively ghettos, under the careful watch of Chinese security forces. Much of the security is in response to Uyghur-Han tensions and isolated Uyghur acts of violence.

As a whole, Xinjiang is 43% Uyghur and 41% Han, with the Han proportion growing as a result of governmental efforts to encourage migration (including, reportedly, granting prisoners early release conditional on them moving there): as in Tibet and Inner Mongolia, the two other autonomous regions in China, they're trying to marginalize the indigenous ethnic populations by flooding their territory with Han. In 1945, for example, Xinjiang was just 6% Han and 83% Uyghur.

On the other hand, Urumqi—the capital city of Xinjiang and its economic powerhouse—is about 75% Han and 13% Uyghur. Although Urumqi has been a Han city for a long time, the major difference is that it's now a city of over 3 million people, while in 1949 it had only 100,000 people (of which 62% were Han). 

Urumqi demographics

Year	Total	Uyghur	%Uyghur	Han	%Han
1949	100,710	18,310	16.99	67,588	62.29
1950	121,746	21,074	17.30	77,554	63.70
1951	125,275	21,955	17.52	78,902	62.98
1955	171,897	31,769	18.48	109,842	63.89
1960	634,844	76,496	12.04	477,321	75.18
1965	615,189	62,439	10.14	463,804	75.39
1968	679,165	72,339	10.65	511,547	75.31
1972	765,788	73,265	9.56	587,813	76.75
1975	930,430	91,708	9.85	716,550	77.01
1980	1,060,502	108,239	10.20	812,557	76.62
1985	1,172,335	138,546	11.81	868,789	74.10
1990	1,384,300	173,200	12.51	1,007,355	73.30
1996	1,478,922	188,327	12.73	1,076,319	72.77
2000	2,081,834	266,475	12.80	1,567,621	75.30

Urumqi is the capital city of Xinjiang, and in many ways it's a pretty good representation of what the government wants to turn Xinjiang into: predominantly Han, visually similar to other bland, large cities in China, with materialistic Han culture as dominant, and with minorities relegated to what are functionally ghettoes, and doing all this while maintaining sanitized versions of minority culture as tourist attractions for the Han. The Uyghur are well aware of what the government has done in Inner Mongolia and Tibet, and are aware that their culture and way of life are under threat, and in many ways Urumqi has become ground zero in the battle for Xinjiang—although there have been tensions and incidents throughout Xinjiang, and even in Kunming and Beijing, Urumqi remains the most identifiable source of ongoing tension.

Obviously, the pivotal incident in the recent history of these tensions is the 2009 Urumqi riots, which themselves were a response to an incident in eastern China in which Uyghur workers were killed after false rumors circulated that Uyghurs had raped a Han woman.

Whatever the genesis of the recent tensions, it seems clear to me that the Uyghur have learned from the experience of Tibet and seen how ineffective the Tibetan passive resistance and self-immolation has been, and instead adopted a more aggressive approach. Instead of punishing themselves as a way of drawing attention to their disagreement and unhappiness with Han domination, the Uyghur instead have acted in a way to make the Han feel unwelcome and unsafe in Xinjiang. This seems to have had the desired effect: while Tibet has been overrun with Han migrants and tourists (so much so that even some Han will admit there are too many tourists), Xinjiang enjoys a reputation among the Han as being too dangerous to visit and a relatively unattractive migration destination.

To the extent that the Uyghur really don't want Han in their homeland—even as tourists—I think that the Western media gets a lot of the story wrong. A recent NY Times article, for example, lamented the decline in tourism in Xinjiang as though this was a blow to people living in Xinjiang, and not an actual goal of not only the terrorists but of many Uyghurs. (Also, it seems as if any English-language article on Xinjiang must describe it as 'restive.') A drop in tourism is unlikely to affect that many Uyghurs, especially since it seems like most travel agencies, hotels, etc., are run by Han, and not Uyghurs. This extends everywhere, from the big travel agents to hotels, and even to hostels (typically run by young Han migrants, even if they do tend to be very sympathetic to the Uyghur). The Han dominance in this industry merely reflects Han dominance of all lucrative industry: even though Uyghur benefit from quotas that make it easier to attend university (and are exempt from the one-child policy), almost all jobs seem to be filled by Han, and most Uyghur seem to work in the traditional farming and animal husbandry sector, while it's Han migrants who are employed in newer industrial projects.

The government response to the threat of Uyghur terrorism is to institute a police state. There are license plate cameras everywhere, including on highways in the middle of nowhere. Police checkpoints where they scan the RFID micro-chip equipped ID cards of all passengers are also common, and are located between major cities. The government keeps track of where everyone is, at all time, where they stay (you scan your ID card when checking in at a hotel, just as you do when purchasing a train or bus ticket), and what you're looking at on the internet (you scan your ID card at internet cafes and you need a government permit in order to have an open internet hotspot). Indeed, for almost a year after the 2009 riots the government totally disabled the internet in Urumqi: no one could access anything more than about 100 local sites. Luggage must be X-rayed when taking both the train and bus. Gas stations are barricaded and all passengers must get out before the barricades are lifted and cars allowed onto the premises. Security guards in riot gear patrol potential flashpoints. The fear and paranoia is palpable.

Pagoda on the western edge of Hong Shan (Red Rock) park. Unsurprisingly, all of the parks are Han style. You can see lots of tourists taking pictures by the pagoda, which is the highest point in the park and city centre. I saw a Uyghur man stand in front of a Han Chinese family so their picture couldn't be taken, then pretend not to understand Mandarin when they rather politely asked him to move.

Chinese signs of this nature are often quite poetic, but I wonder about their efficacy since empathy doesn't seem to be a Han strength.

Looking southeast from Hong Shan park. Urumqi is on the northern edge of the Tian Shan mountain range that runs from Kyrgyzstan all the way through north-central Xinjiang to the edge of Gansu.