The Emperor Far Away

by David Eimer

  Great Game players, both legendary and unsung, were regular visitors. Francis Younghusband stayed a winter. He went on to lead a British invasion of Tibet in 1903–4, only to experience an epiphany on the roof of the world that transformed him from an empire-builder into a soldier-mystic. In 1918, Colonel F. M. Bailey was at the consulate en route to an extraordinary series of adventures in central Asia. They included helping to propagate the revolt among Muslims which resulted in so many Kyrgyz crossing into Xinjiang after the Russian Revolution.

  Bailey was such an effective spy that he was recruited by the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, to hunt himself, the British agent who was stirring up the peoples of central Asia against their new communist masters. He was also a noted naturalist, just as Sykes and Eric Shipton, the last British consul in Kashgar, were part-time explorers. In the days of empire, it was possible to serve your country and collect rare butterflies on the Tibetan plateau, conquer unclimbed mountains or cross unmapped deserts.

  A traveller in a more modest way, I felt a pleasing sense of solidarity with those men, simply by virtue of having stayed in the same place they had, even if Beijing, rather than London and Moscow, is now the imperial power in this part of the world. But I doubted whether Bailey, who could have stepped out of the pages of a John Buchan thriller, would have approved of how I and many of the other guests at the Chini Bagh spent our nights smoking hash on the balconies of our rooms. He would have been a whisky-and-soda man, although I suspect Younghusband in his later incarnation would not have been averse to a joint to aid his spiritual journey.

  While we were sitting stoned under the stars on one of those hot summer evenings, the British among us came up with the idea of a party to celebrate the Chini Bagh’s unique history. A Union Jack was found at the bottom of a backpack and draped over the balcony rails and we held open house, drinking beer from the bottle, until there was a knock at the door and the police arrived.

  They weren’t concerned about the reek of hashish in the still desert air; it was the flag that was the problem. They had heard, probably from our teetotal and less imperially minded Pakistani neighbours, that we were gathering in honour of the Chini Bagh’s past. The Union Jack was clear evidence of our separatist tendencies. It took some time to convince them it was a joke, and that we had no intention of reclaiming this little bit of Kashgar for Britain.

  Eventually, they left smiling, but only after we had taken down the flag and promised not to display it again. It was an early lesson in how the Chinese authorities regard anything that could remotely be conceived as a threat to Beijing’s dominion over its furthest-flung territories as nothing less than treason. Luckily for us, we were foreign tourists and so allowed a little leeway.

  If we had been Uighurs gathering to commemorate Kashgar’s past status as the de facto capital of the only truly independent state ever established in Xinjiang, then we would have been arrested and quite possibly executed for our splittist activities. That state was created in 1864 by Yakub Beg. An Oliver Cromwell-like figure, Beg took over almost all of what is now Xinjiang through a combination of military cunning and sheer ruthlessness, before imposing strict Islamic law on the region. His country, which he called Dzetyshaar, or ‘Seven Cities’, died with him in 1877, but not before the British and Russians had paid court to him as its ruler.

  With no physical traces left of the Chini Bagh I had known, my uncertain recollections were all I had to remind me of 1988. But when I walked around the back of the hotel, I found that not all of the past had been obliterated. One small part of the consulate was still standing. A sign outside stated the building was a ‘Cultural Relic’, although that hadn’t stopped the hotel converting it into a restaurant. As I peered into the dining areas full of Chinese tourists whose chopsticks were whirring over their dishes, I realised that one of them was my former sleeping quarters.

  Stained lino covered the old wooden floors, but the elaborate ceiling cornices were still there, as were the doors leading to a small stretch of the balcony I had spent so much time lounging on all those years before. The view from the terrace then was of the tight little alleys of the old town. I looked out now on to salmon-pink apartment complexes and a bright-red office block with Chinese characters atop its roof. But I was happy just to be standing there, transported back to being twenty-one and footloose.

  Discovering that my former digs had survived the wrecking ball infused my return to Kashgar with some much-needed meaning, because almost everything else I remembered had disappeared or was in the process of going. In 1988, the old town covered most of the city centre, an intricate mesh of winding, cobblestoned lanes, some no more than lines of simple mudbrick homes. But other alleys housed elaborate, three-storey structures with terraces and window frames decorated with brightly coloured arabesque patterns, accessed by wooden doors that opened to reveal small courtyards.

  Plunging into the old town was both disorientating and invigorating. Barbers and dentists, their profession indicated by signs displaying rows of teeth, naan bakeries, blacksmiths, knife makers and carpet weavers, silk shops, restaurants and small mosques were scattered throughout. Donkey carts clattered down the alleys, where the smell of spices mingled with the smoke billowing off the grills outside the restaurants as skewers of lamb were barbecued in their dozens. Mobile butchers wielding wicked-looking knives hacked up the carcasses of sheep to provide the raw material for the kebab men.

  Now those shops and houses are vanishing fast and whole streets are like the film-set version of a town – a single row of buildings with vacant land behind them where the alleys have already been levelled. ‘I think in three years there’ll be nothing left of the old town. It won’t exist,’ a Uighur who was still clinging on to his small general store told me. ‘No one is happy about it but it is the government, so what can you do?’

  Its demise began in the wake of the devastating Sichuan earthquake of 2008, an event that allowed the city authorities to claim that Kashgar’s oldest buildings were no longer safe to live in. Yet the old town had already survived two millennia, while the schools and apartment blocks thrown up as cheaply as possible in Sichuan Province by corrupt contractors crumbled to the ground when the 2008 quake struck, leaving almost 70,000 people dead.

  Most locals believe tearing down the old town is less about making Kashgar safe for its residents and more about wiping out the past – an effective means of emphasising Han control over the Uighurs’ spiritual and cultural capital. It is no coincidence perhaps that the 220,000 residents of the old town are being moved to hutch-like flats on Kashgar’s outskirts, where it will be much easier to monitor their activities.

  Only the great Id Kah Mosque, the largest in all China, is certain to survive the destruction. In every sense it is the heart of Kashgar, the one building that can’t be demolished unless the Chinese want to incite a Xinjiang-wide uprising. From first light on, as darkness gives way to an orange-streaked dawn sky, the square in front of it starts to fill up. Old men fingering prayer beads and women covered from head to toe join vendors selling ice cream and prayer mats, kids running around and tourists snapping pictures. People pray at all times, while families promenade before heading to the nearby restaurants for dinner.

  During major Muslim festivals, 50,000 people or more pack into the Id Kah and the square. There are so many worshippers that the surrounding roads are blocked when they fall to their knees as the loudspeakers boom out the prayers. It is a peaceful demonstration of how Kashgar remains a Uighur city, even as much of it is being systematically obliterated, a once great Silk Road city being reduced to rubble to fit the CCP’s narrative.

  Mosques in China are often hybrids of traditional Islamic and Chinese architecture, a concession to the long-held Han distrust of religions from far-off countries. Many appear to be Buddhist temples, until you notice the silver or golden crescents perched on the pagoda roofs. But there is no mistaking the Id Kah’s denomination. Sand-coloured, it is partially hidden by trees which make i
t appear smaller than it is until you venture inside and realise how far back it extends. There is a classic simplicity to its lines, with perfectly proportioned minarets at the corners flanking the arched entrance and walls neither too high nor too low.

  The Id Kah dates back to the mid-fifteenth century, although other mosques occupied the same site for hundreds of years before. Having survived numerous conflicts over the last five centuries, it stands now in defiance of the changes around it, like one of those forts in an old western movie surrounded by hostile Indians. The latest challenge is a row of recently built, Chinese-owned department stores across the road. They incorporate a faux-Islamic styling, yet they stand taller than the minarets of the Id Kah.

  Their presence allows for a symbolic stand-off – grandiose new shrines to the Han religion of commerce opposite the Uighurs’ ancient place of worship. I was confident the Id Kah would still be there the next time I came to Kashgar, while the department stores would go the way of most modern Chinese architecture and age rapidly and disastrously, before being pulled down and replaced.

  So much of old Kashgar has gone that I was at a loss to know what to do with myself. But I hung around anyway, reluctant to move on after investing so much in my return. I spent a lot of time with Lin Lin, a thirtysomething woman from Beijing who was staying at my hotel while scouting locations for a TV show. Rather more sensitive to Uighur culture than most Chinese, she took care to wear a headscarf and it was only when you saw her delicate features and pale skin close up, or heard her melodious Mandarin, that you realised she was Han.

  Lin Lin liked to cultivate an air of mystery. She had an enticing, cat-like, self-contained nature. A keen shopper, she dragged me to the various markets around Kashgar in search of pashminas, silk and jewellery. The only place she didn’t buy anything was the Sunday market. In 1988, it had been a frantic clash of peoples and tongues. Now Uighurs and ethnic Kyrgyz and Tajiks still bargain over camels and sheep and goats tied tightly together, but they do so confined inside a much smaller, rigidly demarcated area. I preferred the chaos of before.

  At night, we ate in the Uighur places near the Id Kah, leisurely meals of lamb skewers, naan, laghman noodles and the black Xinjiang beer. She would appear uninterested when we returned to the hotel, saying ‘Good night’ and disappearing to her room, only to call later and ask me to come over. I didn’t mind being summoned. Lin Lin was travelling on TV company money and her room was much more comfortable than mine. It had two double beds and after we’d slept together, I was always sent to the spare one with a warning not to make any noise. Cats are light sleepers.

  6

  Three Borders

  When Lin Lin returned to Beijing, I had no excuse to stay in Kashgar. I decided to make my way south along the Karakoram Highway to Tashkurgan, close to the borders with Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was another exercise in nostalgia; I’d travelled the same route when I departed China in 1988. But Tashkurgan’s proximity to three frontiers was too tempting to pass up, so I caught an early-morning bus and said a bleary-eyed, not very fond, farewell to Kashgar as we edged through the traffic towards its southern suburbs. I knew I wouldn’t miss the city it has become.

  Outside Kashgar, the bus ran in between fields of wheat and corn and past fruit farms where watermelons grew in rows and pear and peach trees stood in neat lines. An hour past the small town of Upal and we were on the Karakoram Highway proper, climbing through a valley of towering stone cliffs stretching for mile after mile, along with army trucks, construction vehicles and tour-group jeeps.

  There was a police checkpoint at Ghez I didn’t remember from before, and we all trooped off the bus to have our identity cards or passports scrutinised and our names recorded. A fellow passenger told me all Uighurs now need a permit to travel beyond Ghez, unless they live in the Tashkurgan area. They are being kept away from the restive Muslims across the nearby frontiers.

  Past Ghez, giant sand dunes rose, and then the magnificent Karakul Lake, ringed by snow-capped peaks and green pasture with yaks and yurts reminiscent of Kyrgyzstan, appeared. The two highest mountains in China outside of Tibet, Kongur Tagh and Mutzagh Ata, look down on the still, glacial lake from above 7,500 metres. So clear is the water that it reflects the surrounding landscape like a giant mirror.

  Unlike Kashgar, Tashkurgan had not changed much. It is still an overgrown truck stop, with a large PLA base on its outskirts, despite being the capital of Xinjiang’s Tajik Autonomous County. Ethnic Tajiks make up the majority of the population, along with Uighurs, a small community of civilian Han and the odd Pakistani trader. Soaring, menacing mountains surround the town. Tashkurgan, a collection of grimy, hastily constructed buildings, seems fragile and temporary in their presence, as if it could be blown away by the strong winds that drone down the few streets at night.

  At 3,600 metres, it is cold even in September. People were already buying winter fuel at a depot where women with blackened faces wielded sledgehammers to smash up boulder-sized lumps of coal, before shovelling it into sacks. Every other shop sold the thick green PLA overcoats that are the winter uniform of farmers and migrant workers in the parts of China where the mercury plunges. In another month, Tashkurgan would become a place to hibernate in until spring arrived.

  Tajikistan’s easternmost province, Gorno-Badakhshan, is just sixty-five kilometres away by rough road, close enough for China to have contested the borderline until 2002. Travel to it is not encouraged by Beijing. The frontier is closed to foreigners and only a couple of buses a month run there. Eastern Tajikistan is almost as lawless a place as Afghanistan, which borders the south of Gorno-Badakhshan. It is home to its own band of Islamic groups fighting for a separate state, while the heroin ferried out of Afghanistan north to Russia and Europe passes through the region as well.

  Despite their radical relatives across the border, there is none of the tension between Tajiks and Han that characterises the Chinese–Uighur relationship. Nor, unusually, are the Tajiks resented by the Uighurs. With just 41,000 people in Xinjiang, they are too small a presence for the Uighurs to feel challenged. They have assimilated a little too. Among themselves the Tajiks speak Sarikoli, a Persian-based dialect, but most can also understand Uighur.

  They are easy to spot with their sharp, Caucasian-like features and lighter hair, eyes and skin than most Uighurs, although everyone in Tashkurgan has the wind-burned face and red-spotted cheeks that come with living at altitude. The women wear black pillbox hats, with elaborate pink or red patterns around the sides and a veil pinned back to reveal their faces, along with black skirts over long leggings. Ismaili Muslims, they owe their allegiance to the Aga Khan, like their cousins in Gorno-Badakhshan, the Afghans in the Wakhan Corridor to the south and the people of Pakistan’s Hunza Valley.

  While crossing into Tajikistan is difficult, it is impossible to travel from China into the Wakhan Corridor and Badakhshan Province in the far north-east of Afghanistan. The border was closed after the communist takeover in 1949 and has remained shut. Just seventy-five kilometres long, it is the shortest of China’s frontiers and the most remote. Like a crooked finger pointing east, the Corridor is sandwiched between both mountain ranges and countries. To the north are the Pamirs and Tajikistan, in the south the Hindu Kush Mountains separate it from Pakistan, while at its eastern end the 4,900-metre Wakhjir Pass leads into China.

  Long ago, the Wakhan Corridor was part of the southern Silk Road route that connected the Middle Kingdom to India. Marco Polo is said to have entered China via the Corridor, if he came at all. For 2,000 years, the mule trains braved the snow and ice as they struggled over the high, desolate mountain passes on their way to Tashkurgan. From there, they headed east to Yarkand, where camels replaced the mules, to begin the long pull across the southern fringes of the Taklamakan Desert towards Gansu Province and Jiayuguan. Then it was a short journey south to Xi’an, the ancient capital of China and the beginning and end of the Silk Road.

  With Afghanistan and Tajikistan a
ll but closed, Tashkurgan is now a transit point for people travelling to and from Pakistan. South of town, the Karakoram Highway leads up to the 4,700-metre Khunjerab Pass and the highest paved road border crossing in the world. I travelled that way in 1988, hitching rides on trucks and tractors to Karakul Lake and on to Tashkurgan before catching a bus to Sost in the Hunza Valley.

  Back then I managed to cross the frontier without a Pakistani visa. The Chinese guards didn’t bother to check if I had one and once in Sost, a five-hour drive from the actual border, I apologised profusely to the Pakistani officials for flouting the rules so flagrantly. Over a leisurely cup of tea, they agreed finally to give me ten days to get to Islamabad where I could rectify my mistake.

  Security is much less lackadaisical now. Before I could even leave Tashkurgan, I had to stop at the army base and buy a permit just to get me to the Khunjerab Pass. I was with Lao Yu, a Han migrant from Sichuan Province eager for extra cash. He quoted an outrageous price to drive me to the border and back, but accepted half with good grace and we set off towards the end of China in the far west.

  Apart from a few Pakistani and Chinese trucks moving slowly up towards the frontier, we had the road to ourselves. On our right, the dull grey, jagged peaks of the Pamir Mountains rose above the snow-laden clouds and separated us from Tajikistan, a natural barrier far more formidable than any border fence. Tiny settlements of box-like houses, grazing yaks and sheep and the odd Tajik farmer trotting slowly along on a horse were the only signs of life.

  An hour beyond Tashkurgan, we came to the largest village we would pass through. Lao Yu pointed to the mountains on our right. ‘Afghanistan is over there,’ he said. Until very recently, the border and the Wakhjir Pass were accessible only by a dirt track and the soldiers posted there patrolled on horseback. When winter closed in, they could not be relieved till the following spring.