And I ran, I ran so far away I just ran, I ran all night and day I couldn’t get away – Flock of Seagulls If you have not read our account of how we got to Wuqia, where we underwent border processing, check it out here to get some background on what …
Recent attacks in Kashgar and the government’s new decision to ban burqas in Xinjiang’s largest city, Urumqi. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/world/asia/uighurs-xinjiang-kashgar-police-attack.html?_r=0 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2869905/Capital-Chinas-Xinjiang-ban-burqas-public-report.html
Our journey to leave China began at the crack of dawn, six a.m. Xinjiang, eight a.m. Beijing. We piled out of our hotel quietly, trying not to attract police attention. The streets were deserted. A few taxis petered past us. We waited outside one of the bus stations where shared taxis gathered. The few cabs …
We were trying to leave Kashgar for a lake on the Karakorum Highway, the world’s highest international highway, where we would camp out at Karakul Lake, just sixty miles from the town of Tashkurgan. Not sure where we could hitchhike from, we had originally wanted to take a bus there and hitchhike back. I went …
Here is some news on the assassination that we covered here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/world/asia/jume-tahir-murder-verdict-xinjiang.html?_r=0
Previously, we did a Faces of Kashgar that took a look at what Kashgaris looked like, to give readers a visual sense of what it felt like to be in Kashgar. Now, we’d like to go back to that, with some of the fantastic portraits Galen did at the Eid al Fitr celebrations
The morning after Eid al Fitr, we were preparing to leave Kashgar for the Karakurom Highway. As we tried to upload photos and send out emails, our internet slowed to a crawl and then stopped completely. This was not unusual. Though we were using VPNs to navigate around the Great Firewall of China, we were …
Here are some photos that we were not able to fit into the article on the End of Ramadan (and a few that we wanted to throw in again). Note that these photos are more of a mix, as far as who shot them. Galen and I each had cameras, as did our friend Josh, …
They will not allow us to dance tomorrow. For five years, we have not been allowed to dance to celebrate Eid al-Fitr.” – Uighur Tour Guide commenting on religious repression. Since riots in 2009 in Urumqi, the Chinese government has severely restricted religious expression. Though the government has not ended the sermon at the …
The Id Kah Mosque is the largest mosque in China, with a capacity to allow 20,000 worshipers in on its most important holy days. It is also one of the oldest mosques in China, having been built in 1442. Through its long history, it has seen much. Islam had already arrived in Kashgar and the …