https://kashgar.org Kashgar.org en https://kashgar.org/afaq-khoja-mausoleum-fragrant-concubine/ About five kilometres north-east of central Kashgar, in the village of Haohan, stands the finest Islamic building in Xinjiang. A green-and-blue tiled tomb with a 17-metre dome and four corner minarets, built around 1640 for Muhammad Yusuf, a master of the Naqshbandi Sufi order. His son Afaq Khoja was buried there in 1694, and up to five generations of the family lie under the dome. shrines heritage religion tourism Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/afaq-khoja-mausoleum-fragrant-concubine/ https://kashgar.org/become-family-cadre-homestays-kashgar/ Since 2016, more than a million Chinese officials have been assigned a Uyghur family each. They're called relatives. They arrive with gifts, stay for days, eat at the table, sleep in the house, and fill in forms about what they see. The programme's name is "Pair Up and Become Family", and Beijing is proud of it. surveillance human rights Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/become-family-cadre-homestays-kashgar/ https://kashgar.org/china-kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan-railway/ For almost thirty years a railway from Kashgar into the Fergana Valley was a drawing that never got built. Kyrgyzstan worried about debt. Russia didn't want China's gauge on its old turf. Everyone argued about the route. Belt and Road debt Kyrgyzstan Uzbekistan Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/china-kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan-railway/ https://kashgar.org/cpec-kashgar-gwadar-corridor/ When Xi Jinping went to Islamabad in April 2015, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was sold as a road from Kashgar to the Arabian Sea. Chinese goods would come down the Karakoram Highway, cross Pakistan by road and rail, and ship out of Gwadar, cutting weeks off the voyage around India. The price tag was $46 billion. Two years later it was $62 billion. Belt and Road debt security Karakoram Highway Pakistan Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/cpec-kashgar-gwadar-corridor/ https://kashgar.org/getting-to-kashgar/ Kashgar wants visitors. Xinjiang counted 323 million tourist visits in 2025, a record, and Kashgar prefecture alone logged 50.1 million, up from a few million a decade earlier. The rebuilt Old City is a 5A scenic area with a morning gate show. Airlines keep adding routes. travel tourism surveillance borders Kyrgyzstan Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/getting-to-kashgar/ https://kashgar.org/id-kah-mosque-kashgar/ Id Kah is the mosque on every Kashgar postcard. Yellow brick, a tiled gateway, two slim minarets about 18 metres high, and a courtyard of poplars behind. It was founded in 1442, the present building dates mostly from 1798, and it covers about 16,800 square metres. On the big festivals it once held around 20,000 people at prayer, with the crowd spilling into the square outside. heritage religion tourism human rights Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/id-kah-mosque-kashgar/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-afghanistan-wakhan-tajikistan/ South-west of Kashgar, past Tashkurgan, China touches Afghanistan. The border is only about 76 km long, high in the Pamirs at the end of the Wakhan Corridor, a thin strip of Afghan land that the British and the Russians drew in the 19th century to keep their empires apart. There's no open crossing. The only pass, the Wakhjir, sits at about 4,800 metres and is usable a few months a year. borders security Afghanistan Tajikistan Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-afghanistan-wakhan-tajikistan/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-detention-camps-police-files/ Beijing's word for them was "vocational skills education and training centres". The people inside were students, the official line went. They studied Mandarin and law, learned a trade, and graduated. In December 2019 officials announced that all of them had. detention human rights surveillance Xinjiang Police Files Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-detention-camps-police-files/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-forced-labour-cotton-uflpa/ Kashgar's farmland is cotton country. Xinjiang grows more than a fifth of the world's cotton, and the southern oases around Kashgar, Aksu and Hotan grow a lot of it. For years the picking was the job that brought migrant Han workers west each autumn. After 2017 the state found a cheaper and more obedient workforce closer to hand. forced labour UFLPA detention economy Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-forced-labour-cotton-uflpa/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-old-city-demolition/ In 2009 Kashgar's Old City was still a working town. Mud-brick houses stacked two and three storeys high over lanes too narrow for a car, with families who had lived in the same courtyard for generations. Architectural historian George Michell called it the best-preserved traditional Islamic city anywhere in Central Asia. heritage tourism human rights Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-old-city-demolition/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-special-economic-zone/ In May 2010, a year after the Urumqi riots, Beijing decided Xinjiang's problem was poverty and that money would fix it. A central work conference approved a special economic zone at Kashgar, the country's sixth. Fifty square kilometres, ten of them out at the Irkeshtam border post. Five years without income tax for new firms, cheap land, subsidies. A banner under the Mao statue in the city centre read "Learn from Shenzhen, pay tribute to Shenzhen". economy Belt and Road forced labour UFLPA Kyrgyzstan Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-special-economic-zone/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-sunday-bazaar-livestock-market/ 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 the 13th century. Until recently the market had a building to match. The Grand Bazaar by the East Gate, called the Sunday Bazaar by the visitors who flocked to it, had about 4,000 shops and more than 9,000 kinds of goods. It was Xinjiang's biggest international trade market. Pakistani, Afghan and Central Asian merchants bought wholesale there… culture heritage tourism Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-sunday-bazaar-livestock-market/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-surveillance-state/ In 2018 a walk across central Kashgar meant a police post every hundred metres or so. They were called convenience police stations, and Xinjiang built thousands of them after Chen Quanguo arrived from Tibet as party chief in August 2016. Some street corners had ten cameras. Uyghurs on buses were taken off at checkpoints for ID checks and body scans while Han passengers stayed in their seats. surveillance detention human rights Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-surveillance-state/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-uyghur-birth-rate-collapse/ Here are two numbers from China's own censuses. Kashgar prefecture had 4,499,158 people in 2015. In 2020 it had 4,496,377. In five years, in one of the youngest and fastest-growing regions of the country, the population didn't grow at all. birth control human rights Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-uyghur-birth-rate-collapse/ https://kashgar.org/kashgar-who-runs-the-city/ Kashgar sits in an oasis at the western edge of the Taklimakan desert, closer to Kabul than to Beijing. For two thousand years it was a market town on the routes between China, Persia and India, and for most of that time nobody in Beijing ran it. history economy Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/kashgar-who-runs-the-city/ https://kashgar.org/konasheher-uyghur-prison-sentences/ In December 2019 Xinjiang's regional chairman told a press conference in Beijing that everyone in the camps had graduated. Some of them had. Many went somewhere else, and Beijing's own prosecutors kept count. detention Xinjiang Police Files human rights Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/konasheher-uyghur-prison-sentences/ https://kashgar.org/ordam-mazar-kargilik-mosque-destroyed-shrines/ Ordam Padishah sat out in the sand dunes of Yengisar, south of Kashgar. It was the tomb of Ali Arslan Khan, a Kara-Khanid ruler killed in 998 fighting the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan. Uyghurs remembered him as a saint martyred in the wars that brought Islam to the region. Every year tens of thousands of pilgrims walked into the desert for a three-day festival at his shrine, a cluster of flags, poles and tombs that had stood for close to a thousand years. shrines heritage religion human rights Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/ordam-mazar-kargilik-mosque-destroyed-shrines/ https://kashgar.org/tashkurgan-karakoram-highway/ Drive south from Kashgar on the Karakoram Highway and the oasis gives way to the Ghez canyon, then the high Pamir. Karakul Lake sits at about 3,600 metres under Muztagh Ata, a 7,500-metre dome of ice. Another few hours on, at 3,090 metres, comes Tashkurgan, the last town before Pakistan. travel borders religion Karakoram Highway Pakistan Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/tashkurgan-karakoram-highway/ https://kashgar.org/uyghur-language-boarding-schools-kashgar/ 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 the Turkic world. He's said to be buried at Opal, about 50 km south-west of the city, in a tomb the Chinese state lists as a national monument. For years a seven-metre statue of him stood there. culture human rights Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/uyghur-language-boarding-schools-kashgar/ https://kashgar.org/uyghur-muqam-meshrep-kashgar/ 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 and a jolly Uyghur uncle. Then the performers pull tourists into the circle to dance. The dance is the meshrep, and for the visitor it costs nothing. culture heritage detention tourism Uyghurs Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://kashgar.org/uyghur-muqam-meshrep-kashgar/