Kashgar Sunday Bazaar, How Central Asia's Great Market Was Bulldozed While the Livestock Market Hung On

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. Nearly every stallholder was Uyghur.

In the spring of 2022 it was knocked down.

Satellite pictures taken a month apart, in April and May that year, show the roofs and stalls gone. A police officer told Radio Free Asia that two thirds of the market had already been demolished and that the regional Politics and Law Commission, the party body that runs police and courts, was handling it. Vendors were moved to Awat, more than 12 miles away, with little compensation. Those who complained were reportedly questioned or detained. A market official said simply that the bazaar no longer existed.

Kashgar's Sunday livestock market, the part that survived, in 2015. Photo: Laika ac from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Xinhua praised it the same month

On 31 March 2022, while the bulldozers were working, the state news agency Xinhua ran a cheerful report on trade at the Kashgar bazaar. It didn't mention the demolition. When the news got out, the tourism bureau in Urumqi called the social media posts false and said the lack of foreign visitors was down to COVID. Officials said a tourist attraction would go up on the site.

A year later the same thing happened to the Khan Bazaar, the old market facing Id Kah Mosque. Demolition started in March 2023. Police arrested three people who objected, among them a 16-year-old whose father had been jailed after 2017. The official reason was the familiar one: dilapidated buildings, to be replaced with earthquake-proof ones. Local sources said well-connected businesspeople from elsewhere in China picked up the property cheap.

Why tear down a working market? The researcher Darren Byler suggested the state saw it as too autonomous. A bazaar is where people meet, talk, trade and make money outside the state's view. Uyghur merchants with their own capital and their own contacts across the border were exactly what Beijing's security campaign was built to break up.

Where the animals still come on Sunday

The livestock market survived, because it had already been pushed out. It now sits several miles south-east of the centre beside a four-lane road, after property development drove it out of town. It runs on Sundays only, from about ten in the morning, busiest around lunchtime. A taxi from the Old City costs about 30 yuan.

It's still worth seeing. Farmers bring sheep, goats, cattle and the odd camel from villages within about 50 km. Buyers feel the fat on a sheep's tail and argue over prices. Deals are often sealed with a handshake that hides the numbers. Men shout "bosh-bosh!" to clear the way for a cart. It's the least staged thing a visitor in Kashgar is likely to see, and that's the reason to go.

Back in town, the craft streets of the rebuilt Old City have been regrouped for tourists: coppersmiths, instrument makers and hat sellers in neat rows. State media say business has never been better. In the first eight months of 2024 Kashgar recorded 19.5 million domestic tourists, up almost 30 per cent. The rebuilt quarter is leased to a Beijing company that markets it as a living folk museum.

A knife you have to register

Kashgar's most famous craft is the Yengisar knife, a blade with an inlaid handle made in the town of that name south of the city and passed from father to son. A good silver one could take a craftsman two weeks.

After the attacks of 2013 and 2014, the knife became a security object. In August 2015 Kashgar police required a permit to buy a kitchen knife, valid for one day, with the buyer's name, ethnicity, address, ID number and stated purpose. In 2017 parts of Xinjiang went further and ordered household blades to be engraved with the owner's ID number or a QR code, and unused knives to be handed in. Sellers in Yengisar told reporters the tourists had stopped coming. Asked whether his son would take up the trade, one young shop owner said he had no idea.

That's what the market looks like now. The animals still change hands, the tourists buy copper, and the city's great bazaar is a sales office for whatever comes next.