Saving Kashgar
He Shuzhong and James Stent

More than anywhere else in the world, Kashgar's Old City conjures up the exotic cosmopolitanism and mixing of races and cultures of the Silk Road. For centuries, the maze of alleys threading through the jumble of mudbrick houses, the markets filled with Central Asian merchandise and handicrafts, and the strikingly simple but elegant Muslim religious structures, have captured the imaginations of travellers from East and West.

But earlier this year, the authorities of Xinjiang shocked the world with the bland announcement that the Old City, almost in its entirety, was to be demolished and replaced by a faux old city that will be a sterilized and 'improved' imitation of the original. Most of the residents will apparently be moved to new apartment blocks of the sort that scar the urban skylines of China today. Some will be resettled in the new Old City so that this theme-park imitation of the real thing will have live natives to adorn it.