I travel to China several times a year mainly for fun but also to check out hotels and new tourist attractions for my book. The following information is not in my 2002 book. 

The following items are dated with the month the information was obtained. Everything is subject to change but this should give you a good idea of what to expect. Please also look at our collection of photos from some of these places.

Vertical Layout Slides   -   Landscape Layout Slides

The last time this page was updated was 12/31/08

Silk Road South:  Khotan (Hotan) – Yecheng (Kagilik)  – Shache (Yarkand) -   Kashi/Kashgar  

Our Urumqi guide  kept  telling us our flight would probably be late – but it was on time!!   

We flew to Hotan/Khotan from Urumqi to a world of  Islamic domes, textured bricks, Arabesque arches,  and geometric and floral mosaics. The people were mostly Uighurs, members of  one of China’s 54 ethnic minorities.  They looked more Middle Eastern than Chinese.  Most of the women wore burkhas or head scarves and long skirts. Some even walked around in spike heels.  People bounced from place to place on flat donkey or motorcycle carts.  In spite of seeing  the occasional cell phone,  the many taxi cabs, and signs in Chinese and Uighur,  I had to keep reminding myself that we were in China.  

Our Hotan guide met us at the airport with a spacious, air-conditioned van for the three of us.  Hotan was one of the famous,  2000 year old  Silk Road trading towns, a genuine oasis  that developed largely to service ancient camel caravans. It is on the southern road that links  India and China,  and the Mediterranean and China, and it is on the south side of the infamous Taklamakan Desert. Taklamakan means “You go in but don’t go out.” Today, cars can cross that desert in one long day on a relatively new highway. Even though we were there in July, I didn’t find the heat oppressive, though my companions did at times.  Fortunately for us, the sky was cloudy.   It could have been worse.  

Near the town is also the Jade River, actually a river bed with water only after a rare  rain.  There people still collect nephrite jade with rakes and water pumps, though we did see one mechanized loading ramp. The trade route was known as the Jade Road before it became the Silk Road (a term first used in the 19^th Century).   Thousands of  tiny pieces and huge boulders of jade were for sale in the local market.  At the Foreign Trade Carpet Factory, China’s first carpet factory, which opened in 1950, we watched carpets woven by women, not children. At the 2000 year old Atlas Silk Factory,  we watched  silk worm cocoons spun into yarn, tied, dyed and woven into multi-coloured ikat fabric. And we didn’t see any children working there either.     

Hotan has lots of photo opportunities. We captured a little girl  wearing a burkha, almost all covered  except for a cute little face. A friendly outdoor dentist and his patient both posed happily and didn’t seem to mind the interruption. A donkey bent down to eat a watermelon and police women strutted in spiked heels. We looked for 2000-year old pieces of  earthen city wall and  explored the Hotan Museum (telephone 0903-6182017). The museum had a lot of old costumes and unique shoes, a knowledgeable curator and real antiques and reproductions.  Downtown looked quite modern with the usual white tile-covered building blocks or lovely brick buildings with Islamic arches, both covered with bright advertising signs. Outside city centre,  you can still find beautiful old wooden houses, hidden behind earth and brick walls. Many had open  gates giving tantalizing glimpses of a private oasis inside.

Hotan child in burkha. Image copyright Ruth Lor Malloy 2008.  

If you have a chance, try to visit a local home here and anywhere else on the Silk Road.  Uighurs  are very friendly and most are pleased to have visitors take pictures. Inside the houses are grape arbours, fancy wood carvings,  and outdoor platforms for eating and entertaining guests. 

Recent visitors told me that Hotan’s Sunday Market was more authentic and less touristy  than the famous Sunday Market in Kashi where it’s hard to take photos without a foreign tourist in them.  We were the only apparent foreign tourists at this once-a-week market  and it is indeed a medieval world of  peddlers. One had a live snake attracting buyers to his medicines, and many others had smoky, outdoor barbecues with the tantalizing aroma of cooked  lamb. Its peddlers lined narrow alleyways surrounded by piles of coloured cloth or hidden behind stacks of crates alive with protesting geese, ducks and chickens. We didn’t see any sheep, cattle, and donkeys for sale. These larger animals are the highlight of  Kashi’s Sunday Market. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kashi or Hotan’s Sunday Markets?

You may have to choose between Hotan’s jade and Kashi’s large animals, and a dumpy three-star hotel versus a more comfortable stay in  Kashi’s new four-star hotel. Hotan has fewer foreign tourists. Kashi has a larger variety of things to do and more impressive mausoleums and monuments.  Hotan is more Uighur:   the town is  86% Uighur and Islamic.  The countryside is 100% Uighur  so it has a lot more old culture there.  Hotan is smaller, isolated  and more conservative. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We stayed at the Hotan Hotel where breakfast had 12 choices of fried vegetables and steamed buns.  Lunch on the sidewalk outside the hotel was a very pleasant setting and we had three kinds of dumplings.  We found no western food. Our guide told us we were the second foreign group to visit this year.  The hotel has 228 three-star rooms, good air-conditioning, and one television channel (Chinese only). It was within walking distance of the town square where local children ride  miniature cars,  play games, bounce on giant inflated toys, and paint ceramics on weekends. An internet café is close by and at a nearby store, telephone calls  to North America cost only Y2.40 a minute.   The location was excellent.   

The edge of the desert is only a couple of kilometres from the airport – a vast flat expanse of beige sand, now covered in places near Hotan with woven mats to hold it down. The  next morning, we found a layer of sand on the cars outside our hotel, and as we drove towards Kashi, sand  blew in delicate waves over the paved highway. It wasn’t a full-blown sand storm but it gave us an idea of what those are like. A few days later, I realised that my camera was gritty with spots on my images.  Do take a second camera in case this happens.  

Alas, I can’t recommend our guide so won’t mention his name.  I had a hard time communicating with him and he kept contradicting himself.  He smoked inside the carpet factory and didn’t respond to several of our requests.  But he was better than no guide at all.      

Tour groups follow schedules in Beijing time in Xinjiang region so it’s strange indeed to have breakfast at 9am with tours starting at 10am.   China only has one time zone.  

From Hotan we headed for Yarkand  on National Road 315, a very long drive with lunch in Kagilik (Yecheng in Chinese), another oasis town.  It’s amazing how modern and new these off-the-beaten-tourist-track towns can look in places.  The lunch at a restaurant on the town square was decent and afterwards we found a fancy jade and jewellery shop a few meters away. The owner pointed to the town  museum across the square, but it was hard to find because the building was shared with a billiard parlour and government offices. Because no other tourists were around, we had to look for someone to open its two rooms, and found it only worth a visit for those bent on learning about history, traditional culture,  and museums.   

I was obsessed with finding traditional boots as usual and the museum’s curator kindly took us personally to visit a shoe maker who still made them in a 500 year old style.  It was also an opportunity to visit one of the local homes, and cobbler Hamdul Abdurahman  was very happy to show us his workshop and sell some boots. 

The road westward followed a row of snow-covered mountains. The countryside was flat and in a few places grew cotton, rice and corn. We spent the night in Yarkand (in Chinese Shache), another oasis town which can be a day trip from Kashi.  The three-star Wanghou/Queen Hotel is relatively modern. (Tel. 998-8529999.)  Its spa gives hot sand treatments. Our rooms had high ceilings, dark furniture and surge protectors with three electrical outlets.  The outlets would have been great for recharging cameras but there was no power on in the city that day.  Water from the shower sprayed onto the toilet in our bathroom and the beds were hard.  I had a twin room to myself so could take a duvet off the extra bed and use it to soften the mattress.  The bellman, who looked Russian,  refused a tip, at first!!  

Our clothes were covered with fine sand.   Fortunately, the weather continued to be overcast and not overly uncomfortable. Workmen in the town centre were tearing down old buildings alas and I hoped they would rebuild them in the old traditional style.      

I wandered over to the nearby town square at 6:30am and found a friendly student who spoke English. She took me by bicycle rickshaw to see the nearby tomb of 16^th century poetess Amanni Shalan – and recited a couple of her famous Uighur poems, a delight to hear.  Across the street was a new building in traditional Islamic style so there’s hope that the old architecture won’t be completely destroyed. We wandered around the market for an hour and saw some lovely old buildings in a park that was dedicated to the poetess. Alas, only men were relaxing there. Shops were on the ground floor and arcaded balconies were on the second floor of many buildings – all richly decorated.  (We were to see some of these later in the movie The Kite Runner, which was shot in this and other Kashgar areas.)  Here we saw our first camel which was pulling a cart through the market and shopped for locally-made richly-decorated knives.     

Another long day’s drive took us westward to Kashi, the most important of the Uighur Silk Road cities.  Our tour was arranged by Xinjiang C.I.T.S. and our guides Akbar and  Mahira were delightful. See Urumqi. For other interesting Silk Road destinations, see Karakorum Highway, Kashi,  and Dunhuang.  – RLM, DATE, July, 2007.      

Back to the Updates Index  

Click here to Order
Ruth Malloy's China Guide 2002 Edition
From Amazon.com

Back To Ruth Lor Malloy Home Page

Copyright © 2009 by Ruth Lor Malloy. All rights reserved

Web Site Design and Maintenance
tdc Marketing and Management Consultation