Words Fail Me

Over the last two years, I’ve spent many, many hours in this airport lounge in Xi’an.  Good times, good times.

Security at the Kashgar airport was insane.  To get into the ticketing area, you had to show ID and undergo the most thorough pat-down I’ve ever been subjected to.  Crazy long lines, stretching outside into the freezing cold.  Then another security checkpoint to get to the boarding gates.

The first class lounge, however, was desolate.  And bereft of refreshments.

I thought this image from Kashi was telling:  remnants of the city’s ancient wall, surrounded by razor wire and with a surveillance camera perched on top.

Ah.  A hospital for “common people” rather than, say, Cedars-Sinai.

“Chiken” is “chicken,” I assume.  But wait, do they feed the apples to the chicken?  Is it like food for chickens or is it human food that’s a mix of apples & chicken but with double the amount of expected apples or something?  I’m so confused.  (No, the Chinese doesn’t clarify anything.)

Throughout Asia, I’ve seen some pretty absurd things written in English on clothes.  Misspellings.  Mangled grammar.  Embarrassingly unintended vulgarities.  But I have a real about not taking pictures of people without their permission and I’m always reluctant to ask people if I can take a picture just so I can make fun of their clothes.

But when I saw this kid’s Vine-infected fashion choice, I broke my own rule and shot him from behind like a black hat cowboy.  He had it coming.

Lying, as it does, at an important crossroad of the Silk Road, Kashgar’s Sunday Market is legendary, providing a hub for over two thousand years where goods could be traded between East and West.
It is sprawling.  Absolutely sprawling.  It makes the biggest Walmart in the world look like one block of Venice Beach.Even though (slightly) covered in modern times, the recent snow had turned the floor into a gellid, muddy mess.
Certain sections at the fringes were ominously quiet.  Others were bright and convivial, like the alleyway selling nuts and fruit.
These plastic female torsos can be used for fashion displays…  …or to collect dripping snowmelt.
Bazaar, you say?  More like bizarre, am I right?  (I allow myself one bad pun every fifty blog posts.)

I call this one “Blackbirds in Tree with Smokestack and Cooling Tower.”

While I’m at it, I might as well update my population chart.

(I used the most current metro population data from Wikipedia, rounded.)

I started wondering wondering if Kashgar was the farthest I had ever been from where I grew up.  (Almost, but not quite, as it turns out.)  In the spirit of the population and elevation charts, I made this:

(All distances according to Google.)