The Silk Road was once the main artery for the exchange of goods, culture, and art between China, the Middle East, and Europe. It was along this timeless highway that the great religions of Buddhism and Islam were to enter China. In Bazaars of Chinese Turkestan, acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Peter Yung provides an intriguing photographic essay that travels down the Old Silk Road to the present-day marketplaces of Chinese Turkestan.
With photographs of great beauty, accompanied by an evocative text, Yung takes us on a fascinating journey through the Taklimakan Desert--the "Desert of Death"--to the flourishing oases of Turkestan, whose inhabitants learned long ago how to turn the sandy wastes into rich farmland and vineyards. We meet merchants selling yarns and dyes, silk and rugs, jade ("fished" from the rivers) and gold, daggers and shish-kebab, melons and pilaf. And we get a sense of the colorful people who visit the bazaar, the Uygar men with shaved heads and the women in bright silk dresses, billiard players in the open air, young boys watching an old man make paper beneath a trellis of grape vines. And along the way, Yung provides an illuminating commentary on the region's history, describes the legendary trading cities of Kashi, Shache, and Hotan, and discusses current efforts to maintain the Islamic heritage and identity of Xinjiang.
Bazaars of Chinese Turkestan takes us to a world few of us knew existed. It is a mesmerizing book that will captivate everyone who yearns to travel to far-off places, to leave civilization behind and explore the unknown byways of the Old Silk Road.