China Guide
The Northwest
The bazaars
Address: Around Id Kah Square
The street heading northeast from Id Kah Square is the main carpet area. The region's best carpets are handmade in Khotan, but some good bargains are to be had in the Kashgar bazaars. The carpets are relatively rough in quality and have geometric designs only, but the prices are about a third of the equivalent in Turkey. You should be able to get a nice felt of rolled coloured wool (1.5m x 2.5m) for less than ¥200 or a larger hand-knotted carpet (2m x 3m) for ¥800. You can see people making carpets, musical instruments and jewellery at the Handicrafts Centre 200m north of Id Kah Square on Jiefang Lu; high-quality double-sided silk carpets cost around ¥1000 per square metre. Kashgar kilims, produced by nomads, are highly sought after and almost impossible to find locally.
A small road east of Id Kah Square, parallel to Jiefang Lu, is a big area for Central Asian hats. As well as the green and white square-shaped variety so beloved by old Uyghur men, there are prayer caps, skullcaps, furry winter hats and plain workmen's caps. Following this lane south, turn right, where a large, semi-underground market occupies the space between the square and hat lane. Here you will find a large selection of clothes, carpets and crockery as well as Uyghur nuts, sweets and spice stands, and the occasional blacksmith hammering at his trade. Further south down hat lane, you will come to a woodcraft area.
North of the square you'll find jewellery and high-quality ornate knives, produced in Yengisar. The lane directly south of Id Kah Mosque, heading due west, sells a mixture of hats, jewellery, large chests overlain with brightly coloured tin (purpose-built for carrying gifts for brides-to-be), and handmade musical instruments. The two-stringed dutah is the most common. The tanber has an even longer stem and a round bowl shaped like half a gourd, while the rawupu has five strings and a snakeskin drum.