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Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, China

The most important thing to know, first, about Kashgar is its vivid contrast to Pakistan. Where Pakistan is brown and gray, Kashgar is green and pink — a succulent watermelon on the edge of nowhere.

And there were women! And, even though we were still in the Islamic world, the women had legs and hair and rode bicycles and smiled. Seeing them was like gulping oxygen when I didn't even know I was starved for air. It made me giddy.

Yes, the hotel was still gloomy and staffed by sullen young women. But we learned that there were two Kashgars. The province of Xinjiang (in the far west, butting up against the old Soviet republics) was the victim of an internal "colonization" policy that moved thousands of Han Chinese (the "true" ethnic Chinese from eastern China) to tame the potentially unruly territories. These were the bored arrogant tourist office functionaries and hotel clerks.

The vitality was found in the indigenous community of Uighurs, one of the ethnic so-called minorities who make up the majority of the Kashgar population.

On Saturday, August 15, we set out to explore the local market. It was odd to me that the tourist hotels were jammed packed but Jim and I seemed to be the only foreigners out and about. We might have had the same feeling we had that first day in Pakistan: strangers — extradimensional shadows — passing through the monochrome workaday world of an alien society. Certainly we were odd specters. But instead of staring at men mulling over auto parts and appliances, we found a bustling community of craftspeople: sewing, turning logs into chair legs and baby cribs, pounding galvanized metal into pails and pans, turning raw cotton into batting, baking, blacksmithing and shoeing horses.

I'm a mediocre photographer and Jim's only marginally better, but when I look back at the pictures we took, I'm mesmerized. It was impossible to take a bad photo. They glow. Was it the pollution-free atmosphere on a 4000-foot plain at the edge of a desert? Gotta be part of it.

But it was also the town and the people. While some women had heavy brown homespun shawls that covered their heads and others wore demure white scarves and men's suit jackets, the majority of women and girls stood out in silky reds and satiny pinks and rainbow prints. Every young lady wore the required brown stockings, but many wore red socks to jazz up the look. Every girl and woman covered her head, but the popular style was gauzy red chiffon shot with gold threads.

Red was the accent color in every shot. Red scarves. Red socks. Red oil cloth on tables. Red tomatoes. Red-dyed eggs.

Beyond the color were the faces. I have a lot of pictures because people — at least men and kids — weren't at all shy about posing. In fact, the kids would rush up and pantomime shutter-clicking by crooking their index finger next to their eyes. Their faces were a wonderful hodge-podge of features from East and West, the kind of faces that make me laugh at racial categories.

I brought a jar of bubbles all the way from home and sat in the People's Park one afternoon. It drew a crowd: little girls who demanded to swish the wand themselves, little boys who chased and smashed the bubbles, adults who stared and mumbled as if I were some kind of sorcerer.

We rode around on donkey carts driven by little boys who yelled Bosh, bosh as they beat their patient beasts. One afternoon we shared the cart with a bundle of long alfalfa stalks. Another cart pulled up and everyone was mugging for pictures — till the other donkey poked his head into ours and began chomping the greens. Then we nearly witnessed a brawl.

What about the Sunday Market? This was to be the main event, the apex of our entire trip, the very reason we set out on this course. Biggest market in all of Asia. The guide book said it attracted dealers from all over western China and now from the newly liberated republics of the old Soviet Union. Our mouths watered. Wouldn't we have the pick of the best stuff pouring out of these cash-starved nations? As well as the little discovered treasures of Xinjiang?

Ha, ha. The joke was on us. We had the pick of fat bucking bulls and long-haired goats. Along with a hundred thousand other people, we pushed our way through stalls of fabrics, fly swatters, pens, soap, squirt guns, shopping bags, knives, nuts, snow leopard skins (real and fake), and wool felt hats. No one was in the rare treasure business. Perhaps there were hidden meeting places for the big-time wholesalers where looted art treasures were traded for hard Yankee currency, but we only saw the output of a vibrant rural economy. We came away with nothing but great photos.

The Sunday Market was on Day 14 of our trip. Time to turn around and start our three-week trip back home.

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