To Protect an Ancient City, China Moves to Raze It

[Coventina]

Source: New York Times

KASHGAR, China — A thousand years ago, the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road converged at this oasis town near the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Traders from Delhi and Samarkand, wearied by frigid treks through the world’s most daunting mountain ranges, unloaded their pack horses here and sold saffron and lutes along the city’s cramped streets. Chinese traders, their camels laden with silk and porcelain, did the same.

The traders are now joined by tourists exploring the donkey-cart alleys and mud-and-straw buildings once window-shopped, then sacked, by Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

Now, Kashgar is about to be sacked again.

Nine hundred families already have been moved from Kashgar’s Old City, “the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in central Asia,” as the architect and historian George Michell wrote in the 2008 book “Kashgar: Oasis City on China’s Old Silk Road.”

Over the next few years, city officials say, they will demolish at least 85 percent of this warren of picturesque, if run-down homes and shops. Many of its 13,000 families, Muslims from a Turkic ethnic group called the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), will be moved.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/asia/28kashgar.html?hp

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The article goes on to explain that they will be replaced with apartment buildings and reproductions of Islamic architecture, and that this is being done to preserve the Uighur culture.

:eyes:

[Downwinder]

1. More boomers, tear down the old, it has to be new. Buildings that

have stood for hundreds of years get replaced by buildings with a 30 year lifespan. But, "We're doing it for Public Safety." B***S***.