Roaming Kucha

The days in Kuqa are baked through by the sun. Hanging over the ancient land of Kucha, the scorching orb resembles a red-hot iron griddle, sizzling against the Yardang landforms along the Kuqa River banks. The ochre-red rock formations layer upon layer like mille-feuille from afar, yet reveal their jagged, knife-edged ferocity up close. Hot winds howl through the crevices, their mournful wails echoing like unquiet spirits from ancient battlefields. The alleys of the old town feel even more haphazard than Kashgar's. Rammed-earth courtyard walls lean precariously yet stubbornly refuse to fall, with reed stalks protruding unevenly like an old woman's thinning hair. Uyghur elders squat on earthen platforms beneath poplar trees, sipping herbal tea with mulberry naan. Sixty years' worth of desert dust collects in their wrinkles, scattering like sand whenever they laugh. Suddenly, a white-capped elder bursts into raw Muqam singing—his voice raspy as a tumbleweed across the Gobi, yet twisting through melodies that wrench the heart. When onlookers cheer and slap their thighs, he stops abruptly, returning to tearing his naan as if the soul-baring song had been a collective hallucination. Beneath the arched gateway of Kuqa Grand Mosque, boys play "awaz" games. They hop between squares scratched onto brick pavement with apricot pits, ankle bells jingling. Sunlight filters through perforated brick walls, casting honeycomb patterns on their bodies. At the sudden call to prayer, they scatter, leaving the light patterns to climb silently up empty pillars. At the bazaar's end, a naan bakery operates from a domed clay oven resembling an upside-down black bell. When the baker hooks out golden naan, sparks fly like fireflies. A flour-dusted apprentice crouches in a corner, arranging coins into crescent moons on his palm. Biting into a hot naan, I'm ambushed by an explosion of sesame and wheat aromas—so scalding yet impossible to spit out. At dusk, I climb the ruined walls of Kuqa Prince's Mansion. This "last princely residence" now stands as broken walls where peeled plaster exposes reed and tamarisk fibers in the rammed earth. As sunset dyes the ruins tangerine, a rawap's lament drifts through the air. Following the sound, I find a blind musician in faded blue chapan sitting against the wall, his playing steeped in sorrow. A tin box at his feet holds scattered bills. When my coin clinks in, his melody abruptly turns joyous. Tilting his mottled face upward, he grins with three remaining yellow teeth. By the Kuqa River at midnight, stars hang low enough to pluck. Across the water, an oil refinery blazes with light, its pipelines coiled like pythons across the desert. A drunk staggers along the bank, collapses vomiting, then lies singing in Kyrgyz. His voice ripples over the murky water, startling wild ducks from the reeds. Their wings beat toward the refinery, skimming pipeline reflections like ancient spirits traversing modern industry. At dawn in Subashi ruins, eroded stupas stand like gnawed corncobs, pockmarked with cavities. "This was the Zhāohùlí Monastery from Great Tang Records," says my guide, though I see only pottery shards. Picking up a patterned fragment, he warns: "Put it down! That held human ashes." As I drop it, a sudden whirlwind twists sand into spirals—like monks' robes swirling a millennium ago during soul-releasing rites. Passing a luthier's workshop on our return, I watch an old craftsman stretch python skin over a dutar's soundbox. His bony fingers trace the scales like caressing a lover. Sunlight through the skylight turns stacked mulberry wood necks into vessels of golden honey. "Young people don't want this music anymore," he murmurs—just as electronic dance music thunders from next door, shaking plaster from the walls.