Every Sunday morning herders and farmers head for the huge open-air market on the outskirts of Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road city in the mainland'smost westerly province, Xinjiang.
The richer ones travel by truck or van, but most arrive on foot, walking for hours to buy or sell yaks and cows in an outpost that is nearer to Islamabad, Kabul and Moscow than it is to Beijing.
Kashgar is more than 2,000 years old and predominantly Muslim. A strategically important gateway to China from Pakistan and Central Asia it has long been on the backpacker trail, but these days, with improved air and rail links, it has emerged as a major tourist destination.
'I have never seen such a huge livestock trading market anywhere in the world. This old trading method seems to have been going on unchanged for more than 1,000 years. It's amazing,' said Pierre Bouche, a French architect from Paris, who was spending two days in Kashgar before taking the less than two-hour flight to Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
'Uygurs are very friendly and they smile a lot,' he said, adding that safety was not a major concern at all.
Tourism in Kashgar is lively once more since the city was labelled a hotbed of unrest after nearly 200 people were killed in ethnic riots in Urumqi on July 5 last year.
