ABSTRACT
It was Ali who introduced me to the big mosque, shortly after he arrived in Kashgar for the second time in the late summer of 2012. He asked that we meet in front of the Seman Hotel, where he usually stays during his frequent visits to the city, and I was quite surprised to see him walking towards me from the opposite side of the road. The Seman Hotel is one of Kashgar’s landmarks. Formerly the abode of the Russian Consulate between the late 19th and the mid-20th century, it lies at only a short distance from the Chini Bagh, the former British consulate, and today another major hotel in Kashgar. This important page of history in what has come to be known as the Great Game (Hopkirk 1992) seems forgotten in the cityscape of contemporary Kashgar – as lost as the two empires that were its main players. Only two old signs stand in front of the former consulate buildings, which, despite frequent rumours of imminent renovation, laid mostly abandoned between 2009 and 2017. Yet, both the Seman and the Chini Bagh are major hotels for foreign businessmen and tourists alike. Many Pakistani traders, in particular, are frequent guests. The new Chini Bagh Hotel also hosts two Pakistani-owned shops as well as the Kashgar liaison office of the Northern Areas Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NACCI) from Gilgit-Baltistan. The few Pakistani restaurants in town, moreover, are all located in close proximity to either the Seman or the Chini Bagh.
