I see how the Kashgar cafe is full of foreigners. The Western bubble pops up, all too apparent. A worn-out path of budget travelers stretches around the globe. English, Aussies, Canadians and Japs can't escape running into each other again and again - especially at these eateries designed to collect our dollars: Chinese dishes and pizza pies, even fried egg breakfasts and coffee. It's this path I want to get off and forget. I don't really want to see any familiar faces. I don't have to apologize. I love a good talk, but sometimes - I need to be alone. Maybe that's why I'm riding to Tibet, after all.

On Friday night I meet an exception to the rule of "foreigners-only" at the cafe. He's only nineteen or twenty and has studied English for a couple of years after school. He earns extra cash by showing tourists around Kashgar. I question him about the Chinese government and life in Xinjiang. He's remarkably canny and unafraid. I ask, "Does the government give you any money? Do you have to pay when you go to the hospital?" His answer, "Nothing. We have to pay a lot." It's clear that a goodly number of local people in Xinjiang really don't care if the Chinese come or go. The boy tells me about the difficulty buying hashish. He's clever: the market price has jumped a hundred times - since he claims the police have clamped down on the scene - fining and jailing local producers. Apparently, the greybeards use it more than the youngsters nowadays. So he says, if you want some, you have to pay extra for it. I don't bother asking for any; I hate hash. Give me cool, smooth grass instead, thank you.

Saturday disappears as quickly as letters into mailboxes and cups of ale into my belly. Cool rain pools the light of small red taxis wheeling round the traffic circle. The rain will go. Before night meets morning, Paul and I wander over to the darkest corner of the hotel grounds to check out some nearly naked KTV chicks. After that, we find the old Russian Consulate.

The Russian Consulate is a prime survivor from an earlier era of modest "frontier elegance." Layered tiers of simple yellow bricks are set between austere stone lintels. Today, the Consulate comprises a wing of the Seman Hotel. Inside, the edifice has preserved a feel for its heyday, especially the big dining room. Here we discover a startling artifact: a huge wall mural, probably painted at the time of the Consulate's construction in 1890. The scene painted upon the mural is quite beyond interpretation. It's title, more than I need today: "Theseus - Vanquisher of the Minotaur." An old cliche, but a pretty one. Basically, the painting reads like a map of civilization from Occident to Orient, left to right. Yet, the Western "half" appears very dark...

The world of Greco-Roman myth is depicted above the world of reality: a god hands down a divine message to fearful mortals. Perhaps these gods are out of touch? Far to the left, some insecure-looking scroll-makers are gripping the burden of their creed and language. Women bear libations and casks of wine. The pillars of civilization surround all of this, but there is little light. In fact, an aura of fear is cast around this version of the Western world. Perhaps the Russian painter felt that the folks of eastern Turkestan were somewhat in the dark about the West, or perhaps, in a not very subtle way, he wanted to suggest that the West was bent on conquest and its constant religious squabbling inevitably suppressed enlightenment. At worst, his image makes the West appear shaky at the foundations... Ah, but maybe the Russians were trying to win favors with the Uigurs and Turkmen. For in the East, on the right side of the mural, lies Kashgar, or perhaps simply Mecca. The painter's name and the painting's title is signed in square Russian characters on the bottom right...

Here, unlike all the grey and stooped Romans and stone-bearing Jews, all the Turk and Arabic peoples stand tall and colorful below broad beams of golden sun. Amid the rows of Turkmen sits a horseman, obviously a Russian, since he wears a uniform and a beard. The crowd is large and among them is a local leader who resembles a mullah. He wears a brown turban of authority. He might be Muhammad. Beside him stand the local Eastern folk, including a lusty Uigur woman, her bosom cascading from her dress. She certainly wears no veil. You cannot help but feel that the Russian horseman, of acutely serious mien, works hard to restrain his glance from her inviting flesh. A most literal allegory is placed in the middle of the whole painting, exactly between the West and the East: a centurion wrangles with a big bull... We are to believe many things according to this image: the West and East will meet in a battle. Another way of looking is simpler: the East follows their mullah and Lord while the West is bent on conquest. So, viewers of the painting are led to believe that the presence of the noble Russian rider among the Uigurs implies that the more civil, and less "Westernized" Russians are able to side with them. Obviously, the Russian painter wants to convince the locals that the identity of his nation lies in the East, while the Western world remains foreign to his intuitions. This impression represents a ploy on the painter's part. For what could a Russian know about Islam or Turkmen? Perhaps the painter didn't know what to paint, and the secret behind his dark and bright imagery is revealed in the currency of his own day: in the eighteenth and nineteenth century it was the vogue to interpret everything in the world through the "Revelation of St. John" and the "prophecies" of Nostradamus. Such great menaces as Napoleon explained the popularity of these superstitions. Are we looking at a crude representation for the whole design of earthly destiny in this painting? That goes too far? Perhaps the painter attempts nothing more than to portray how radically opposed in spiritual inspirations and material motives are East and West. Still, the attempt to win favors with local Turkmen cannot be dismissed.

On Saturday evening, I bring back about five other travelers to have a look at this mural thing, and we discuss it for half an hour. One British guy with unruly hair has a completely different opinion. It's funny how we sometimes realize that our preconditions for "understanding" things often coincides with what we want things to mean - even if they don't... As I set up my mini-tripod to torpedo the mural with a time-lapse shot, the British fellow speaks. He says something to the effect that the whole painting defines the phenomenon of empire-making in general; maybe the Englishman only wants to see beyond the painting's overt lack of symbolic subtlety, as if he's trying to reach the innocent and more intuitive mind of the painter's first inspiration.

Even uninformed observers can see the painting is the work of a "gifted amateur." Perhaps the ambassador himself painted the image, having nothing else to do with his spare time... The figures are crude and the colors, hurried and unsubtle, are much like a cartoon. His efforts to portray emotions and detail fall short, and the looks of desperation on the faces of his Greco-Roman subjects suggest the painter's own sense of failure, as if he knew too well that a caricature was the best he could achieve... We can forgive the painter his hackneyed prejudices, and even his unsubtle allusions to the whoring of Russian and British officers, since after all, the sheer incongruity and bizarre ambiguity of the piece reveals, at least, a sincere wish to depict a universal insight about East and West. While he wanted to share his thoughts with the local folk, whatever the painter may have felt and understood about Kashgar was ultimately beyond his capacity for coherent articulation. My efforts to explain also lack images sufficient to explain his fumblingly subliminal insights.

Sunday comes and everyone gets up early to visit the great market. Me and three women - Betty, the blonde, and the hippy - take a cab to the market at 6:15. None of the vendors are open yet. But, behind the market lies the stockade and the animal dealers are already here. The herdsman go through motions that never had a beginning and will never cease until all the worlds in the universe stop turning: they knot up the forelegs of all their sheep and goats to hold them in an orderly line: for sale, for sale - everything will be sold today. I notice the farmers feel naked in front of cameras. Too many tourists for their taste. Men and their sons wait for the local crowd to arrive and surround them with privacy and anonymity once more. After 7:00 A.M., more folk wander into the market and heavily laden carts slide into town, drawn slowly by burros.

Breakfast is a stuffed mutton bun and a pot of weak red tea beside the noisy thoroughfare. By 7:30 a huge crowd fills the entrance to the stockade and you can't get in anymore, so it's better to go find the rest of Sunday morning in the market lanes. The Kashgar market is a weekend job for many local folk. Several oasis villages dot the desert edge in the vicinity of Kashgar, and everyone comes to town.

A very old man is grinding spices beside the road. I buy some cinnamon and have him mix it with cloves because it smells so good. He smiles and surely thinks I'm silly when I say it's for tea. I meet one of the travellers from the hotel, a Swiss guy who got a big knife for 100 yuan. But he has money to burn having worked in a Rolex factory the year before: Swiss companies control 80% of the luxury watch market.

A small carpet bag catches my eye. It's made of solidly woven sheep wool dyed blue, gold, red, brown and several other colors besides. Perfect for my camera. Bargaining is a serious game in this country. Uigur merchants always expect you to buy once you begin haggling over the price. Should you lose heart and run from the chase, the salesman will take offence and conclude that you are an idiot who doesn't really know what he wants. This particular merchant wears a trim beard on his olive skin. He keeps an intent eye on me. He really wants me to buy the carpet bag. Yes he does, and he won't take my head-shaking about his price, 100 yuan. He's willing to come down, but not to 50. The best he will do is 80. I say 70 but he doesn't want to budge. He then launches into a step-by-step explanation of his cost price, which he claims is high, since the bag comes from reputable weavers in Hotan town, some distance away. He senses that I really want it, so he practically sits on me for his 80 renminbi. I'm a lousy bargainer and get taken.

Following my fancy, I walk alone since I've lost the women. The vendors sell everything from furniture and fabrics to bicycle parts. It takes a good two or three hours to cover all the aisles. The market is roofed with red awnings and the diffuse air beneath glows warmly. I find something else that I want to buy. Ukrainian wool shawls, red and green blossoms on creamy white, and black and white poppies on scarlet. Betty, the California girl, spoke of them. The man gives me a deal, only a few dollars each, so I buy four and plan to mail them home to Canada. A lot of stuff comes from the countries surrounding Xinjiang: cheap cotton and fancy polyester from Pakistan and India; plain red and black carpets from Kyrgyzstan; and all kinds of domestic goods: plastic tubs, pots, utensils, electric batteries, tools, string, stationary and sewing machine oil.

By 11:00 A.M. I feel too hot. Everyone wears a hat but me. I can't stand the crush of people and my deep-seated agoraphobia flares up, forcing me to rush from the market and back to the hotel in a taxi. Later in the afternoon I meet a Canadian guy who wants to ride his bike to Pakistan. But all he has is a big backpack. I advise him to buy some woven wool "donkey bags" at the market. We go to the market, it isn't so crowded as morning time. He bargains and bargains and chooses the sturdiest pair of saddle bags he can find. He tells a curious tale about designing an automatic gas-filling device for gasoline stations in Calgary. New users must install a sensing device and a special intake on their gas tank so the robot camera can automatically direct its filler hose... The system will be introduced along with a special subscriber's credit card. Hallelujah! Now, the obese and the lazy will no longer need to struggle - grotesquely - up out from their Lincolns and Caddies to fill up! They will never have to go out doors ever again: yet another miracle over nature and a wonderful labor-saver for the hurried automatons of mighty America! What a whiz... (All right, so I admit it's great for handicapped drivers.)

Tomorrow I ride! I pack the shawls for mailing home. I try to sleep on the thought that it's time to go. Ah, there won't be anyone to talk with anymore.