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 Kuche
Kuche ( also known as Kuqa ), about one day by bus and 400km to the west of Urumqi, is a good place to break the long journey from Urumqi to Kashi. It's a small town with a long history, and a largely Uigur population. The fourth-century linguist and scholar Kumarajiva , who came from here, was one of the most famous of all Chinese Buddhists. Having travelled to Kashmir for his education, he later returned to China as a teacher and translator of Buddhist documents from Sanskrit into Chinese. It was in large measure thanks to him that Buddhism came to be so widely understood in China and, by the early Tang, Kuche was a major centre of Buddhism in China. The fantastic wealth of the trade caravans subsidized giant monasteries here, and Xuan Zang, passing through the city in the sixth century, reported the existence of two huge Buddha statues, twenty-seven metres high, guarding its entrances. The city even had its own, Indo-European language. With the arrival of Islam in the ninth century, however, this era finally began to draw to a close, and today only a few traces of Kuche's glorious past remain.
There's little evidence now of Kuche's past wealth; today the city is dusty and relatively underdevelopped.. It is effectively in two parts, the old (to the west) and the new (to the east), lying a few kilometres apart. The new city contains all the facilities you'll need - hotels, banks, post offices and the long-distance bus station, while the old city, largely Uigur, is peppered with mosques and bazaars and has a Central Asian atmosphere very different to Chinese towns. To reach the old city, take any bus heading west along Renmin Lu, the main street on which the bus station is located, until you reach a bridge across the river - the old city lies beyond the river.
From the New City , a couple of sights are easily accessible. One is the remains of the ruined city of Pilang , otherwise known as Qiuci (the old name for Kuche), though there is nothing really to see beyond a few old rocks. Following Tianshan Lu from the new city, the ruined city is about ten minutes' walk west of the Qiuci Hotel. Slightly more interesting is the nearby Tomb of Molena Ashidin Hodja , a simple shrine and mosque, in honour of an Arab missionary who came to the city, probably in the thirteenth century. It's on Wenhua Lu, about fifteen minutes' walk west of the Minmao Hotel.
The bridge leading to the Old City is really where the main area of interest begins. Along the river banks below the bridge, cattle and sheep are traded, and there's also a general market here on Fridays - a spectacular display of Uigur culture on a large scale. Beyond the bridge, you can soon lose yourself in the labyrinth of narrow streets and mud-brick houses. Right in the heart of this area, fifteen minutes approximately northeast of the bridge, is the Kuche Mosque (锟?), built in 1923. Delightfully neat and compact, with an attractive green-tiled dome, this mosque is of wholly arabesque design, displaying none of the Chinese characteristics of mosques in more eastern parts of the country. Beyond the mosque, on Linqi Lu, is the museum (锟?2), housing a moderately interesting collection of locally discovered pottery, coins, skeletons and a few frescoes. Opening hours depend on whether the doorman is awake or not. To reach the museum from the bridge, follow the main road through the old city to the end, then turn right and it's a few hundred metres farther on.
(Source: Xinjiang Information Office)
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