Mewlan Turaq, owner of a clothing boutique, fixes an ornament in his shop in the Old Town. [Photo/Xinhua]
Changed lives
The renovation project has changed the lives of Mardan and his wife. In 2017, while strolling with his wife, who had a dream of opening a coffee shop in Kashgar, Mardan noticed that a recently renovated two-story building at a crossroads in the Old Town was being offered for rent.
The couple immediately fell in love with the dusty building, believing it to be the ideal location for their coffee shop.
Having rented the building they started to fill it with old furniture and decorations they had collected from flea markets, such as a sign from a 1980's tailor's shop, and they used old doors as tables and hung pictures of Kashgar in old window frames.
"I just want the coffee shop to be a place to showcase Kashgar as it was in the old days. It's my responsibility to preserve our culture and present it in a modern way," Mardan said. At the time, many observers doubted that the tea-loving Uygurs would accept coffee and even the young couple wondered if people would come to the Old Town to try it.
Despite their concerns, Kashgar Corner opened for business in 2018, just as the city's tourism boom began. Last year, Kashgar hosted more than 8.8 million tourist visits, a rise of 59 percent year-on-year.
Back in 2018, Xinjiang's social situation gradually stabilized after a number of anti-extremist and anti-terrorism measures were put in place. For a period, terrorist attacks happened frequently in Kashgar prefecture, which made people afraid to travel there.
At first, the coffee shop's customers were mainly tourists, who often packed the premises at peak times. Gradually, local residents of the Old Town also developed the habit of drinking coffee, just as they have become accustomed to hearing a young musician playing the popular Western song Despacito on the rawap (a traditional five-stringed Uygur instrument) at a famous centuries-old teahouse in the Old Town.
A man surveys the window of a cultural and creative products store in the Old Town. [Photo/Xinhua]
Dilnar Akbar, Mardan's wife, said she is no longer surprised to see 70-something locals ordering coffee instead of tea.
"They told me that the decor in Kashgar Corner reminds them of the old times, and they find the aroma of the coffee quite alluring. For them, it is always a good thing to have another place to have a chat in the afternoon," she said.
When she was 16, Dilnar left Kashgar to attend a senior high school in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, before going to a university in the northern port city of Tianjin.
During her time outside the region, she became a coffee lover. "My experiences outside Xinjiang opened my eyes. I am glad I can bring new ideas back to our city, which is thirsty for development," she said.
When Kashgar Corner opened, it was one of only two coffee shops in the Old Town, and the rival was struggling. Now there are seven establishments, according to Mardan. "Drinking coffee is no longer an exotic thing, but a part of the daily routine in the Old Town," he said.
When the COVID-19 outbreak started to spread in China earlier this year, the couple was worried that the coffee shop's business would be hit hard because the number of tourists would drop sharply. Despite their fears, local customers have helped to keep Kashgar Corner afloat.
