Dear Reader (2023-10-28),
First of all to my new subscribers, thank you for joining me in my small corner of the interweb. To my pre-existing subscribers, thank you to you too, for sticking around. It is so nice to know you are out there in the ether.
In today’s post we visit the town of Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, where the theme of the moment is wood. There is an Eastern Orthodox church made of wood, and a Dungan mosque also made of wood. The latter was built without nails in a Chinese tradition. This leads to the question, who are the Dungan?. “The Dungan in the former Soviet republics are Hui (ed. and Muslims) who fled China in the aftermath of the Hui Minorities’ War (also known as the “Dungan Rebellion”) in the 19th century.” [1]
There is also a visit to the local market. Our tour guide, the amazing Kara, did caution us to hold our belongings close. Some of the market was indoors in dark nearly empty corridors of peeling paint and failing brickwork. Other parts of the market were outdoors in corridors of old shipping containers. By this stage of the trip, I am now feeling relatively safe, and balancing that with the pragmatism of not doing anything stupid, which is not to be confused with nonsense and silliness. That river of mirth flowed constantly.
To round out today’s images there is a pair of pairs.
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Cheers, Sean
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References
~ [1] – Cut and pasted from Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungan_people
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