What Time? It's 9 o'clock AND it's 7 o'clock ??!!

XinJiang Autonomous Region (perhaps not very autonomous after all) has 2 concurrent time zones, making time itself seem a silly thing. One time is local XinJiang time, and the other is Beijing time - 2 hours ahead. Official things, like breakfast at the Chinese Tourist Hotel, and plane departures happen on Beijing time, and answers to 'what time is it' happen on local time. To make things equally exciting there are two languages spoken. I soon realized, as all the local Ughyurs get stuck with the worst jobs, all the taxi drivers are Ughyur. I got in a taxi saying, 'ni hao' and got a glare, realizing my mistake, the next time I got into a taxi I said, "Salaam Aleikum" and the driver replied with a heartfelt smile and "wa'aleikum a salaam". But, try to Salaam the Han nationals, and the same glare comes back, or rather a bewildered look as if we're speaking latin.
Watermelon season. Jujubes. Fresh flower peaches, grapes, apricot kernals.
We went to the shrine of Apak Hoja, the air of Sufis, somewhere beyond the mud walls. Akimjan, from the morning after the after missing official breakfast-time experience - peanuts cold pork rind and sugary white bread to dip in sweet and sour sauce, eeks..., guided us to China Air and to China Bank and back to China Air and suggested we eat chicken noodles at Entazaar Restaurant (delicious), took us to parts of the Old City, where the cobbler sewed my boots back together, lingering over the details to irk a bossy woman who then had to wait with her fists clenched for him to finish both of my boots zippers and back seam. There were some guys singing operatic 'happy birthday' across the way on the computers next to the W.C. We saw more bowed instruments, something called 'khoshtar' that had minah birds carved on the top. There were parrots in cages singing outside of the little grocery shops. Women wore skirts just below the knees with silk leggings and nylons over them; clicking high heels and scarves tied under the hair, men in mismatched jackets and suit pants, the pirs wearing Afghani style robes and long white beards.
Kashgar.