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I love markets.
Me in the spice market at Yarkent. Markets are where you see what people are making and buying and selling. People are talking and laughing and shouting out prices and exchanging sotto voce comments...
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Shoe a mule or fill a cavity–your choice at the Kuche market.
So you can get your mule shoed… …and ten feet to your left see this sign… …so while you’re waiting on your mule you can go in and get that pesky cavity in your second lower left molar filled. I sent...
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Naginata.
That would be this shown here with samurai for scale, whose weapon it was A naginata could be over twelve feet in length, butt to blade tip. Other than the obvious uses — stabbing, slicing, hooking,...
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It’s all about product placement on the Silk Road.
Coal and stovepipes in the Kuche market. Hey, buy one, gotta buy the other. Which I will be signing at 2pm on December 2nd at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona. Click here to pre-order.
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Once you get in, you’ll never get out.
The Taklamakan Desert. Some sources claim it means “Place of No Return”, more commonly interpreted as “once you get in, you’ll never get out.” And you can see why. Which I will be signing at 2pm on...
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The silk in Silk Road.
Those are silk cocoons, spun by silk worms who have fed long and well on mulberry leaves. There is a fire beneath the caldron, and this lady is boiling them in water to make the very end of the...
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It’s a deal.
In the Kashgar livestock market. The guy in the tall hat is the broker, the guys on either side the seller and buyer. The tallest guy is always the broker, we were told. And evidently, if they aren’t...
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The Templars
So, okay, Dana Stabenow, BA, MFA, NATS* here. Google Templars and you get 1,290,000 hits. On the day I wrote this post, the sixth hit down was this story. It says something about the enduring mythology...
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Rugs, ropes and rivets.
What do you want? Need? Make? Sell? Buy? Whatever your answer is, the Silk Road’s oasis towns have a market with your name on it. The guy below? He’s making rivets out of tiny pieces of metal he has...
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Corsets, 4-inch heels, and foot binding.
I hiked the Chilkoot Trail in 2000. When I was writing about it for Alaska magazine, somehow I stumbled across the information that women in that time, 1898-1899, wore on average forty pounds of...
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