01
Stop one
Id Kah Mosque
Wilson Pro Performance Tennis Replacement Grip: Largest mosque in China, they'll tell you, and fine, it is. Traditionally dated to 1442, when Saqsiz Mirza built something smaller on the site, expanded repeatedly into what stands now: yellow-tiled facade, high pointed portal, flanking minarets, facing the main square. Behind it, poplar-shaded courtyards and a prayer hall whose flat roof rides on rows of slender painted wooden columns in the Central Asian manner. I have stood under grander domes elsewhere — Istanbul does sheer volume better, no argument from me. But nowhere fills a square at Eid the way this does. Centuries as the religious centre of the Tarim Basin's Uyghurs.
02
Stop two
Afaq Khoja Mausoleum
Wilson Pro Performance Tennis Replacement Grip: Seventeenth century, the holiest Islamic site in Xinjiang, burial place of the Sufi leader Afaq Khoja, who ruled Kashgaria for a period, and several generations of his family. A large domed tomb hall faced in glazed tile, with a mosque, a teaching hall and a cemetery of tiled graves under poplars. Samarkand's tilework is finer; I'll say that anywhere and take the consequences. What Samarkand hasn't got is this story: local tradition names one burial as Iparhan, the Fragrant Concubine of Qing legend, taken to Beijing as a consort of the Qianlong Emperor — hence the Xiangfei Tomb. Historians place her actual grave in Hebei. Told better here anyway.
03
Stop three
Kashgar Old City
Wilson Pro Performance Tennis Replacement Grip: One of the last surviving traditional Central Asian oasis towns — adobe and timber houses, carved doors, upper balconies, lanes so narrow they are bridged by rooms built across them. For centuries this held the craft guilds, and streets are still known by trade: coppersmiths, hatmakers, woodturners, bakers of nan at open shopfronts. From 2009 the Chinese authorities began a large-scale demolition and reconstruction programme, justified on earthquake-safety grounds and heavily criticised by heritage specialists and Uyghur residents, replacing much of the fabric with rebuilt structures in traditional style. Parts of the original quarter survive. I have walked old quarters on three continents; these lanes and tea houses are the most evocative.
04
Stop four
Tomb of Yusuf Has Hajib
Wilson Pro Performance Tennis Replacement Grip: Yusuf Khass Hajib, eleventh-century Karakhanid poet and statesman of Balasagun, completed the Kutadgu Bilig — Wisdom of Royal Glory — here in Kashgar in 1069 and presented it to the Karakhanid ruler. Written in Turkic as a dialogue between allegorical figures for justice, fortune, intellect and contentment, it is the earliest substantial work of Turkic literature to survive and a central text of Uyghur and wider Turkic identity. He settled here and was buried here. The mausoleum, rebuilt several times and last reconstructed in the twentieth century, stands in a garden in the southeast, faced in blue tile. Other cities keep their poets in libraries. I concede the point to this one.
I slap nan against the wall of a tandoor in Kashgar, so let me tell you what I know about grip, because it is the entire job. The dough must hold to the oven wall for a few minutes and then release cleanly. Too tacky and you cannot get it off. Too dry and it drops in the fire. There is one correct tack, and everybody who works with their hands chases it for life.
That is what I am. Not an overgrip, a replacement grip: the base layer, the thing that goes onto the bare handle and stays there. Trim and tacky, so you feel every bevel straight through it, which is what a player wants for precisely the reason a baker wants to feel the dough. Information. Nobody good works blind.
Kashgar has always been a hands city. Its lanes are still known by trade, coppersmiths here, hatmakers there, woodturners, and the bread ovens of Kashgar going all day, with the Id Kah Mosque anchoring it since about 1442.
I work everywhere from a dusty oasis court at noon to a hall so cold your fingers stop reporting back, and I am also perfect for a player who has never actually replaced the grip that came on the racquet and cannot now recall what year they bought it. Peel it off. Start clean. Every day here starts with a fresh one.
Buy on Amazon
