The Soul of Kashgar Old Town - Gaotai Residential Area

Gaotai Residential Area is a Uyghur residential community built on a loess high cliff more than 40 meters high and over 800 meters long at the northeast end of the old town of Kashgar, Xinjiang. It has a history of 600 years and is a major landscape for displaying ancient Uyghur residential architecture and folk customs in Kashgar. The soul of Kashgar Old Town lies in the old town, and the essence of the old town is the Gaotai Residential Area. The 'Gaotai Residential Area' only occupies one-tenth of the area of Kashgar's old town, yet it almost encompasses all the architectural styles of the old town. Gaotai Residential Area is a Uyghur residential community built on a loess high cliff more than 40 meters high and over 800 meters long at the northeast end of the old town of Kashgar, Xinjiang, with a history of 600 years. The characteristic residential buildings here are mostly made of earth and wood, and they are important physical evidence for studying the living customs and architectural features of ethnic minorities, as well as one of the mysterious colors of Kashgar Old Town. The high cliff has existed for two thousand years, and more than a thousand years ago, Uyghur ancestors built houses and settled here. It is said that the famous Eastern Han generals Ban Chao and Geng Gong once left their footprints here. In the mid-9th century, during the Karakhanid Dynasty, the royal palace was built on the north side of this high cliff, and the current Gaotai Residential Area was built on the south cliff. Koziya Beyxi - in Uyghur, meaning 'high cliff pottery house', has developed over a thousand years of history, forming a unique residential architecture with hundreds of years of history on the high cliff. The Uyghurs of Kashgar have been living here for generations, building their houses against the cliff. As the family population increases with each generation, they add another floor on top of their ancestors' houses. Generation after generation, houses connect to houses, floors to floors, layer upon layer. A single residential house is a family history of reproduction, livelihood, rise and fall, and the continuation of descendants. The Uyghurs have a strong sense of clan, and the core of their residential culture is the attachment to home and homeland, so many residential houses have been passed down through seven or eight generations. Some large residential compounds have as many as ten or twenty rooms, with several generations living together in one courtyard, truly embodying the concept of 'four generations under one roof'. Here, you can see everywhere 'over-street houses', 'half-street houses', and 'suspended houses' built over the crossroads of alleys, which look like watchtowers or blockhouses standing in the alleys from a distance. These unplanned, randomly built houses upon houses, and houses outside houses, are arranged into deep, crisscrossing, winding, and undulating alleys of Kashgar's Gaotai Residential Area. Walking along any path inside the alley, you can see the large gates of residential courtyards built along the alley, opening against the outer wall, with each household right next to each other. Gaotai Residential Area has a strong Uyghur architectural style, which has been influenced by Islamic culture under the unique environment and natural conditions of Kashgar, and has gradually formed over hundreds of years of historical evolution. Gaotai Residential Area is rugged, densely populated, with many alleys, crisscrossing in all directions. It is praised by tourists from home and abroad as the 'living folk museum of the Uyghur people' and represents the connotation and historical heritage of Kashgar, a famous historical and cultural city in China.