Why a Booktrail?
1920s and present day – Kashgar, one of the most remotest cities in China in the 1920s, and the journey told via the pages of a cyclist’s guide for ladies.
A Lady’s Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar
What you need to know before your trail
1923
Sisters Evangeline (Eva) and Lizzie are missionaries heading for the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar. For Lizzie, this is a religious calling whereas for Eva, she’s there to write a book for her publisher called A Lady’s Cyclist Guide to Kashgar.
Present Day
Frieda returns from a long trip abroad to find a man sleeping outside her front door. She gives him some bedding to keep him comfortable but in the morning the man is gone and the bedding has been neatly folded. On top is a an exquisite drawing of a bird with a long feathery tail, some delicate Arabic writing, and a boat made out of a flock of seagulls on her wall.
This man will take her on a journey back to his Yemeni homeland and the adventure which reveals stories of Eva and Frieda separated by decades but united in many other ways.
Travel Guide
“For five hours our path had descended through a dusty basin, its lowest part dotted with tamarisk trees emerging from mounds of blown soil and sand had accumulated around their roots; and then these dead poplars.”
And so begins a journey along the Silk Road which brings the sisters to Kashgar, in East Turkestan, a city and country ravaged by world events.
The Muslim city is in the midst of a culture clash as the Christian missionaries stoke up feelings of alienation. Soon after arrival, this journey and mission is put into jeopardy when a newborn child is handed to them and the two sisters along with their Mission leader Millicent, are accused of murder. Their roles in Kashgar society change and they are forced to adapt to a Kashgar not one of them could have imagined.
Social conditions for women in Kashgar were not comfortable ones and via Eva’s diary, a picture forms of the events taking place in the country and how they as foreigners are viewed.
“All of the cities of the North West are now in the grip of Terror as Moselm Brigands maraud through the desert , raiding cities at will, warring with the Chinese”
This however is also a picture of their environment and new discoveries. The significance of birds and bird imagery, is everywhere, the importance of religion and cultural beliefs when Christianity comes to a Muslim community paints a picture of a country in turmoil.
In the present day, this guide to Kashgar is found and the themes of past religious zeal, motherhood, women’s role in society and human resilience come to the fore.
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Twitter: @suzyjoinson
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