Xinjiang Gemstones and Minerals Beyond Jade: Tourmaline, Sapphire and Crystals
Beyond Hotan jade, Xinjiang hides tourmaline, sapphire, and quartz waiting to be found. A first-hand guide to markets, prices, and the best towns for collectors.
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Ultramarathons and Desert Races in Xinjiang: Running the Gobi
Run Xinjiang’s Gobi and Taklamakan ultramarathons: real race details, entry fees from ¥680, kit tips, safety, and the best months from a runner who has finished four.
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Wildflower Meadows of Xinjiang: Alpine Blooms and Where to Find Them
Spring Comes First to the Barluk Mountains
My first encounter with Xinjiang’s wildflowers happened not in the famous green valleys but on a wind-scoured slope near the Kazakh border. I timed my drive for late April
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Foxes of Xinjiang: Red Foxes, Corsac, and the Steppe Hunter
The Two Tricksters of the Steppe
Most visitors come to Xinjiang for the mountains and the lakes, and they leave talking about the scale of the place. The Tian Shan ridge throws shadows across whole valleys. Sayram
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Uyghur Courtyard Houses: How to Read a Xinjiang Home
The First Threshold
I stepped through a carved wooden gate into a courtyard shaded by a poplar, and the heat of the Turpan afternoon dropped away as if someone had switched off the sun. A grape vine ran overhead on
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Xinjiang’s UNESCO and Tentative World Heritage Sites
Xinjiang’s UNESCO and Tentative World Heritage Sites
Most travelers arrive in Xinjiang expecting empty desert and come away stunned by how much history is carved into its cliffs. This corner of northwest China holds
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Xinjiang’s Production Corps (Bingtuan): The Planned Oasis Towns
The Grid Towns You Didn’t Expect
Driving into Shihezi for the first time, the grid plan is impossible to miss. The roads meet at right angles in a pattern so regular it feels drawn by a draftsman rather than grown
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The Great Game in Xinjiang: Empires, Spies, and the Pamir Approaches
The Great Game in Xinjiang: Empires, Spies, and the Pamir Approaches
For most of the nineteenth century the map of Central Asia was a rumor with a border drawn through it. Between roughly 1830 and 1907 the Russian
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Kashgar Pigeon and Xinjiang’s Slow-Cooked Bird Dishes
The First Bowl I Was Given in Kashgar
I arrived in Kashgar after a long train ride from the east, dusty and unsure what the city would taste like. A friend’s cousin led me through a warren of mud-brick lanes in the
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Buying Train Tickets in Xinjiang as a Foreigner: 12306, Apps, and Real Hacks
My First Night at Urumqi Station, and Why This Guide Exists
I still remember standing in the cavernous main hall of Urumqi Station at ten past eleven at night, a worn passport in one hand and a phone that refused to