Horse Festivals and Equestrian Games in Xinjiang: Racing, Girl-Chasing and Naadam
Last July I parked my rented 4×4 on the shoulder of a dirt road outside Zhaosu and walked out into a field of waist-high grass, where a line of around forty horses was being walked in slow circles by men in embroidered coats. A whistle cut the air and the whole line broke into a gallop toward a flag three kilometers away. I had come for the horses, but what stayed with me was the noise: the hoofbeats, the shouting, and the old women on the ridge calling out the names of riders they had known since those boys were toddlers. If you want to understand Xinjiang’s grasslands, you have to understand that the horse is not a backdrop here. It is the point.
Xinjiang’s summer grasslands belong to two strong equestrian cultures. The Kazakh herders of Ili and the Tianshan ranges treat the horse as a working partner, a measure of wealth, and the center of their social calendar. The Mongol communities of the north and west, including the county of Hoboksar, carry the Naadam tradition north from the steppe. Both groups throw festivals that a foreign traveler can actually reach, watch, and in some cases take part in. This is a practical guide drawn from my own trips, with the dates, the venues, and the small things that make the difference between standing awkwardly at the fence and being handed a bowl of milk tea by the organizers.
The Kazakh horse-racing tradition
Kazakh horse racing is not the short sprint you might picture from a city track. The races run long. On the prairie outside Zhaosu I watched a heat of roughly 20 kilometers, the riders small boys and girls of ten or twelve, balanced light on lean mountain ponies that looked too small for the distance. They finished muddy and grinning, and the winner’s family handed out sugar bricks and blessed bread to everyone standing nearby.
The horses themselves are a breed worth knowing. The Ili horse, raised around Zhaosu and the wider Ili valley, is compact, sure-footed, and built for cold and altitude. At a festival you will see them tied in long rows behind the starting line, sometimes a hundred or more, each with a colored ribbon braided into the mane. Owners walk the line offering handfuls of feed and quiet words. The betting is informal and almost always between families rather than strangers, so do not expect a bookmaker. What you can do is ask the owner of a horse you admire if you can take a photo with it. I have never been refused, and twice I was invited to help walk a restless mare back to the trailer.
Distances between festival venues and the nearest town are real. Zhaosu town sits about 70 kilometers southwest of Yining, and the prairie gathering spots are another 20 to 40 kilometers out on roads that turn to clay after rain. I learned to leave Yining by eight in the morning, because the races start early and the good light is gone by noon. A full day out, including the drive and a long lunch with a herding family, ran me about 240 kilometers round trip and maybe 120 yuan in fuel.
Girl-chasing and other games
The game foreigners find most surprising is called girl-chasing. A young man and a young woman line up at opposite ends of a course, ride toward each other, turn, and the man gives chase as they ride back. If he catches up he may recite a line or two of poetry and pretend to swipe at her with a light whip. If she is faster and outrides him, the crowd roars. It is a courtship game, open and funny, and the riders are clearly enjoying themselves more than any spectator.
I was told, and later saw, that the woman gets to whip the man if he pesters her or plays too rough. That rule is enforced by the whole circle of relatives watching, so the flirting stays good-natured. As a visitor you are not going to be drafted into the game, and you should not try. What you can do is stand at the edge of the circle, smile, and let the families explain it to you. The older men love an audience who asks real questions.
Around the racing and girl-chasing you will find the rest of the Kazakh picnic ground. There is kokpar, a rough goat-carcass tug-of-war played on horseback that looks chaotic and is governed by rules nobody explains to outsiders. There is bareback riding and occasional archery from the saddle. Children race miniature horses no taller than a Labrador. The whole field smells of smoked horse meat, of the fermented drink called kumis, and of dust kicked up by hooves. If you want a grounded look at how this life fits together day to day, read up on Kazakh nomadic life before you go, because the festivals are only the loudest expression of a year lived on horseback.
Naadam-style festivals on the Mongol steppe
The Mongol side of the region keeps the older Naadam form: wrestling, archery, and horse racing as the three pillars. You will not find the giant state-sponsored Naadam of the national capital out here, but the county festivals in places like Hoboksar keep the shape. The wrestling is the part that draws the biggest crowd. Wrestlers in tight embroidered vests step forward, spread their arms like wings, and stomp in a slow circle before locking up. Matches end fast or go long; either way the loser walks the winner to his seat, a gesture of respect I found more moving than the contest itself.
Mongol horse racing differs from the Kazakh version in temperament. The fields are bigger, the crowds louder, and the distances longer, sometimes 30 kilometers for the open category. The horses are thicker-built steppe animals, and the jockeys are again children, kept light on purpose. At the Hoboksar festival I attended, the finish line was a rope held by two men on foot, and the first horse across got a dab of cream on its forehead and a song from the elders.
One thing that surprised me: the archery is not with a modern recurve but with the old composite bow, and the targets are slender leather rings set low to the ground. The archers shoot from a slow walk or from horseback at a canter. Misses draw laughter, hits draw a small bell chiming from the target frame. It is a patient sport, and watching it taught me to slow down and stop checking my phone.
The summer season calendar and venues
Almost everything happens between late June and early September. The grass is at its tallest, the herding families have come down from the high summer pastures, and the schools are out so the child jockeys are free. Timing your own trip around these windows matters more than any other single choice.
Zhaosu holds its big horse events in July, tied to the wider heavenly-horse reputation of the county. The main gathering draws several hundred horses and a few thousand spectators over a weekend. Details shift year to year, so treat the month as fixed and the exact weekend as flexible. Plan your base in Zhaosu’s heavenly-horse prairie and ask at your guesthouse which field is live that week, because the races move between a few flat valleys depending on the weather.
Barkol, out past Hami in the east, runs its grassland festival in July and August when the Barkol grassland in Hami turns green and the lake draws migratory birds. It is far from the Ili cluster, a long drive across the eastern deserts, but the isolation means smaller crowds and a more local feel. I met maybe a dozen other travelers there, against hundreds in Zhaosu.
Getting to these venues takes planning. The festivals are not at train stations, and the nearest bus often drops you in a county town 30 or 40 kilometers from the field. I relied on a rented car for the Ili loop and a mix of long-distance bus and local taxi for Barkol and Hoboksar. Budget about 300 to 500 yuan a day for a car with driver if you do not want to self-drive, and book the driver a week ahead in July, because everyone else wants one too. Guesthouses near the venues fill up on festival weekends, so lock in your room before you leave the city. The county tourism offices post handwritten-looking notices about the exact dates, but the surest signal is the grass itself: when the prairie is green and the herders have come down, the races are close.
Hoboksar, near the northern border lands, holds its Mongol events in August, after the hay is cut and stacked. The the Mongol county of Hoboksar is a self-drive destination more than a tour-bus one, and the festival rewards people who bring their own car and a willingness to ask directions in broken phrases. For the full spread of dates across the region, the Xinjiang’s festival calendar is the place to start planning, because it rolls the Kazakh, Mongol, and Uyghur events into one list so you can chain them into a single summer route.
How a foreign visitor can join in
You will not be racing a horse, and you should not try to barge into the circle. What you can do is join the audience as a guest, and that status opens more doors than you would expect. Arrive early, bring a small gift if you are invited into a yurt (a bag of fruit or a box of sweets costs under 30 yuan and is always welcome), and let the family adopt you for the day. I once spent an entire afternoon at a stranger’s picnic cloth, being fed boiled mutton and translated jokes, simply because I had shown up quietly and not demanded anything.
Language is less of a wall than you fear. Kazakh and Mongol festival grounds pull in Han Chinese visitors from the cities too, and someone nearby almost always has phone translation or a few words of English. Learn five phrases: hello, thank you, may I take a photo, delicious, and goodbye. That small effort, said to the right grandmother, earned me more goodwill than any tip.
Dress for the weather and the dust. Mornings on the prairie start near 10 degrees Celsius even in July, and by midday the sun is brutal. I wore a long-sleeve shirt, a hat with a chin strap, and closed shoes, and I still came home with dust in my ears. Bring water, a power bank for your camera, and cash in small bills, because the food stalls and the horse-cart rides rarely take cards out on the grass.
If you want to go further than watching, horse trekking with a local family is the natural next step, and it pairs perfectly with the festival season. Several herding households around Zhaosu and Barkol take guests out for a half day or a multi-day ride, with the horse chosen to match your experience. You do not need to be a rider to enjoy a slow walk to a high meadow and back. The festivals show you the horse at full speed; the treks show you the horse as a friend. Together they are the best education a visitor to these grasslands can get.
One last practical note. Festivals are rural, religious, and family events. Drone flying is often banned near the crowds, alcohol is unwelcome in many yurts, and wandering into the horse lines without asking is how you get trampled or scolded. Walk softly, watch where the locals sit, and copy them. Do that, and by the second day someone will be saving you a spot on the ridge and pointing out which horse is the one to watch.
