Altay

The Altay Mountains to the north prevent rain clouds from reaching the Gurbantünggüt Desert, which fills the center of the Junggar Basin in China's northwest corner.

The Kazaks were struggling in poverty before liberation. Some 2,000 people died of starvation in the Altay Prefecture from 1944 to 1945, and 40 per cent of the Kazak herdsmen in Altay County alone were homeless in 1946.

In January 2010, a blizzard of such force which had not occurred in six decades attacked the Altay Prefecture, and the minimum temperature dropped to minus 40 degrees Celsius.

When Saliye Hobay, a Kazak ethnic woman born in Altay Prefecture in the north of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, was laid off in 2002 after the clothing factory in which she had worked for six years went bankrupt, she fell into momentary depression.

Yilamujiang grew up in Altay, a prefecture bordering Mongolia in far northwest Xinjiang. Chinese officials consider the region the cradle of Alpine sport, after cave paintings of hunters on skis were dated at 10,000 years old. Locals still use hand-carved wooden skis covered in a horsehide, although mostly now for the benefit of tourists.

Torchbearer Dinigeer Yilamujiang hails from the mountainous terrain of Xinjiang's Altay prefecture.