Hello, welcome to Roundtable Special Series China Horizons.
Today we're still in Xinjiang and we're enjoying our trips as much as we can.
We've tried the sweet and juicy honey melon.
We've enjoyed the beautiful landscape and, of course, the diverse culture.
But we are learning as much as we are enjoying.
We also know here in Xinjiang, there's the hum of drones, the rhythm of tractors and the glow of solar panels.
Yes, today we're looking into the opportunities created by the various industries in the autonomous region.
I'm Niu Honglin with Lai Ming and Yu Shan for today's show.
Hello, everybody.
Hello.
Hey, welcome to the show and you can see the surrounding and, knowing that we're not in the studio, we are on our business trip again and we are in a very special place.
I say this all the time, but i do feel like all the locations are very special and with characteristics.
If only we were not on a business trip but a private trip, of course, enjoying the environment even more.
Where we are, We are in the courtyard of a homestay in the Grape Valley in Turpan Xinjiang, Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Yes, previously we were in Urumqi, which is the provincial capital of the autonomous region.
And now we are moving to Turpan, a very important city, a city with a lot of tourists, attractions and also resources.
And now you know why it's very beautiful and the Great Valley is one of the best-known sites or tourism sites here in Turpan as well, given the very rich say.
A natural landscape, and also the valley itself, provides such a unique view in the middle of an area, of a landscape, a basin that's typically featured by Gobi Deserts and very heated, dry land.
But as we walk down here to the Great Valley, I just feel like there's this cool wind blowing up.
And people say that down here in the Great Valley the temperature can be lowered by almost 10 degrees Celsius lower than that from above here.
So yeah, that's just how cool this place is.
Yeah, and this is 154 meters below the sea level.
It's a basin and it doesn't get a lot of rainfall over the years.
About 16 millimeters a year.
Yes.
That's very scarce.
Where the evaporation is around 3000 millimeters a year, which means that it can get really, really dry.
And living here, staying here for several days.
I've already finished half of the moisturizers I have.
But here in the Grape Valley, the feeling is a little bit different.
You feel the air is damper, more pleasant, which explains how come people would have to come here, I guess.
And the feeling is strengthened by the ubiquitous presence of grape leaves.
This is, after all, the Grape Valley, so there's a lot of grapes being grown, being developed.
And so it's pretty much a part of the everyday life here.
And we are now... sitting comfortably under the shade of, well, a bunch of grapevines.
And over here there's over eight kilometers long of a vineary, or rather grapevine, that's grown here.
Actually, just the moment we arrived in Terpeng, I think, along the road I saw a lot of brick houses or brick short buildings that's made with mud and brick, with gaps poking throughout the walls.
I think those places are made particularly for drying grapes, so that the grapes can be put inside and the wind of over 40 degrees Celsius sometimes can just go through nonstop.
And here the local people say that over 40 days or more, that's when the fresh grapes can be dried into raisins and the raisins shall be ready for further say, purchasing or just trying, or being cooked into local meals.
Yes, very tasty rice blended with meat and mostly lamb and grapes, raisins and other ingredients as well.
Yeah, sure.
So grapes is part of the landscape, is part of the lifestyle, is part of the attraction.
That's getting a lot more people interested in coming and having a taste.
And you breathe it.
You breathe the hot air.
You feel it.
You wander through the streets and you see elements of grapes everywhere.
And that's just one of the main attractions of Turpan.
But that's not the end of it.
There's also fresh fruits like honeydew melons.
Ah, yes.
What else?
Apricots.
Apricots, of course.
And watermelon, also very, very tasty.
And traditionally Grape Valley is not, Or at the very beginning it was just a place to grow all these grapes.
And we have farming families living here, enjoying the environment.
And later on, it transformed itself into a tourist destination.
And, like Yushan said, it was one of the most famous and popular tourist destinations here in Turpan, if not the entire autonomous region.
Now we see around 20 households run local product business, employing over 100 direct customers.
And 300 indirect.
Almost every household here would have something to do with the tourism industry here in the Grape Valley.
We mentioned here this is a famous, when I say famous, homestay.
I don't say it lightly, because there was this quite famous Chinese variety show that was shot here.
Yes, and where are we going that daddy?
Where are we going daddy?
Yes, that one was shot here.
And also they shoot the entire season in the grape valley area or part of the season in the area.
So they stayed in many of these kind of homestays for several days.
And we have other households using their special techniques to cook and make different types of raisins to sell.
So that's also related to the tourism industry.
And if you check out the surrounding areas, see very beautiful souvenirs with local characteristics.
The Xinjiang wear Uyghur style hats, as well as tiny little products you can put as decoration on your table.
They're in the shape of camels.
They're in the shape of music instruments.
Some of them are real music instruments.
And all these means there are craftsmen behind all these products.
Yes, I think the tourism industry in Grape Valley is definitely the leading and major pillar industry.
And it's very interesting you mentioned the reality show, Where Are We Going Daddy?
Because that used to be a very high profile, very influential TV show.
People would tune in when it's aired.
But my inspiration from this story is that people are constantly looking for something that people would like to pay attention to.
I mean, the media industry is constantly looking for something that people are interested in.
So here in Putao Go, the Great Valley, we're not only looking at the unique scenery and the landscape, there's also the opportunity to have a taste of the more than 13 types of grapes, and they have the opportunity to feel the local culture, the carpets, the musical instruments, performances.
So that really is an upgrade from the traditional way of tourism that people will come and take pictures and they move on to the next destination.
Yeah, and I remember over 20 years ago when it was my first time to come to the Great Valley.
People don't really spend the day, or rather spend the day and the night here in Terpeng.
They come like I did, like my family did, like many of us used to.
They come from Urumqi and took a few hours driving here.
They tour throughout the day and they arrive back to Urumqi afterwards.
Nowadays, it seems like, with all these homestays and hotels being constructed in Terpeng, people can just indulge themselves inside the city of Terpeng for a few more days and just walk around, walk deeper into these sites and just feel more of the local atmosphere, food or tourism options.
Now it seems like the trend nowadays that's so different from when I came here over two decades ago.
I think I just had an epiphany.
We should start a grape tasting contest, like a wine tasting.
If you can stay in a vineyard, you can stay in Grape Valley and taste the different types of grapes and see which one has a little tiny taste of rose, which one is a bit sour, but it's the perfect blend of sour and sweet, and which one is just so super sweet that you have to finish the entire plate if you start.
It could be a really cool experience.
And the reason I thought we could do that is because, Lai Ming mentioned, There are so many different types of grapes here, in not only the Grape Valley but also the entire Turpan.
In fact here in Turpan, because it holds over 550 grape varieties.
It is even known as the global grape gene bank.
Right.
So there's a rich material to draw from if the locals would like to up their game and try and come up with even more innovative types or tastes based on grapes.
I think the last time I was here, or even before coming to Xinjiang, visiting Xinjiang for the first time, I remember knowing a certain type of grape called Wu He Bai, so seedless white grape.
I think that is it.
That's the grape we have on the table.
Yeah, it's the most iconic one.
It's the most famous one because it's very, very sweet.
For example, watermelon is not that sweet considering its sweetness level, whereas grapes can be really, really sweet.
And the number here is for watermelons, average watermelon, the level is around 10.
And for this specific type of grape, this Wu He Bai, the seedless grape, white-ish kind of grape.
It can be as sweet as 22 to 24.
It's twice as sugary as... Not twice as sugary, but twice as sweet.
The sugary level is a different thing.
Yeah, it depends on the size you take.
I was just about to finish the sentence.
Yes, yes.
You know what the local people call Wu He Bai?
They call it 小葡萄, as in small grapes.
And you've got the accent.
They have very say regularly, or smaller than average kind of size, comparing with all the other types of grapes here in Xinjiang.
But one, say, disadvantage for 小葡萄 is that it's hard for long transportation.
If you order it say, in Beijing, and a few days later it arrives Almost one-third, that would be the lucky case is that one-third of the whole box is already gone bad.
Because you have to be here and eat it freshly.
That's how you taste the flavor of Xinjiang grapes.
That's part of the reason why we're here.
Yeah.
And no matter how sweet and tasty and great one type of grape can be, I still believe more varieties would be a better idea.
You have more choices and you might not be a super fan of the super sweet ones.
And this is proving my case.
We see in a village, Traditionally the entire village.
85 of the land area of the village is used for grape raising.
And they are traditionally only planting this type of Wu He Bai kind of grapes.
The revenue was not that great until such time that they were introduced to different types of grapes, different varieties, and started to also improve the techniques of growing the grapes.
And that's when the industry in the village really take off.
Well, businesses have to innovate for various reasons.
I think one of the reasons, as Yushan mentioned earlier, might be the challenge of transporting the Wuhe Bai across the vast terrain within the country, if not beyond.
But the other reason is, like I said earlier, people always want more.
People want more when they look for travel experiences.
People want more when they look for fruits.
We've seen that with other types of grapes available across China the Yangguang Meigui type of grapes.
So people are always looking for more.
So we can't certainly contain ourselves with Wuhe Bai, even though it's very sweet, like 24 grams.
In terms of the sweetness level.
Yeah.
So there's got to be something more.
There's got to be something more innovative.
That's something that's driven the innovation here in the Great Valley.
Besides that, when you say people want more, I think you're totally right.
We want more also in terms of the farmers.
They want more.
They want more profit.
They want more customers.
More efficiency.
More efficiency.
That's very important.
And for the efficiency to come in place, for the technologies to be applied in the industry that they have been working on for almost hundreds of years.
It takes a little bit of innovation.
It takes a little bit of adaptation as well.
Yeah, adaptation.
Speaking of, just as we were arriving in the city of Turpan, I was looking at the grape Tetris.
What is that?
I was looking at the grape trellis.
Grape trellis.
It's kind of an arch thing like a gate or like the official term.
I think one of the official terms is arbor.
So it's kind of like a shape or shelf for the grapevine to climb on.
So it's part of the infrastructure.
But then, as I was looking at it, most of the trellis that I was looking at, they were very low, very crude, very rudimental.
And I was just wondering how is it possible for people to conveniently lower their posture and then go through it and try and pick the grapes.
I think it saves space in Asian times.
Of course it saves space.
When they're concentrated, I think the evaporation is slowed down.
But now we're talking about the industrial age, the post-industrial age.
We've got to have something machine-made to help improve the efficiency.
One of the efforts in innovating the grape industry locally is to try and replace these little trellis, these little arbors, and replace them with a bigger and taller and more sturdy structure so that machines can come in and do the harvesting and also so that they can withstand stronger and also more challenging more stern harvest wins the inclement weather here in the region.
That is so interesting.
We're making changes to the kind of working style that we're accustomed to for hundreds of years, so that machines can be our partners in working in the industry.
We're making changes for them so that they can work for us.
And of course, that is not the only case that's happening here in Turpan in the entire Xinjiang.
When it comes to agricultural industry.
It's definitely one of the pillar industries here in the region.
And even for fruit, we have different examples.
We've tried traditionally the very, very sweet honey melon.
Of course, it's tasty and it's growing very well.
And some new species are also being introduced to the region.
For example, I'm not really sure about you, but I am a big fan of fig.
When I was little, in my grandma's place, there was this little fig tree.
And she says every single day, one fig would grow. ripe so I can enjoy one fig.
I was very, very old until I realized it was not a one day, one ripe thing.
It was a one day for me thing.
So I have a special connection with fig.
But for this kind of fruit, you know, it has to be ripe at the right time.
And the storage, the transportation of this fruit is also quite hard.
And it's also relatively demanding to the environment when it comes to the growing and ripening of this fruit.
And introducing it to Xinjiang.
I think it's not that precise or not that accurate to use the word introducing.
Because here in Xinjiang, there has been this fruit growing.
The only problem was that it was not as abundant.
The harvest was not abundant.
And the variety itself was not as sweet and tasty.
It's a very tasty fruit, and that's why my mouth is a bit watering.
It can be very, very sweet.
Some people would even call it a little bun full of sweetness.
It's how sweet it is.
I don't remember ever having had fresh fig, because I don't think they grow where I came from.
So when I came out of the train station and saw people peddling figs fresh figs I thought this is maybe a local specialty.
It's kind of a local specialty because originally there is a fig variety here in Xinjiang.
The problem is that for one mu of land you can only grow or you can only yield around 600 to 800 kilograms.
And it takes three years for it to start riping.
That's rather slow.
That's rather slow.
Yet the newly introduced variety would give you 3,000 to 4,000 kilograms per mu.
That's about six to eight times.
And also at the same time when you start introducing the new sprouts.
It takes around only three months giving figs and riping.
So quite efficient.
So the new type of fig that's growing widely in Xinjiang nowadays.
I think it features three biggest advantages.
First of all, the sweetness level that it contains is now multiplied to a fact that.
How do you describe it?
People call it now the sugar... The little sugar bun.
Yeah, the little sugar bun.
That's what people call it now.
20 years ago, that name did not exist.
And the second point is that it's... it weights heavier as in per fruit.
Bigger ones, tastier ones.
One average weight, for one single fig that's grown here in Xinjiang can weight as much as 80 grams, which means that it contains a lot of water as well.
And that brings to the third one.
Nowadays, with the very dry weather here in Turpan well, in Xinjiang in general, it's good for these figs to be kept fresh and without any concerns for attracting bugs because of its sweetness.
And back then, 20 years ago again, the only memory I had for figs from Xinjiang are the cute little dried ones that I used to eat like candy.
Good for female, by the way.
Yeah, it is.
And the first time I tried fresh fig was actually back in eastern China's Shandong province, where there's the green-skinned fig, very red and pinky on the inside.
But here in Xinjiang it's also my first time from yesterday that I tried the yellow skinned fig with white in the fruit inside.
So that's just a new say type of fig, but also very much sweet and very just delicious in general.
And it's harboring up such a big and profiting industry locally.
I'm very glad to see fig because it's quite close to my heart.
It's a fruit I'd like to pick and use as an example.
How about both of you?
Do you have a special fruit in your heart that you have deeper connection with or just enjoy the most?
Plums.
Oh, plums.
I like plums too.
Yeah, because they're originally grown in my hometown.
And my people work very hard to innovate and create new varieties as well.
So when I saw the dinosaur egg.
Dinosaur egg.
We call it dinosaur egg.
It's a comparison to, well, it's a comparison because it It's huge.
It's huge and it's red.
It has a bizarre color of dusty, purplish red.
There are some stains up here on the surface or on the skin, but they're not real stains.
They just look like that.
And they taste both a little sour and very sweet.
So that combination is very attractive to me.
So that's something that I only recognize them from this year.
I don't even remember them being in the market last year.
So this is also something new.
And the thing is, here in Xinjiang, we tasted some of the best prunes I have ever tasted in my life.
Because previously, when I tried these prunes, I think they're supposed to be relatively softer and creamier.
I'm talking about the texture instead of the taste.
And the other day in Xinjiang, we bought a little bit of those prunes.
Dinosaur eggs.
Dinosaur eggs, as well as other types of prunes.
And we tried it.
It's rather crispy. and juicy, and the texture is much chewable, it's not as red.
And I suddenly realized it does not have to be soft to be fully ripe.
So again, I think it's enough proof to say that Xinjiang is really abundant in the agriculture industry, or at least for these different types of fruits.
Fresh fruits, very impressive.
We see in Altai, there are around 280,000 mu sea buckthorn boosts.
Or seaberry.
Seaberry, yes.
Some would call it, yeah.
Yes, it's boosting the economies by 15,000 RMB.
And also in Changji, it produces 80% of national chickpeas. which is getting to be a very popular type of agricultural product People are going for salads Yes, people think it's very healthy And also Kashgar is the biggest new plum production and sales center with industry value over 6 billion So the fruit industry here in Xinjiang is definitely very impressive but you cannot have fruit every day well we wouldn't want to you cannot have fruit only fruit for every day you can have some other things and proteins please some proteins and the reason i'm bringing it up is that these years here in china this specific type of product is being more and more popular among Netizens among the younger generation And we want to enjoy this And we are talking about seafood Seafood in desert That's a new concept And something we already talked about on the show On Roundtable But it's lucky for us to be traveling here And see with our own eyes How the industry has developed So our first stop was to a fish farm in really in the midst of the Gobi Desert yeah we were on the van and then as we approached all of a sudden there's such a fish farm in the middle of the Gobi Desert and it's all mountainous surrounding it and also after we went inside I was able to just see how they were raising this type of fish named hong zun or rainbow trout so um they just borrow the natural landscape so well that the fish farm they designed tiered different level of fish pond so that the water from the fish pond from the higher ground can just naturally flow down and the manager there told us that all of their fishpond do not require an electronic pump to pump the water because the water just naturally flows from the higher ground to the lower ones and the fishpond are built alongside this whole design or rather a watering system.
The landscape.
Yeah, this is just how smart they get when they come up with this idea of using this Kind of like a harsh landscape to create such a place where fish can profit and grow so well.
I don't know about you.
My initial question was, where does the water come from?
It's the middle of the desert.
Indeed.
Well, actually, the water comes from a nearby lake.
And the lake water again comes from the snow mountain, where it collects the melted snow from the top of the mountains.
Okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, and they just managed to build such a system to carry the water from the lake into the fish ponds.
And in general, the fish farm uses about 28000 cubic meters of water to keep all the fish ponds operating.
And each year they are able to produce over 600 tons of rainbow trowels, which is not bad at all.
It's a very interesting design if you really think about it.
Yes, they have that huge amount of water there.
But the water is like from the Snow Peak Mountain and the ending point is the farmland in Turpan and the water is taking a detour.
They go to the fish farm and they help the fish a little bit and they go back to the drainage system and then they go back to the irrigation system.
It's a very smart design.
Right, it's a system that the local experts in aquaculture came up with.
It's called a flow through aquaculture and essentially it is borrowing water from the irrigation channel and the water goes through the ponds down the elevation and then it goes back to the irrigation channel again after certain rounds of filtering.
There's definitely going to be some byproduct.
If you were to raise fish in the water, they're going to create excrements.
There are fertilizers or food you give the fish, so the water is goes to certain deposit ponds so to remove certain extra natural organic material and then it goes back to the irrigation channel to make sure that it's safe for agriculture use.
It's actually a very moving story.
I talked to the manager of one of the fish farming companies here in Turpan.
We were there and he said that not only are they making sure that the water they're using, well more likely that the water they finish using to start with, they use the water three times in the fish tanks, making sure the efficiency.
And then when they give the water back, they make sure there's only the natural fertilizer in the water.
And they even consider the fact that nowadays, more and more farmers even not most of the farmers, the variety of the farmers are using the trickle irrigation or the drop irrigation, meaning that they're using these equipment that are quite thin.
And if the fish residue is inside and would block, clock up the system a little bit.
So they would filter the water again and again and have all the so-called pollutant, the organic matter.
They would collect the organic matter so that when the water is given back to the system for agricultural use, it would not affect the lower industry a very unlikely lower industry they're having.
And, in the meantime, the bigger particles of the fish residue.
They're also thinking about how to further process that into fertilizers in the future.
So that's another new business that they can just pull out from the fish farm alone.
They're just being very innovative here.
I feel like we are living in a new age where, I think in the past, agriculture really depended on the climate, on the environment and on the weather.
Now here.
This is a good example of how we are overcoming and innovating to a point where well some of the natural obstacles can be overcome.
And this company, this is not their first fish farming base.
Their first fish farming base was actually in the famous Sarum Lake.
If you haven't been to Sarum Lake, you've wasted your life.
Well, there's still time for me.
It's a very beautiful lake and it's also a good base for cold water fish farming.
And what they do is to have some cages and they put the cage in the Sarum Lake and the fish only live in this cage.
Oh, sad story for fish.
But easy to harvest for fish farmers, And they even install a lot of high-tech AI-powered equipment To monitor the situation of the fish, Whether or not they're happy and perky and swimming Or they've escaped That would be a problem And also the quality of water in the cage area the upstream, the downstream, making sure the situation is not affected in the lake because of the farming industry.
So I think the caring for the environment is not only when you create something out of nothing in the middle of the desert, but also when you're taking advantage of the natural environment.
So one iconic seafood product from the Sarum Lake has to be the northern whitefish Kao Bai Gui right.
And I think it's recently popularized in this industry that people are starting to raise such a fish inside the lake.
And to be honest, a friend of my father is right now working in this industry.
And, according to him, one major rather challenges that they're facing right now, just same as the seedless grape here, is the transportation of how they are able to bring the fish to further areas outside of Xinjiang.
Because the northern whitefish, after leaving the very water body of the Serum Lake, will die very soon.
So it's really hard to keep them fresh, especially for long distance traveling.
So that makes it even more of a delicate locally.
That attracts a lot of people to visit the Serum Lake, not only because that you have to, because there's a must go sightseeing spot in Xinjiang, but also to try out the fish there.
I'm sure in time you'll father's friend will find a solution because we see a development in cold chain transportation and technology in the region in other industries.
For instance, we talked about prune earlier and they are supposed to be stored very quickly in cold chain environment right after picking.
So So the technology is ready, but it's not there yet when it comes to the size.
Maybe in time it'll scale up.
And that is the story of freshwater fish farming here in Xinjiang.
Do you know?
In the middle of the desert.
I repeat this so many times, because in the middle of the desert you can also raise seafood.
Who knew?
You think seafood can only be originated from the sea, but that's not the case because of a certain special geological situation here in Xinjiang the salt-alkali land.
Yeah, sure.
There's the special salt-alkali land aquaculture.
Yes, it's happening here in xinjiang with local people.
Originally i was thinking the idea is that you have the land full of salt and other element in it, you pour water into the land, create a natural not very natural manufactured a little lake that is full of salt and things and then you raise fish there and i was like but it doesn't, it will work, but why bother?
What's all the trouble?
And afterwards, after doing a little bit research and talking to experts here in Xinjiang, I realized how naive and stupid I was a little bit.
Because if you really take a look at the industry, the idea is that they are not pouring the water into a deserted area.
They're using the salted water from, for example, a already existing lake that is there because of the agricultural activities elsewhere.
For example, after irrigating a certain land, used water or the water left would flow into an area and forming this lake, that is, with a lot of salt and other elements.
This is an inland area, so the water doesn't have an outlet.
So when they evaporate, the salt will condense.
So usually you'll find more salt-alkali land than freshwater lakes in this region.
So it makes sense to make use of the salt-alkali land and try and develop agriculture if we can.
But it doesn't work that way.
The way I imagined.
It's not a simple math.
So we already have some salty alkali land.
We just add water and it works.
But no.
It's a balancing.
Yeah, in order for some fish to thrive, they need also other chemicals, magnesium and calcium, all kinds of stuff.
That kind of elements are not necessarily existent in the salt alkali land.
So some terraforming, some magic has to be done to add these elements to the water so that the fish can thrive, and it varies from water body to water body and also varies from fish variety to fish variety.
So there's a lot of exploration and experimentation to be done so for the salt, alkaline land aquaculture to thrive.
If we put it in layman's terms, If you want to do something as such, if you want to start a seafood industry here in the desert, what you need to do is to have a research team and finding the right water body for you.
And they would make tests, experiment to see what are the elements in this water and whether or not it's already perfect for a specific type of fish or seafood.
Or do you need to add a little bit of something?
By saying, adding more things into it.
We're talking about the microorganisms, we're talking about different elements, and then we find the right species of fish or seafood.
They will thrive in the water body.
And there you are.
You got your very own seafood raised in the middle of the desert.
Australian lobster.
Ah.
Tiger crabs, siren trout, Mike IT Australian lobster, and all types of shrimp.
They, through different cold chain transportation, would be lent on my very own dinner table.
You don't even have to travel here.
I don't even have to travel here.
And one specific type of product that you have to talk about here in Xinjiang would be cotton, because here in Xinjiang it produces 90 of the cotton compared to the entire country.
So cotton industry is definitely thriving.
And we're looking at a lot of new inventions and technologies being used here that are quite important and very, very interesting.
For one thing, I didn't used to know this, but cotton bowls are like little flowers.
They would thrive and bloom in different times, which means on the one sprout of cotton plantation they're ready for picking.
They're ready for picking in different times.
You have to pick them in different times.
Or, in today's age, because we're using heavy machinery to harvest.
When they're harvested, some cotton balls are very, very much ripe beautiful, soft and round and fluffy, and other ones might just be baby bows.
And you have to select them, put them in different class and sell them on different prices, which would be a problem for the farmers.
And now what they're doing is to use drones to put some or to spread some special sprays, some special defoliants or other types of chemicals, so the plant would mistakenly believe that ah, it's autumn time.
We need to make our cotton bowls ready, as together, so all of the cotton balls would be ready, they would be all in the shape of the, round and fluffy and ready to be harvested, so that the harvesting would be much more efficient and also the quality of the cotton would be better.
There will be of the same size, the same level of matureness to be used in agriculture and industry.
Yeah, just proving how modernized nowadays that the agricultural industry is applying high-tech.
And I remember watching such a video.
I think our friend Yushun took it just from last year or the year before, I think.
Where there are drones.
I think it's either watering the cotton plant or spraying pesticides onto the plant.
But there's just drones doing the job.
And he was, like you know, Yusheng.
He's like a tech geeky, tech lover who was so obsessed with the fact that drones are helping out with these problems.
Operations in the meantime.
It's just further proving just how smart it is nowadays for cotton planning here in Xinjiang.
My guess is it's pesticides, because for a cotton to be grown and ripe, it takes around seven to eight times for different types of pesticides to be used for these.
Cotton land and using machines are, for sure okay, but now with drones, it's getting even more efficient and it's easier.
And the good thing is now they're installing more detecting devices on the drones, so the drones can go not only spray the pesticides onto the cotton plants but also detect whether or not there are any any types of disease of the plant, judging by the spectrum of the color on the plant.
So it's getting smarter and smarter.
And they can come up with different prescriptions based on the survey results.
They can, for example, spot which cotton plant has a certain disease just by looking at it, or rather flying over it.
And it came to me as a surprise learning that traditionally textile industry was not that big here in Xinjiang.
I thought it should be because cotton industry was the pillar industry and it makes a lot of sense if you continue the following industrial link.
But because they didn't used to have all the machines to make the textile.
And also, Even if the textile is weaved or manufactured, the next step, the dyeing step, which is supposed to happen right after the textile, But dyeing takes a lot of water.
Exactly.
So that was not originally a pillar industry here in Xinjiang, but that situation is also changing.
I think the autonomous region now is taking a strategy or taking a direction at.
They would like to have the entire industrial line within the region to lower the cost.
And the reason they're able to do that is because of the improvement of the advanced technology.
Now they have different techniques to make sure that, to start with, they have the machines to make the textile already.
And when it comes to the dyeing techniques, they are reducing the water consumption by around 80, depending on what technique they're using and also different ways.
Even there has been one innovation of dyeing the textile without water completely.
And of course, the type of dye would be a bit different.
Nowadays, it's definitely harmless to the environment after processing.
So all these make sure that the textile industry, even dressmaking industry, can thrive here in Xinjiang as well.
I think that makes sense because...
Back in the days, the industry in China mostly concentrated on the east coastal area.
But now we are in the process of improving them and relocating them to western and central part of it.
And also Xinjiang being a very important hub on the Silk Road, it makes sense for it to reduce the cost of transportation, to have raw materials processed locally and then being completed and then sold and shipped outside to the other regions and beyond the borders.
Yeah, and just two days ago we went to a private museum locally here in Terpeng, where I saw a very big wooden made machine, or a weaver machine rather, where the very, very beautiful Uyghur style Atlas silk was made.
And just a little bit of that silk was already presented there with very complicated patterns on it all like symmetry in colors and in styles.
And then, as you see, following that little bit of silk that's already done, there's super long lines and also silk lining there ready to be further weaved into a longer say, maybe a carpet or a scarf, judging from the shape of it.
So it's just something that's used to be so delicately handmade is now being say, modernized to be mass produced into product that, into products that tourists can buy from the side of the street, from outside of this very homestay, out in the alley nowadays.
That's just amazing to see how people are just getting creative and getting innovative on these skills.
At the same time, the machine that you saw was once an advanced technology.
Now it's almost as ancient as something that you can put in a museum, that you can use and experience as a tourism item instead of something that's still in use.
And this is also happening here.
When we have abundant resources here in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, we find different ways to use it.
And I'm talking about new energy.
Yeah, there's plenty of new energy here.
And judging from what we have talked about so far, is this scorching heat almost throughout the year except, of course, the winter when it gets refrigerated cold.
But solar energy is abundant and rich in the region.
It's the number one source of.
It's the number one region when it comes to the resource of solar energy and also wind over the terrain.
As we traveled, we saw plenty of wind turbines erected across the region.
So there's a lot to be explored with this regard.
Yes, Xinjiang's new energy capacity exceeds 112 million kilowatts and over 55% of total.
Rumuki, Hami, Changi host 10 million kilowatt scale bases.
And there's also a humanity side of the story.
There is this little county or township in Hami and previously over 80 of the people living there were elder generation, because the younger people go out to bigger cities to find a job to support their families.
It was the situation for a really long time for that county, for that Da He county.
And in 2022, one industrial park was built there.
And the industrial park also brought over 2,000 workers from around the country.
And now every 36 hours there would be this one huge turn by leave or turbine blade being produced in this industrial park.
They're bringing the younger generation back to the county.
They are revitalizing the county and they're giving it a new look.
They're making this little county a place that is famous for its new energy related industry.
That is good for the entire autonomous region.
I do feel, I do get an impression traveling across the region.
I saw, maybe during our walks or during our trip in the bus, we saw plenty of young people walking around with little kids in their arms or in the strollers.
This is, in my impression, a very young region of the country and It really makes sense to try and give them opportunities to prosper locally and try and create that cycle of development.
And now we see Hami Wind Equipment Park leads nationally in blade production and the key parts localization rose from around 60 in 2014 to almost 90 these days.
So it's getting more and more advanced to say the least.
And it's not just these wind turbines that's bringing up the local green energy sector.
But also this is from my dad that they're also utilizing these wind turbines standing all together in lines in the Gobi Desert as a sightseeing view.
Because people are building sightseeing towers nearby, because it's like a very massive and impressive kind of view that you can get, seeing all those turbines lined up.
You made a good point, Lai Ming, earlier that we saw those wind turbines on the train going from Urumqi here to Turbine.
And I shot a video for my dad saying, see, that's the wind turbine you mentioned to me.
He said, oh, that's nothing compared to the view that I was trying to describe to you in real.
There are so many wind turbines and they're providing such a view not only on the on the green energy sector, but also just so that the local people can have one more side earning to invite more people to just see how good of this wind turbine group, or rather this industry, is being built locally.
Another detail that I noticed these days is not directly related to the industry, but rather how people view technology here in Xinjiang.
Maybe you still remember, this January, the DeepSeek the best version of DeepSeek has been introduced, has been released available on the market.
And right after that, a lot of different places in Xinjiang, including government departments, started to use DeepSeq.
They would get access to the model and start providing their own DeepSeq powered infrastructure and DeepSeq powered systems to civilians to use, to citizens to use, so that the paperwork can be streamlined, the process can be easier, the efficiency can be improved.
It's not only in Urumqi, it's also in Hami, in Kashgar, in a lot of different places.
And I think Xinjiang people are being very open and very welcoming to the new technologies.
They are so eager to have the autonomous region transformed, helped and improved by new technologies.
One way they can do it is to house the servers.
I mean, with DeepSeek breaking into the scene and getting all that attention yes, everybody's using it, everybody's talking about it so that really creates a burden on the server.
And for the company to grow it really has to expand its deposit of servers.
And it makes sense for it to build in this part of the country because locally there's a lot of like I said earlier solar energy and wind power, so electricity and power cost can be rather low.
And also they are using a new innovative technique to try and reduce the energy cost.
Not on top of using clean energy.
They come up with a insulating oil, that liquid that really soaks the surface within and with the flow of the liquid the temperature is lowered, and that's somehow being able to limit the cost of energy to about one sixth of the original level.
So that's another way to create and develop digital technology in this region.
I guess in today's Xinjiang we see technology powers, the land, industries create opportunities and culture still helping us enjoying our lives more and more.
And that brings us to the end of today's show.
Thank you so much for being with us for our special series China Horizons on Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin with Lai Ming and Yushan.
For a future episode, we're still going to be here in Xinjiang, so you make sure you don't miss it.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
