Living kashgar and the silk road behind, we travel into the tianshan or heavenly mountains. This great mountain range defines the border between china’ most northwestern province and neighboring Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.  Its majestic peaks are nearly as high as the Himalayas, forming a natural great wall. For much of a year it’s bound up in ice, but the glacial melt water allows ever green forests to grow, a far cry from the desert south of here. These mountains are the gateway to some of china’s most surprising people and places.

In the upland valleys, a family of Kazakhs has been grazing their livestock all summer on the lush alpine meadows. It’s autumn, in a few weeks’ time, winter snows will seal the mountain passes, so the Kazakhs has decided to break camp and move while they still can. Turning their backs on the mountain pastures, they have many long weeks of travel ahead of them along well worn trails. The destination could hardly be more different from the heavenly mountain’s lush pastures. This paths head into one of china’s wildest and least known places.

This is the zhunge’er basin, an added land that lies in westernmost edge of the great Gobi desert, the most northerly desert in the world. Zhunge’er is a place of surprises. This bizarre landscape is called the five colored hills. And though very little lives here now, the ancestors of tyrannosaurus rex once roamed these hills. Their fossils only discovered in 2006.

 but the zhunge’er is not entirely lifeless. In the darkness a little roborovski’s hamster emerges to search for food. They are the world’s smallest hamsters, the size of a ping pang ball, and they live in family groups around ten. Unlike the Kazakhs, hamsters cut migrate to avoid the severity of winter. They have to prepare for difficult times by storing up provisions to spend the season underground. Anyone who has kept a pet hamster knows what an energetic little creature it can be. In a single night, the hamster may cover the equivalent of four human marathons. But foraging far and wide    creates a problem, how to carry the harvest back to its nest. Here the hamster’s famous flexible cheek pouches come into play. They can be stuffed full of seeds for carrying back to the burrow. Underground the family has special food chambers to store the bounty. The supply will have to last them through the lean and cold times ahead. Winter is on its way.

  Within a few short weeks, the five colored hills are blanketed in snow driven by icy wind from Siberia. Despite being at the same latitude as Venice, Asia’s northern deserts have no nearby sea to warm them and so suffer bitterly cold winters. When it melts next spring, the snow will provide moisture for grasses and other plants to grow. Like almost everywhere beyond the wall, the harsh conditions force people and wild life to keep moving to find enough to survive. The kazahks have arrived from the Tangshan Mountains to graze their animals on the meager pickings in the zhunge’er. But kazahks don’t have this place all to themselves. The winter migration routes take them passed the fence enclosure in the desert. The horses on this side of the fence aren’t domestic animals like those belonging to Mongolians and Kazakhs. These are the last wild horses on earth. Millions of them once screeched all the way to Europe but now they barely number in the hundreds. For part of the winter the wild horses are quarantined to stop them mating with the Kazakh’s horses. In that way, the gene pool of the rare wild animals can be kept pure. There is a biggest problem, however, the live stock and the wild horses compete for the same food. Many Kazakhs families and their flocks will pass through here over the winter. By the time the wild horses can be released from the pen, much of the best forage will be gone. When there are so little to go around the first place, it doesn’t take much for the situation to turn critical. Even in the least inhabited parts of china, wild life and people come into conflict in the struggle to survive.

Yet in the barren landscape, a remarkable association between people and wildlife persists, a tradition harking back almost 6000 years. 82 year old reya carried on the tradition that has made the Kazakhs famous throughout china. Every winter for most of his life, Reya has gone hunting with a golden eagle. This eagle is around five years old. It was taken from the wild as a chick and raised by reya who trained it to return to him after each flight. He will keep this bird for a total of ten seasons before setting it free. Foxes were once the favorite quarry for the eagle hunters. These days they almost never catch anything. As in many parts of china, wildlife is far scarcer here than it used to be. When reya finally released this eagle, it will be the end of its hunting days. Many of the younger generation of china’s nomads are moving to modern cities and leaving their traditions behind. There lives no longer ruled by the changing of the seasons.

Back in the northeast in mid winter, the great wall still dominates the landscape. Originally built to keep out dangerous warriors, today it’s a little more than a curiosity. The han Chinese whose ancestors built the wall now live in the great cities like harbin far to the north. Each year the artists of harbin get ready for a special winter celebration. Giant blocks of ice from nearby rivers undergo a magical transformation. Tourists flock to harbin from all over china to see the spectacular carvings and the ice city that have sprung up all around. It takes 10,000 people 18 days to construct this icy wonderland. It’s impressive enough by day but the magic of this place only becomes apparent once the sun goes down. Northern china can be a harsh place but also a place of great beauty. The harbin ice festivals shows how attitudes have changed since the great wall was built. No longer are the extremes of life beyond the wall merely to be feared. Now it is possible to celebrate them too.