My name is Katrin, I’m a photographer from Russia , who has lived in China for 6 years: working and traveling. Currently I stay in Shanghai.

Katrin Dora in a rural house in northwest China’s Xinjiang.

I had heard about Xinjiang for a long time from friends. They spoke of two things first — the vivid culture and the overwhelming nature.

For many years, traveling there felt almost impossible. From Shanghai to Urumqi, it takes nearly six hours by plane —almost the same time it takes me to fly home (I’m originally from the Ural region of Russia.)

After six years in China, the opportunity finally appeared. I’m grateful for the chance to do what I love most: photography, while traveling through southern Xinjiang. Yes — southern.

Only then did I realize how enormous this region truly is. Our journey began with people. With warmth. We were greeted at the airport with genuine hospitality — even with a hug. To be honest, that surprised me.

I was deeply inspired by the old city architecture. Locals told me that not long ago it was in poor condition and has since been carefully reconstructed. It still holds a sense of time — layered, not frozen.

Food was everywhere. Pomegranate juice — incredibly rich, good for the heart. Bread with rose petals — yes, roses. It was the first time I had tasted something like that. Black tea, which is rarely served in Shanghai, where green tea dominates everything.

Later, in a traditional restaurant, we tried local dishes. I loved the pilaf — a word that sounds almost the same in Uygur and in Russian (we call it Plov). And dumplings filled with pumpkin.

This experience felt familiar in an unexpected way. Flatbreads baked in tandoors. Lamb skewers. Music played on ancient, few-string instruments. Festive rhythms. All of this all felt close to me.

What was completely unfamiliar, though, was the desert — especially a cold desert, the Taklimakan.

I tried to feel what it means to stand at the edge of a vast, almost uninhabited space — a landscape that has existed for what feels like eternity, stretching across hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

It felt powerful to realize that I was close to the ancient Silk Road and to recently unearthed desert cities, once swallowed by sand.

Katrin Dora at the desert in northwest China’s Xinjiang.

In a museum dedicated to the history of windbreak forests, I finally understood something that had puzzled me for days: why trees grow along desert roads — and how they got there.

Thirteen years ago, tens of thousands of local residents planted trees along roads and near cities to protect inhabited areas from the advancing desert. They lived in the sand for weeks, volunteering to protect the land for future generations.

Can a desert be stopped by people? Yes — but only if there are many people and immense resources.

For me, Xinjiang became a bridge — a bridge to Central Asia, to the Silk Road, to cultures that speak through color, texture, music, and warmth.

Katrin Dora is a Russian photographer and a CEO.

Producer: Xiao Chunfei

Supervisors: Ding Tao and Jie Wenjin

Planners: Jie Wenjin and Cheng Li

Reviewers: Cheng Li and Hou Weili

Editor: Gvlzar Mijit