When He Haiyan, a 52-year-old business-woman in Alashankou, also known as the Alataw Pass, first arrived here in 1998 from Yulin in Shaanxi Province in northwest China to sell fruit at a local night market, she was horrified by the vast, desolate Gobi Desert.
Alashankou, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, had little infrastructure at that time, she recalled. It had only a meteorological station and a railway station that was being built.
Located on the China-Kazakhstan border between two mountains, it is known for its strong winds all year round.
She told inside her shop, which sells imported products such as Russian chocolate, that she never had any intention of putting down roots in Alashankou. All she wanted to do
