A settlement of unbounded frontiers

Seasonal celebrations include grassland skiing and zagu drum-smashing during Spring Festival, and communal outdoor hotpot feasts.

The warmer months herald a 5-kilometer rainbow run across the prairie and grassland scavenger hunts. Bonfire parties feature performances of Kazak dombra (lutes) and Tuvan khoomei throat singing, in which a single vocalist produces two growling voices simultaneously.

Starting next summer, tourists can visit the Golden Lotus Valley, where these yellow flowers used in traditional medicine blaze bright like torches lighting up the landscape throughout June.

Visitors can watch horse races, horseback archery, Mongolian wrestling and kokpar, a regional variant of a Central Asian equestrian sport in which two teams tussle over a sheep hide on horseback.

There are also mass feasts, such as the midsummer tudou yan — a banquet in which every dish uses potatoes — and a comparable August meal of mutton that uses every part of the animal and features a boiled-head speed-eating contest.

Yurts become stalls selling homemade cheese, yogurt, horsemilk liquor and crispy baursak fried bread.

These meals fuse Tuvan and Kazak cuisines, ingredients sourced from icy mountains and verdant prairies, and nomadic production and tourism retail.

Ultimately, this influx of outsiders and the new economy that's arriving with them doesn't dim but rather amplifies Baihaba's singular character.

China's northwesternmost village reminds us that some borders aren't boundaries.

They're not just lines on a map but are thresholds sometimes crisscrossed by cultures, ecologies and centuries.

In this corner of the country in the middle of the Altay Mountains, these outline the profile of one of the most distinctive and captivating corners of Xinjiang, China and the world.

Contact the writer at erik_nilsson@chinadaily.com.cn