The ancient tradition of silk farming could be revived as part of a project to restore items up to 2,000 years old found in ancient tombs.
Omar Ali, 44, gets up at 5:30 am, just before dawn, to take the only food and drink he will have all day until the sun goes down again.
After baking nang, a kind of crusty pancake, for her husband and children early in the morning, Guliayisham Memet puts on a brightly colored silk dress and rides her motorcycle to the carpet factory 3 kilometers away from where she lives, a small village in Toksun county in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
