Lives of people in Shihezi, NW China's Xinjiang

Li Nana, a cotton farmer, tends to her cotton field in Shihezi, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, June 1, 2021. (People's Daily Online/Kou Jie)

Shihezi, about 150 km northwest of Urumqi, is a young city established in the 1950s in the Junggar Basin of northern Xinjiang. Due to the continuous efforts of several generations of people living in Xinjiang, Shihezi has been transformed into a habitable and increasingly developed urban center. As one of the largest cities in Xinjiang, Shihezi has been dubbed as "a shining pearl in the Gobi Desert."