HUANGPU SHANGHAI

Visitors take a night stroll around the ancient city of Kashgar, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. [Photo by Yang Yang and Mao Weihua]

In an evening in mid-September, as the sun set and cool wind dispersed the heat of the day, nightlife in Kashgar, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, started.

In Guli's Home, a guesthouse transformed from a residence, visitors were drinking tea while enjoying a traditional dance by a young woman and 80-year-old Ismayil Sawut.

Opened in 2017 by Salamatgul, Ismayil's granddaughter, the two-story guesthouse has become a key attraction in the city. On short-video platform Kuaishou, Salamatgul's account has been followed by more than 500,000 people. She told the media in July that on average, the guesthouse receives 300 tourists a day, who dance and dine together and talk to each other.

Visitors take a night stroll around the ancient city of Kashgar, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. [Photo by Yang Yang and Mao Weihua]

In Maimaiti's old house that has a history of 300 years, young women dressed in Uygur attire and makeup, posed for photos. Covering an area of 700 square meters, the house has 20 rooms, including bedrooms, a granary and carpet room. A good showcase of local tradition and culture, the building has become an important site for tourists to take photos.

Shops for the photo tour business have grown from two in 2020 to about 200. Song Hanyu, 35, is the manager of Kashgar Sun City Photo-shooting Tour. Song used to grow jujubes. Six months ago, he started the photo-shooting tour business in a 1,500-square-meter theater that went out of business before the COVID-19 pandemic. During peak time, like the May Day holiday, the shop receives 200 clients, and the lowest price for an order that includes attire, makeup and 40 photos is 499 yuan ($68).

"Because many people love the dresses and scenes of local characteristics, and more people are coming to visit Kashgar, the photo-shooting tour business has kept growing," he says.

During the May Day holiday, the ancient city of Kashgar, one of the top tourism attractions in Xinjiang, received nearly 255,000 tourists, up 136 percent compared with 2019, according to the local government's website.

In August, the ancient city saw about 1.23 million visits. It was the first time that visits to the 2,100-year-old city passed 1 million within a month, according to a report on ts.cn, the top news portal in the autonomous region.