A boy plays at the new apartment complex in Wujiaqu, Xinjiang.(Shi Jie)

Wujiaqu is a city under the management of XPCC. We first arrived in a residential area filled with new apartments, painted in a light shade of pink. The people who live here are mostly XPCC employees, which includes teachers, farmers and factory workers. We met a middle school teacher who moved into the area in 2012. She says that compared with the places she has lived in before, her two-bedroom apartment is like a dream home. On our way back, we saw the houses that she used to live in. They look like dilapidated slums with rows of mud-brick walls. These places are completely abandoned now that people are provided with better living conditions.

This morning, we took off from Xinjiang's capital city, Urumqi and officially started off our tour of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, or XPCC. A little bit more than an hour later, we arrived at Wujiaqu.

Last night, at a meeting with the XPCC authorities, it was discussed that one of its biggest projects is building cities. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps literally turned what was empty deserts into a place of living and commerce. Today, we got to see what one of these cities looks like.