Altay's best spot to experience the thrills and spills of skiing | China Documentary

Hello. I don't know where they're taking them. It's quiet. And the light of the sun is so agreeable. Looks like the best place to take a nap. I'm going to a particular site nearby called Dunda Balaka. It's a collection of prehistoric rock art. It's remarkable because it has the earliest depiction of ski that we have in the world. I feel like the man. This is a geography that's more attuned to nomads, earlier hunter foragers. It is like a candy store for a historian. Being here is very different from other travels that I took around China. I feel like I'm the lead of the herd. I'm really at the frontier of the frontier. It could be very inspiring to see what's happening, what's arising. All the opportunities in the future. In this project I'd like to show the diversity of cultures. How those have shifted over time. How new cultures have grown up here. I've never seen skiers that close. Head on my face. The frontier of China. The heart of Eurasia. I'm in Homu village at the northern tip of Xinjiang all the way west of China. Near the border with Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. My name is Nico Derouge, I'm French. I specialize in reportage and documentary photography. Which takes me around the world. I heard that fur skiing is a very old tradition. And that is how people actually started skiing in the first place. People from my country almost assumed that it came from us. That it came from Europe. Hey Maritino. I'm looking for Maritino. I'm a fan around here. If I want to know more about the fur skis. Where it came from. And if it still exists today. Oh my god, I've never done this before. I'm so excited. I'm Hasna, I come from Morocco, from Casablanca. I came here to China to be working in architecture. I'm in Kokoto High Ski Resort. It's on the Altai Mountains. Very close to the Mongolian border in the far north of Xinjiang. Known for its high altitude drops in all China. You have ski grounds in Sweden. Why you came so far to this place? I actually live in Shanghai right now. So I'm trying to figure out the best place in China. It's over my expectation. Hello. I come from Xi'an. Do you know Terracotta Warriors? Yeah, I do. It's your first time to go down the slope? Yeah, I can watch you. I'm not skiing, I'm just watching. She's doing it. Makes me want to learn skiing. What was I thinking of? My name is Neil Schmidt. I'm an American and a historian of China. As a researcher, I work at an archaeological site in Dunhuang. I'm here, 40 kilometers south of Altai City. Going to a particular site nearby called Dunda Balaka, a collection of prehistoric rock art. It has the earliest records of human skiing in the world. Today I'm here to meet Zhang Huixiang, the specialist in rock art and makes copies of rock art using traditional Chinese methods. So this is very rough in that direction. To go up the mountain, I'm guessing, and then this is super smooth. Even this stick, I don't really know. You have to twist your body. It's very different from the two sticks that I used as a kid when I was skiing, right? She's like flying. Look at this! Hi, nice to meet you. She learns skiing. I'm here to meet Subinor. She's a young girl being part of the Xinjiang branch, the national Alpine ski team. Subinor, that's a beautiful name. Where does it come from? It means light? It's the same in my language. How many years have you been training? Can you believe I've never skied before? You've got to be patient with me. I don't know how to ski. I've never done this before. No problem, I can teach you slowly. Wait, wait. Yes, let's go. Oh my god, that's exciting. Hello. Do you speak Chinese? Yes, I'm a beginner. There's no one that stands, you go away. These are straight, these are curvy. What's the difference? This is suitable for competition training. This is for beginners. I feel like a man. That looks professional. Thank you, thank you. Slowly, slowly. Hello. Finally. Finally, finally. It's in that cave. Yes. Where is the firework different from other places? It's not from Zao Ke, it's from Cai Hui. What era are these fireworks from? They're all from the Qing Dynasty. Going back a few thousand years, there's not much material record. So we really don't know the people who created the petroglyphs. But it's likely that there's a continuity from culture to culture over thousands of years. Okay, I feel like this is getting a bit better. On the way up for now. Seems okay. The way down is going to be another story. There are four people in the fourth group. Two people in the middle, step on the long-striped snowboard. This group of people is very regular, including their skiing posture, movements. There's also a pole. Why are you so fast? Very genius. Here we are in the mountains. We don't see anybody on horseback, so skiing would have been the most effective way to hunt. You can imagine hunter-forgers coming down the slopes on skis, herding these horses and these oxen in a mass hunt. All the animals are facing to the right. Give it a kind of animation. It's almost like we have an early version of cinema. The story of early man. Let's go. Everything the exact same. No good. No good. Like this. Can you just stay here like this, please? Okay. How do I stop? Triangle. That's going fast for me. Stop it. We're going there. We're skiing. We're skiing. Oh, my God. Stop it. Stop it. This is my teammate. Hello. Wula. 14. Wang Jianguo. 12 people. That's a beautiful team. Now that you have confidence and that you are talented, that you can do very high slopes, what are your ambitions for the future? Do you want to play in the Olympics? I really want to participate. I'm very confident. How many years do you think you need to be able to go to the Olympics? Six years. Six years? I'm still young. I can participate in the next Olympic Games. This is my goal. This is my dream. Is it you? How old are you? I'm 32 years old. You're about the same age as me. I was born in Hainan. I was born in Jinhai. You were born in Jinhai, right? Yes. In Hemu, does everyone know how to use these first keys? In the past, every family in Hemu would bring their own keys. But now, there aren't many people who know how to use them. I think this is Huli, or something like that. Mr. Zhang wasn't able to do printmaking in Dundubalaka because the types of images are painted and not carved. So we went to another site called Dulate. You can actually see these images carved into the rock. This is from the Stone Age. It's about 8,000 or 10,000 years old. It's beautiful, but it's too old. It's too old. If we don't save it, it will deteriorate severely. Let's look for it somewhere else. When I was a kid, my father brought me here. My father's father was a painter. He was a painter. My father's father was a painter. There was no electricity at that time. There was no electricity. He painted every day. Oh, this is what you found. Green onion. I've never seen this before. You can do it. These animals have been extinct in this area for 15,000 years. They're much, much earlier than anything exists here, also anything that Mr. Zhang had seen. So your dad taught you everything about skiing. Now that you are a dad, how do you plan on passing the tradition along to your child? This part of Xinjiang hasn't been explored by archaeologists in part because it's distant, but in fact, there's incredible material that gave us a window onto lives 10,000 years ago. We can see this ancient knowledge that's been passed down from the Bronze Age all the way to today still being used in a very, very similar way that it was thousands of years ago. Just a few days ago, I was in the snow experiencing first skis in the Altai region. This is the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Region. As you can see, spring is here. I'm here in the Bordala Valley in the far northwest of China, heading up to an archaeological site called Adun Qiaolu. This Bronze Age site is unique because it has both tombs and dwellings. We see the further development of civilization with pastoral nomads keeping animals as opposed to the hunter-gatherers of Altai. I'm here to meet Ira. He's a young Kazakh man about my age from a nomad herder's family. And the time of the transition has come. He's going to help his parents to take the sheep from the winter pasture to the spring pasture. I'm in Yining, a major city in northern Xinjiang which has a great and important history. I'm here to meet Mrs. Kim Ezbuli. She's the owner of Tazmula. It's a quite known company here locally that operates with yurts. Oh! I'm in the best place ever. Woohoo! I feel like a real Kazakh. Professor Songdeshin has been working here for over 10 years. Since 2011, they've excavated numerous tombs and also a couple of dwellings. When we arrived, Ira's mom and dad were there waiting for us. And seeing them coming out of the house and greeting us almost felt like I was in a movie. Their winter house was a very small house. The way they have power is through a solar panel on the roof. Little Nico, I'm here. Look at this view. And this Chinese cowboy over here. I'm almost ready to be a cowboy. The sheep are following me now. I feel like I'm the lead of the herd. Not for long. I don't know what it was. Maybe the horse that they gave me was perfect. But I felt like a real cowboy. When you see the design of a yurt, you wonder about the hands that made those pieces of art. Mrs. Kim brought me into her workshop and allowed me to meet her embroiderers. I hope I'm not going to ruin it. Eventually, we made it to Sairam Lake. Sairam Lake is nicknamed the last teardrop of the Atlantic Ocean. The reason behind this is the warm flow of air coming from the Atlantic Ocean hitting the Tianshan Mountains and creating that lake. This warm flow is also bringing spring with it. That's why the Ili Valley is the place in Xinjiang where spring comes first. Iris family keeps on herding the traditional way because it represents the relationship between them and the animals and nature. The excavation revealed bones that they were able to carbon date because these people were here about 3,500 years ago. Thank you, Heito. Ira and his dad just had a meal, stopped for a little bit to have a rest. They're going to keep on their journey. I'm going to stop here and I'll meet them tomorrow at their destination. I felt sad to leave the sheep, but at the same time a little bit relieved that I was not going to have to stay on the horse for the whole night. It was getting very cold in the mountains and I'm not a real herdsman. This is the mixture of the modern and the traditional. Right. After getting to know Mrs. Kim and her designs better, she took me to meet her son, Kulan, the software genius of her creations. That's a metallic structure, not a wooden one. It's really big. If you use the wooden structure, you will have some safety concerns. But I see a wooden frame in the inside, right? Yeah. What was quite impressive was that he was taking, again like his mother, but in his own way. He was playing with the rules of the European tournament into something more modern. What made you decide to go back to your hometown and come back to China? I have the responsibility to come back. You're proud of it? I'm proud of it. I love this light here. I grew up in my grandmother's house in Zhanfang. When I slept in Zhanfang and saw Tianzhuang, I felt like I didn't have a better mansion in the world. There's something beautiful in my heart and I'm sure everyone likes it. They're coming. The beginning of the spring is also the time for the Nowruz festival. To celebrate this festival, the family was having a big meal. We offered some pastries, sour milk, horse meat. It's good. You don't speak sometimes the same language, but you still connect just with the energy, with the voice, with the eyes. So you connect with some stranger and you still feel like you're similar. I feel like this brought me back to my roots, to simpler things. We really don't know too much about these ancient people, but clearly there's a continuity that existed thousands of years ago that's been passed down all the way to today. Can we do it again? All of these provides points for reflection. When people began to realize and understand the uniqueness of Xinjiang and the range of cultures that came together, it was a real revelation.