Riding the Wind into Xinjiang

In 2003, China began implementing the Western Development Program.

In 2023, the program marked its 20th anniversary.

Over the past 20 years, more than 500,000 college graduates have left the cities and headed west, going where their country and its people need them most.

Fresh graduate Zhou You, full of hopes for his dreams and love, traveled a great distance to the western town of Dabancheng.

During his year as a volunteer, he saw what it meant to live in a vast, sparsely populated land, to uphold ethnic unity, and to give selflessly.

This free and open wilderness in Xinjiang bore witness to his sweat and tears, dispelled his confusion and timidity, and etched his youth and passion into its land.