The people of Altay Prefecture in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have kept fur skiing alive as a time-honored survival and hunting tradition for more than 10,000 years. Cave paintings in the mountains of Handegat, a township in Altay, are considered to be evidence that skiing appeared in northwest China earlier than in northern Europe. Today, local elders still sing a Mongolian long song which describes a story of their ancestors skiing and hunting. Modern practitioners, including teenagers, remain passionate about this time-honored skill.
