Fuyun富蕴

Fuyun sits on the southern foot of the Altai Mountains, at the upper reaches of the Irtysh River, the northeastern gateway of Altay Prefecture. Fuyun itself is a Kazakh-majority county; its Kazakh name, Köktoğay, is the direct source of the place name "Koktokay." Inside its borders sits the Koktokay National Geopark, a UNESCO Global Geopark and 5A scenic area built around the Ertix Grand Canyon, Sacred Bell Mountain, and the No. 3 Pit (now the Koktokay National Mining Park). A county-town park still displays the "Silver Ox," a giant iron meteorite left behind by a meteorite shower that struck the Fuyun area around 1898 — described by the park itself as among the largest meteorites still intact in Asia. Winters here are long and brutally cold, and locals often call the place one of China's "Poles of Cold."

Culture

A Kazakh-majority county in a nested-autonomy administrative puzzle

• Kazakh is the majority ethnicity here; the county's Kazakh-derived name, Köktoğay, is the direct source of "Koktokay"
• Altay Prefecture is administered by the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture — one of Xinjiang's distinctive nested-autonomy arrangements
• The No. 3 Pit once yielded dozens of minerals including tantalum, niobium, beryllium and lithium, feeding China's atomic-bomb-and-satellite program before its retirement into a mining park
• Winters run long and brutally cold — locals often bill the county as one of China's "Poles of Cold"

Nature

A geological museum of canyons, mine pits and alpine lakes

• The Ertix Grand Canyon's granite cliffs are dramatic on both banks, with golden larch forests in autumn
• Sacred Bell Mountain takes its name from a granite peak shaped like an ancient bell — the geopark's signature landmark
• Kekesuli and Yilemu Lake are alpine lakes inside the park whose water shifts color with the light
• The geopark mainly operates April through October; heavy snow closes it through winter

Food & Flavor

Hand-grabbed meat and smoked sausage, straight off a Kazakh pasture

• Hand-grabbed mutton: bone-in mutton simply boiled and torn apart by hand, dipped in salt — the pastoral county's top hospitality dish
• Smoked horse sausage: horsemeat stuffed into casing, air-dried and smoked after the winter slaughter — a traditional cured favorite
• Naren: broad noodles tossed with boiled shredded horse or mutton and its broth — a hospitality dish shared across Central Asian pastoral cultures
• Dried milk curds and fried dough (baursak) round out the standard herding-country tea table