The place where nothing is ever lost in translation

A remote settlement has long been a crucible of multiethnic friendships. Zhang Yi reports from Hongdun in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

In the 1950s and '60s, a group of 46 translators of Kazakh all hailed from Hongdun in Altay, a remote city in the northwest of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

The translators were Han, but they were all fluent in Kazakh and some even spoke Mongolian. They worked for the government in Xinjiang or Beijing, and some held high office.