For Xinjiang residents, work paves way out of poverty

A year ago when Mehmet Tursun decided to leave the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to open his own restaurant 1,000 kilometers away, he wasn't sure he was making the right life-changing decision.

Mehmet, 40, never went to high school and didn't speak fluent Mandarin. But the day he had to hire two more people in his Xinjiang-style restaurant in Langfang, Hebei province, to handle the growing number of customers, he was absolutely sure that he had made the right choice.

He and his partner earned a combined annual income of more than 100,000 yuan ($14,600) in 2017, which enabled them to lead a comfortable life in the city and support their families back home.