In Zhaosu, a remote county in the Ili River Valley in China's far northwestern Xinjiang, winter brings a spectacle locals call "heavenly horses treading snow" -- an image that looks ancient, but the economics behind it are not.
Positioned along the Grassland SilkRoad, it was threaded into successive dynasties' frontier systems through remount stations and courier routes ... When horses lose their old jobs, a frontier county in Xinjiang finds new ones.