It is a sunny afternoon in Burqin County in Altay of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. A Kazak woman Nurjing is waiting for her children to come back from school, smiling.

But what may surprise you is that the 36-year-old mother is sitting in her house made of bricks, instead of a traditional yurt.

"I moved to the new house in the village five years ago. I live a better life now than my previous nomadic life," she said.

"When my family lived as nomads, it was difficult for me to find a suitable school for my children as the grassland is always far from villages and cities," Nurjing recalled.

It was a tradition for the Kazaks to travel to places where there is sufficient grassland and water to live.

This is mostly because the Kazak people made a living by raising livestock such as cows and sheep.

"But now, my two children can go to primary schools within my village. It is much more convenient than before," she said.

Besides schooling, life in general has improved dramatically for Nurjing and her husband since settling down.

"My family now have a tractor, 6.7 hectares of alfalfa (forage grass), 100 sheep and six cattle," the woman said.

"My house is solid. I will not fear the winter snowstorms anymore like I used to when I lived in the yurt," Nurjing said.

She still remembers the difficult life they experienced within the yurt when snow reached 2 meters in depth in winter.

Nurjing's family is only one example of how the local government helped the traditional herdsmen to settle down, according to Mao Ken, governor of the Altay Prefecture.

The government gives them free grassland and has assisted them with building a house.

Altogether four counties in Altay adopted a programme in 1988 to help the traditional Kazak herdsmen to combine agriculture and animal husbandry to build a modern family livestock farm.

The United Nations World Food Programme has provided grain worth of 100 million yuan (US$12 million) to the programme, according to the official.

The local government invested 30 million yuan (US$3.7 million) into the programme to assist growth of forage grass.

The programme to settle down herdsmen in Burqin is the biggest among four programmes, covering 17,000 hectares, said the official.

"Altogether six schools, one hospital, 12 shops and three breeding stations were established in the county," Mao said.

After being settled down, the herdsmen are more capable to fight against disasters.

Furthermore, income of the Kazak people has increased as a result of settling down, according to the official.

The annual income of herdsmen per person in Burqin was up to 3,800 yuan (US$470) last year from the around 400 yuan (US$50) in 1987 before they settled down.

So far, over 1,200 families of herdsmen have settled down in Burqin across five villages, according to Mao.

They owned 120,000 livestock animals by the end of last year and the figure is expected to reach 170,000 this year.

The programme altogether involved 84 percent of the herdsmen in Altay.

"Currently, some herdsmen choose to live in the village the whole year round and some travel around in summer like before. When the winter comes, they will all return home," Mao said.

"This will not negatively influence the culture of Kazak people. It is even more convenient for them to gather together," he said.

Besides the projects to settle Kazak people in Altay, the livelihoods of other ethnic groups in other areas of Xinjiang are among the government's concerns.

At the Jiashi County of Kashgar Prefecture, a total of 11 tremors measuring above 6 on the Richter scale occurred since 1996, as well as 40,000 aftershocks.

Forty-seven people were killed in the earthquakes and 280 were injured.

A total of 75,900 houses collapsed, statistics showed.

Uygur farmer Kurban, 65, was one of the people who lost his house in an earthquake in 1997.

Two months ago, he moved into a new three-roomed earthquake-proof house, free of charge.

"The house, which can resist earthquakes measuring 8 on the Richter scale, is now my own," he said proudly.

The house is one of the first 30 houses built by the county government with an investment of 240,000 yuan (US$29,600).

The township government will altogether re-home 1,100 families in poverty that lost their houses in earthquakes, according to Hu Chongwei, Party secretary of the township.

"All of the houses are anti-seismic buildings," he said.

In total, the Kashgar Prefecture government invested 1 billion yuan (US$120 million) to upgrade houses in order to make them earthquake-resistant.

It is expected that the anti-quake reinforcements work will be completed in three years, sources said.

A total of 520,000 households will have their structures upgraded in the whole prefecture.

In the urban area of Jiashi County, unemployed workers were offered houses free of charge on a temporary basis.

Having received new quakeproof homes, 7-year-old Mijiti said she loved the new house very much.

"It is more solid and bigger than where we lived before," she said.

After losing their house in an earthquake in 1996, Mijiti's father, mother, brother and sister have lived at a house provided by the company the father used to work for.

They moved to the new 50-square-metre quake-proof house this year.

Her father lost his job in 1996 and the family is now living on local governmental allowance.

"Without the government's assistance, I could hardly afford to own such a nice house and support the schooling of my three children," the father said.

A Han manager of the State-owned county department store, where the father previously worked, used to provide schooling and living fees for Mijiti.

Not only residential homes but also schools and homes for the elderly have been structurally reinforced to resist earthquakes in Jiashi County.

(China Daily September 24, 2005)