The border of the great north-west province of Xinjiang, a region three times the size of France, lay at the mining town of Mangnai, fifty miles beyond where I was sleeping. This was an old, feared frontierland - High Tartary or Chinese Turkestan - one sixth of all China now, which barged up against Central Asia. But at Mangnai the road roughened to a stone trail, where trucks, even my bus, gave up.
A number of oil fields are in operation, notably in the Mangnai area in the western part of the basin. A large oil refinery has been constructed at Lenghu, southwest of Dangjin Pass, and another has been built at Mangnai.
2019 March 4, Laurie Chen, “China opens ‘Mars camp’ for researchers, tourists and plans to send rover to red planet”, in South China Morning Post[3], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 03 March 2019, Science[4]:
Spanning 32 hectares (80 acres), the base is situated 60km (37 miles) from the town of Lenghu near the upper reaches of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, an arid desert region dubbed “the place on Earth that is most unlike being on Earth”, according to camp manager Gao Junling.[...] But the “Mars village” was originally proposed by the local government in 2017 as a cultural and educational centre for science, popular science and science fiction, according to Ma Wenwu, a member of the Mangnai city committee, which oversees Lenghu.
