In Ilí, the tsiángkiun has authority over[...]the Mohammedans of the Eight cities in Ilí south of the Tien Shán, who are under resident ministers of different degrees.]
Pending the completion of the Sinkiang railroad, the region is served by a number of major land routes that have been transportation links since ancient times. They are the North Road (north of the Tien Shan) passing from Kansu through Urumchi and Wusu, where it bifurcates into two routes going to the Soviet Union.
1958, Survey of China Mainland Press[4], numbers 1762-1781, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 29:
Work on the Tien Shan tunnel project at Tapancheng will also be advanced in the beginning of May.
In 1851, the Russians obtained important trade privileges on the Sino-Russian border and the right to establish factories and a Consulate at Kuldja north of the Tien Shan.
Modern archaeological excavations have unearthed the remains of a large number of ancient cities that lay buried deep under the sands for more than a thousand years, along the trade route from Bactria to China passing between the Tien Shan mountains in the north and the desert of Taklamakan in the south.
The first large-scale clash in Sinkiang occurred on January 26 at Shih-ho-tzu, a military outpost of eighty thousand inhabitants lying in the shadow of the massive Tien Shan range that separates China from the Soviet Union.
Now a survey of the section from Urumchi to the Ala Shan Pass, on the Soviet border, has been finished, and the roadbed has reached the northern side of the T’ien Shan [23].]
[2006, C J Peers, “Imperial Chinese Armes 200 BC-AD 1260”, in Soldiers of the Dragon: Chinese Armies 1500 BC-AD 1840[9], Osprey Publishing, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 78:
Colonies were established in fertile oases beyond the frontier, to act as supply bases for mobile operations. The first were probably set up in the late 2nd century BC, at Lun-t’ai and Ch’u-li on the southern slopes of the T’ien Shan, but the most important was at Hami, at the eastern end of the Tarim Basin.]
And if you're more interested in giving Mom an experience she'll never forget, why not give her a sixty-three hundred dollar per person trip to Kyrgyzstan riding horses in the magnificent Tien Shan Mountains with a relative of Leo Tolstoy.
