Who Is Still Stepping on Snow: Hemu Village in Deep-Snow Season

6 AM in Hemu Village, minus 18°C.

I stepped out of the wooden door of the guesthouse wearing two pairs of pants, three pairs of socks, snow gaiters, a down jacket, and mittens. The first step into the snow went up to my knees. The second step I was a little more careful, finding the cart ruts the previous people had made. By the third and fourth step, my legs started to disobey me.

But the moment I looked up — it was all worth it.

The Fairy-Tale Village

Hemu Village is at the northernmost tip of Burqin County, Xinjiang, right on the China-Russia-Kazakhstan-Mongolia border. The whole village spreads along the Hemu River valley — all Tuvan wooden cabins built of logs, steep-pitched timber roofs, wood smoked dark brown by the chimney smoke. The village has over 1,400 households of Tuvans and Kazakh herders who have lived here for generations, almost cut off from the world during the deep-snow winter.

I was there April 15-17 — deep-snow season. The snow falls from November and doesn’t melt until late April — a full six months. The whole village is buried under 80 to 150 cm of snow. The wooden cabins only show their chimney, windows, and half a door. Fences, tin mailboxes, bicycles — everything at ground level has been swallowed by snow.

In the early morning, the cooking smoke rises from the chimneys, going straight up ten-plus meters in the cold air, then dispersing pale blue when the wind catches it. This is Hemu’s most iconic scene — white snow plain, brown wooden cabins, pale-blue smoke, the silhouettes of distant birch forest. When Chinese National Geographic picked the “Ten Most Beautiful Snow Villages of China,” Hemu is always at the top of the list.

People Who Live in the Snow

At 7 AM, carriage driver Dawuleti was already busy in his stable. He had to bring his horses to the Hemu Bridge at the village entrance by 8 AM to wait for guests. I asked him if it was cold coming out this early. In his heavy Tuvan accent he said: “Not cold. The horses are cold. Horses don’t wear clothes.”

His daily work was ferrying guests from the village entrance to the observation deck behind the village — a 1.5 km one-way trip. With more than a meter of snow, the driver has to stand on the horse-drawn sled, controlling direction with reins and shouts. The horses’ hooves sink into the snow up to their bellies, but they walk steadily.

When we reached the observation deck, the sun had just crested the eastern ridge. The whole Hemu village lit up in the dawn glow — the cooking smoke turned golden, the brown wood of the cabins turned orange-red, the snow reflected the blue of the sky. In that moment all the tourists fell silent, except for the sound of shutters clicking.

Who Is Still Stepping on Snow

On my last afternoon in Hemu, I walked alone into the birch forest outside the village.

The forest was dense, only a sliver of sky visible overhead. On the ground was a thick “snow crust” — the surface frozen hard by the wind, you’d step on it and it would crackle once, then sink half a foot. This crispy crackling sound echoes through the forest, can travel far.

I walked for about twenty minutes, leaving a lonely trail of footprints behind me. Besides me, I couldn’t see anyone in the whole forest. But occasionally the surface of the snow would show a trail of animal prints — small round ones from rabbits, slim ones from foxes, and a drag mark I couldn’t tell what was.

In that moment I suddenly wondered: In this snowfield, who is still stepping?

It’s Dawuleti rushing the horse carriage, it’s the old Tuvan granny carrying firewood on her back, it’s the rabbits foraging, it’s the grass roots beneath the snow, it’s winter itself. After the snow is stepped on it leaves marks, but the next snowfall smooths everything over. In Hemu, the act of “stepping” is actually meaningless — every step you take will be covered by new snow tomorrow.

Do we go to Hemu to see the snow? Maybe. But what I’ll remember is that quiet of “tomorrow everything will be gone.”