"Nearly 2000 miles from Beijing in the shadow of the Silk Road ski resort, thousands of people living behind me are trying to make a living from the tourist industry. But after July that hasn't been easy."

One such person is Ma Axi, from the ethnic Hui group that makes up 5 percent of the region's population. Like dozens of others on this road, she and her husband run a bed-and-breakfast of sorts, known as a nongjiale in Chinese, where people come to eat and sometimes stay the night. Axi describes business as "good" over the past six years, and it's brought the family an annual income of around 17-thousand dollars.