If you look up "Kaerjiao Grand Canyon" on Google, you can barely find anything about the place. Even if you search it on Chinese websites, there are just a few sentences about the Yardang landform there. CGTN Nature film crew encountered this mysterious grand canyon while filming in Jeminay County in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. 

"Kaerjiao" is a small town in Jeminay County. In Kazakh, "kaerjiao" means "looking forward to snow" because the whole county is seriously short of water. The five-kilometer long Kaerjiao Grand Canyon was an underground rift valley. It was eroded by strong winds over 300,000 to 700,000 years, creating the dry and brownish red Yardang landform today. According to local herders, the blowing wind would make creepy sounds like wolves howling in the winter. If livestock go missing in the canyon, they have slim chances of staying alive.

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(Cover image via screenshot, video by CGTN Nature filming crew. Edited by CGTN's Zhao Ying.)

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