Summer nights on the Sankoh prairie in Gannan

In summer, a figure in red contrasts sharply against the rolling green hills of the Sangke Prairie.

Sunlight breaks through the clouds onto the plain by the Daxia River.

It is cool on the prairie in Gannan on early summer evenings. Flocks and herds head downhill. A grandmother, Zhou Cao, stares at the Buddha sculpture in the Buddhist hall while turning a prayer wheel in her hand. Despite the fact that she has been living on the Sankoh prairie for six years, she keeps thinking of past days in the pasture.

A Tibetan woman turns a prayer wheel.

"In the pasture, grandma felt she could do everything. She was familiar with flocks and herds. But in town, she does not know how to use the washing machine, or turn on the TV, or even use a cell phone. She stays idle, does not have anything to do, and is not used to it," Tsering, Zhou's grandson, said, chuckling about his grandmother's "secret trouble".

Zhou lives in a village in Sankoh Township, Xiahe County, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province. The herdsmen settlement here is called "new village" by the locals. It is a nomads' resettlement project carried out by the local government to improve their itinerant lifestyle, which includes looking for "water and grass". So far, 1,907 sets of newly-built settlement houses are in Xiahe County, and 9,540 nomads from 1,923 nomadic households have settled down here.