Agent of change

Women chat before the start of a village meeting. [Photo provided to China Daily]

When Chen Xuanbo, 40, an ethnic Han official, was sent to work in southern Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, he thought he was going to a place where it would be "too dangerous to fall asleep".

On March 5, only days after 29 people were killed and more than 140 injured in Kunming, in an attack that police said was organized and committed by separatists from Xinjiang, Chen left regional capital Urumqi for Azkhan village that is located in the Kezilesu Kirgiz autonomous prefecture.

"It would be a lie if I said I had no fear then," Chen says.

Before his departure, friends and relatives repeatedly wished him a "safe stay", while his 10-year-old daughter bought him a pair of sneakers because she said, "he would walk a lot there".

Now everyone in the village knows him.

"Many of my worries were unfounded. My daughter gave me the most useful thing," he says. "Various kinds of fruits are ripe. I can pick them and eat them under the trees and feel very safe."

The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China decided in February to send about 200,000 officials to work in grassroots units, mostly in southern Xinjiang, over the next three years.

The project aims to ease ethnic tensions and counter the infiltration by terrorist forces.

"Southern Xinjiang has been isolated from the outside world for a long time. The Uygur and Han ethnic groups don't communicate with each other, and 'Eastern Turkistan' terrorists have become rampant. If the situation continues, misunderstandings between Uygurs and Hans will be exaggerated."

He began to write an online diary as soon as he arrived, and he has posted more than 80,000 characters and more than 10,000 photographs of the region as seen through his eyes.