[This brief excerpt is from C. P. Skrine, Chinese Central Asia (London, 1926), p. 154. The Kaying Valley is in the mountains south of Kashgar and to the east of the great peak Kongur.]

The Kirghiz of the Kaying valley cultivate only a few acres of barley and eat little bread. Their staple food is milk and its products, katak or sour cream and qurut, a kind of cheese. In most tents you will also find a cauldron of mach brewing, the soup containing flour and milk already mentioned. Qurut is made by drying sour cream in goat-skins; the method is to hang the goat-skins full of cream about eight feet from the ground under a piece of cord netting stretched across the top of four posts. The netting keeps off eagles and hawks, while the height from the ground defeats dogs and other animals. When a Kirghiz is to be away from his home for a day or more, he takes with him for food a few balls of qurut, and supplements them with wild rhubarb and celery which he knows where to find on the mountain-side. Bread is made in solid lumps, the only leaven used being sour milk; the poorer families can seldom afford it, fortunately for their digestions. Meat is even more of a luxury; a sheep is only killed on great occasions, when the meat is boiled in large cauldrons, not roasted. Sometimes one of the mergens or hunters of the community succeeds in slaying an ibex hind with his ancient matchlock, and then there is great feasting.

A valley like Kaying is almost but not quite self-supporting...