I have a student that is from there. From what I've heard it's not so bad. The student I teach turned out very well! I also hear the food is good especially the barbecue they call the people there xinjiang barbecue guy because they make good barbecue!

The air quality is quite nice,as well as the landscape,that's one of the places i want to go most in this country.

food is great!!!

Xinjiang and Inner Mongolian students' English is always MUCH better than the rest

The air quality is great during summer and abysmal during winter due to the coal burning stations that fire the city's central heating - which is needed because winter is f*cking freezing.

There have been a few questions on Urumqi asked before - have a look through the archives.

Generally, it's a place for people who have a sense of adventure and a high bullshit tolerance threshold.

The local minority people are, almost to a man and women, absolutely lovely, and the best thing about life in the far west is getting to know Uyghur culture.

No time to write more, sorry.

I love the food too...some is similar to Balkan style cooking, which reminds me of home

Last week, I came across two teaching job offers from Public Schools in Xinjiang, with unusually high pay (100 000 Rmb per year), and after School followed my suggestion on cancelling office hours, I 'grabbed' lower paying Contract. School accepted my reasons, why I don't like to sit in the School 40 hours a week (moonlighting), and changed Contract to : 

'Party B agrees that during the Contract period he/she will not accept employment at any other School, which will disrupt regular teaching work.'

In other words, I can work anywhere I want in my free time, butt...I must always be on time at my prime job!

At the interview with School's Chinese English teacher I had feeling, nobody really wants to come and teach in Xinjiang, so I posted question here, just to find out nothing is really wrong there.

I am heading to Urumqi by the end of April.