Mengkebayaer, a herder and businessman from Angsu village, roasts corn in a traditional wok in early March.[Photo by Satarupa Bhattacharjya/Lin Hong/China Daily]

Matching up

Bixiriletu, a 40-year-old resident of Angsu, another village in the Otog Front Banner, grew up watching his parents herd their sheep to grasslands far from home. In the past few years, he had to wake up nightly to check on his animals.

Now, he has the tools - a camera and a smartphone.

Bixiriletu worked at a coal mine in the banner for much of his adult life. In 2012, he watched a TV program on artificial insemination in sheep. The show, he says gave him the idea of visiting a breeding facility in Ulanqab, which is also located in the region's south.

US tech giant Apple Inc is reportedly looking to set up a cloud hub in the city, its second in China after the southwestern province of Guizhou.

"The donors (sperm) are foreign," he says of the meat-producing Dorper, the South African hybrid sheep that was developed for arid conditions similar to Ordos.

The mixing of foreign and local breeds, Bixiriletu says, has meant shorter waiting periods.