Millions of visitors have visited China's largest center for the Akhal-Teke, a rare breed of horse from Turkmenistan, since it opened in downtown Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Known for its speed and endurance, the breed's coat has a distinctive metallic sheen that makes the horses almost appear to shimmer.

There are some 6,000 Akhal-Teke horses in the world, most of them in Turkmenistan and Russia. The Urumqi center, which belongs to the Yema Group, is home to some 300 of them.

Visitors to the center can feed horses and watch races and it welcomes around 400,000 people a year.