With a population of almost 1.3 million, the Kazak ethnic group living in China mainly inhabit in Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture, Mulei Kazak autonomous county and Balikun Kazak autonomous county of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Some of them are scattered in A'ke sai Kazak autonomous county of Gansu province, and Haixi Mongolia and Kazak autonomous prefecture of Qinghai province. The Kazaks mainly engage in animal husbandry, and are adept at embroidery. They use Kazak language which belongs to Turkic language family of Altaic language system. Kazakhstan's ancestors once used Er hun language, Yeni sai language and Huigu language. After Islam was introduced, they designed new words based on Latin alphabet in 1959, but failed to popularize it due to immature conditions. In 1982, they resumed to use the original words and restored the new words as phonetic symbol.
