But he is a furrier by trade, he insists. For the past seven years he has worked for his elder sister, who owns a factory in the city of Haining, near Shanghai, that makes fur garments and also a fashion store in the landmark Grand Bazaar in Urumqi that sells them. Her business has been so successful that she was able to buy a villa near the Southern Mountain resort.

"She is very successful," Zulpi says. "You don't meet someone like her every day." He also gushed about what he sees as her glamorous life, self-made fortune and expensive tastes. In fact, it was her who came up with the idea of the restaurant, he says.

When Gulba Har, 45, finally turned up at Riano, stepping out of her white Mercedes-Benz SUV in a rosy red woolen jacket over a knee-length black sweater dress, expensive-looking sunglasses perched on her wavy hair, she was every bit as charming as her brother had made out. Her plump, curvaceous shape looked as though it had had a lot of her money lavished on it. Her Mandarin is fluent. She says she has been a car saleswoman in Shanghai when she was young and had no problem communicating with fur traders of the Han ethnicity in Haining.