URUMQI: For Yidilisi Abuduresule, the life of an archaeologist is not much like that featured in Indiana Jones movies.

"Behind the stereotype of fantasies, adventure and thrilling finds are years of strenuous research, time-consuming and even boring field work for a real-life archaeologist," he said.

A senior Uygur archaeologist and former head of the Xinjiang Archaeological Research Institute, Abuduresule is better known as "the desert fox" among locals, colleagues and foreign collaborators.