Alex followed the two men inside, past a thick hanging door curtain. The yurts were quilted paper, stretched over crisscrossed expandable lattices of lacquered wood. The diamond-shaped ends of these lattices were neatly and solidly lashed together, and eight of the lattices, curved into a broad ring, formed the yurt’s round wall. Sixteen slender bent poles of lacquered bamboo ran from the tops of the lattices up to a central ring, bracing the white paper top of the dome.