Chapter 96 end

One of the emails from West: Xiao Gao: I am in Altay, Xinjiang, and the journey is relatively smooth. I have had three tire blowouts, but I repaired them all.I drove westward along National Highway 216 from Karamay. After several hours of running along the way, the desolate Gobi desert will make you feel that you are going to a place that you will never reach.When the car arrived at Chakutu, we saw a small oasis. The most beautiful section of the Ulungu River meanders through there. The riverside is overgrown with shrubs and the twilight is everywhere. Only then can you feel a little bit of Altay.

About 100 kilometers north of Qiakutu Town on National Highway 216, I turned right from the fork there into Qinghe territory. The Sandaohaizi there is really charming, and the silent mountains and pastures are mottled in the magnificent sunset. Flickering, on the green alpine pastures, there are groups of cattle, sheep and horses, making people feel that the nomadic life in ancient times has been postponed until now.In the depths of the silent mountains, the deserted and abandoned Genghis Khan Avenue is still majestic, and it seems that it is still extending in history, and the history close by can only be seen from a distance, and cannot be approached.

I left Qinghe, drove westward into Fuyun, and entered Hualin Park in Keketuohai. The famous Irtysh River started from there, blue and moving, and flowed north through Altay without looking back.The valleys on both sides of the river are quiet and dark, with lush forests and bright wild flowers, creating a European scenery.In autumn, the forest is even more colorful and colorful.After leaving Fuyun County, heading west, you enter the territory of Fuhai. The beautiful Ulungu Lake leans over and lies quietly on the Altay grassland.The lake surface of Ulungu Lake is open, and various water birds such as swans, cranes, wild ducks, and seagulls fly in groups on the islands in the center of the lake.In the evening, the surrounding scenery is picturesque, and the exotic style is even more charming.I soaked in the hot springs in Alxa for two hours, and fell asleep, almost choked to death by the water.

Kanas is a natural and primitive ecological land that has not been polluted, a plant kingdom full of green onions, and an animal paradise where all things thrive.Kanas Lake is clear and blue, and it is a spiritual body of water.On the south bank of Kanas, Mongolian Tuva people live together in Tuva Village. It is said that they are the direct descendants of Genghis Khan and have lived in Kanas for hundreds of years. I stayed in the Altay region for five days, visited the Baihu Lake, Qianhu Lake, Mingsha Mountain, and also visited the Aktubek colorful river bank, Kuxugen Rock Paintings, Mirror Spring, Red Birch Forest, Qidharen Microlithic Site , Dogarte Rock Paintings, Ulast River Valley... In the distant Altay, the beautiful scenery is always page after page, and it is a hasty and hasty travel.No matter how sloppy the people who come here are, how quickly they walk this road, there will always be something in their hearts that will always be preserved in their hearts, making you recall some scattered pictures on the way in your infinite reverie.Altay is far away. Its remoteness is not only geographically remote, but also temporally distant. It retains ancient information and refuses to be disturbed by the noisy world. I don’t know how many years this tranquility and simplicity can be maintained. , because I have met many tourists on the road, and in the birch forest of Keketuohai, I also met two poachers with shotguns on their backs. What made me angry was that these two bastards looked like rats. , but the shotgun in his hand was a "Remington" brand, what a fucking good gun.It seems that within a few years if this continues, this last piece of pure land will be destroyed in the hands of these bastards.

My laptop is running out of battery, I have to find a place to charge it, so I will stop writing here, please save these words on a floppy disk, I will continue to write, and I will be able to put together a collection of essays in the future Why do some people's prose collections sell so expensively in Luoyang and earn a lot of money?The real master of prose has not yet emerged. Email 2 from the West: I rested in Kuitun City for two days, and then drove towards the northwest at a speed of 110 kilometers per hour. Those black Gobi, brown-yellow mountain folds, white snow-capped mountains, green forests, and rushing rivers rushed out of the car window. However, as if I had just had an illusory dream, an undercurrent of life crept into my heart at this time-this is the Ili River Valley in central Asia, which is famous for its vastness and richness. Its sloping pastures and hardy firs tell us , here is an unusual place on the arid continent.

The beautiful Gongnais River is the cradle of the most famous grassland in the Yili River Valley - the Gongnais Prairie. This river feeds the vast grassland in a unique way.Everything in it, water and shore, fog and waves, seems to be born for the grassland, not only stretching out to every piece of green sea with soft and stretched limbs, but also touching every tree in the depths of the grassland with palm-like river forks. Small grass, that small tidal lake also formed a natural reservoir, dyeing the grass green... Famous for its wild apples, Guozigou is the first channel from the Junggar Basin to cross the Tianshan Mountains and enter the Ili River Valley. It has a total length of 70 kilometers, with gorgeous summer flowers and dangerous mountain roads.It got its name because the ditch is full of blooming flowers and abundant wild fruits.Every year in late summer and early autumn, you can see different scenery throughout the year here.

The never-fading topic in all the texts about Yili is the beautiful Nalati.There is the ancient Tianshan tunnel, and thousands of Sai people's tombs are distributed along the way, implying how lonely and frequent the ancient grassland people used to travel to and from this famous passage.Dubu grassland, because of the large area of ​​slope, makes the field of vision clear and wide. When you overlook the interlaced rivers and continuous forests from a high place, you will think that if it does not contain the deepest and sad soul, this grassland will never ooze out like this. Intense and captivating shade.The wooden houses, yurts, thatched sheds, and sheep pens here... seem to be deliberately lowering their breath, waiting for the ups and downs of the grassland, panting lightly, and all the traces of human beings have faded unconsciously after scratching the grassland. , follow the melody of Nalati and enter the eternal harmony.

This is: the elegance and romance of the west. Email from West 3: The driving trip in the western Tianshan Mountains is very pleasant. I have crossed the southern Tianshan Mountains and entered the Tarim Basin. I stayed in Korla City for one night and arrived at Luntai at noon the next day. The first time I knew this ancient city was when I was a teenager. There is a line in Tang poems, frontier poet Cen Shen's "Bai Xuege Sends Judge Wu Back to Beijing": The east gate of Luntai sends you off, and the Tianshan Road is covered with snow at this time.The Luntai mentioned in the poem is here, but the ancient city of Luntai has been lost in the Taklamakan Desert, and the history of the current Luntai City is not too long ago. Obviously, this is not the Luntai City I am looking for.

Thankfully, I found on a tourist map that the Guluntai city ruins are only less than 30 kilometers away from the desert road in a straight line. This surprised me and decided to take a look.I inquired around the city, wanting to spend money to hire a guide, but it turns out that there are quite a few people who want to earn money, but none of them know the way, and most of them have never even heard of the Guluntai City in the desert. I couldn't find a guide, so I had to go on the road alone. I bought two boxes of mineral water and two barrels of spare gasoline, and drove a "Cherokee" into the desert without hesitation.I thought there were only bare sand dunes in the desert, but it is not the case.

It's much more complicated than I imagined. I headed southwest along an unknown old river channel, observing the direction with a compass from time to time. The speed of the car was only 20 kilometers per hour. Here, deserts and deserts intersect. I have to carefully walk around the sparse red willow sandbags and dead Populus euphratica forests on the valley platform. There is a strong breath of death, and its tragic effect is shocking for a long time. I don’t know whether it’s because the map is inaccurate or because the terrain is too complicated. The straight line on the map is less than 30 kilometers away. I walked for more than six hours. The odometer shows that I have driven 150 kilometers. There is no trace of the ancient city of Luntai yet.By the way, I have gained experience driving in the desert, originally I thought that all dunes are soft, and the desert travelers in the common movies are trudging, and every foot is deep in the quicksand.In fact, I found that there are two types of sand dunes. Except for the soft ones, most of the sand dunes are relatively hard, but there is floating sand about one centimeter thick on the surface, and it is not difficult to walk on it.I heard from a geologist in the Tarim Oilfield that many of the topographic maps of the desert they used were drawn in the 1950s. For decades, most of the sand dunes have maintained their original appearance.

When I almost gave up on this operation, the ruins of Guluntai City appeared. Its appearance was similar to what I had imagined. Fangcheng covers an area of ​​more than 100,000 square meters. The east and west walls are vaguely distinguishable. The streets in the city are well-defined, the boundaries of government offices and private houses are clear, and a river passes through the city.Looking up at the old city, the walls are broken and crumbling.There are still a few well-preserved houses in the city, but without the roof, there are still tall doors, pillars, and vermilion lacquered beams, showing the luxury of the year.There is also a courtyard where the pillars of the house are twisted and slanted, and the poplar wood gate is still half-closed and half-opened, as if the owner has just left the house and will come back in a while, which makes people feel horrified.The ruins of the ancient city of Luntai are not as famous as the ancient cities of Loulan, Jiaohe, and Niya. Because they are closer to the edge of the desert, they are not like Loulan and other ancient cities in the hinterland of the desert. It is unknown, and it is said that its archaeological value is not too great. I sat silently for two hours on an earthen platform overlooking the ancient city. At this time, the sunset was brilliant, and the whole ancient city was bathed in blood. I couldn't help thinking of the saying we used to say: blood is romantic.The ancient city is surrounded by death-like silence. In this eternal silence, I seem to have a certain feeling... Gao was very angry with Zhong Yuemin's behavior. This guy has been away for more than two months. Here comes an essay for everyone.In his last phone call, he said that he was about to enter Qinghai from Xinjiang and take the Kunlun Mountain line. He expected that his mobile phone would lose its function in the Gobi Desert area. Don’t worry if you are high. He will call at an appropriate time to report his whereabouts. .After the call was made, the guy disappeared and seemed to have turned into a wisp of water vapor, evaporating in the Gobi Desert in the west.Originally, Gao had a natural attitude towards this kind of inhuman behavior. She knew what Zhong Yuemin was from the day she met Zhong Yuemin, and she was able to get together with him because she had enough psychology for his behavior. Prepare, as long as nothing happens to this guy, let him go.But what Zhong Yuemin did this time was really a little too much. He has not moved for more than a month, which is too outrageous. Whether you are dead or alive, there should be news, right? Zhong Yuemin finally called back, his voice in the microphone was very low, as if it came from a very distant space: "Gao, I'm Zhong Yuemin." "You still remember me? Thank God, I finally remembered to call back, Zhong Yuemin, you really touched me, where are you now?" Gao asked holding back his breath. "Hey, fuck, it's hard to say. I met a group of Hoh Xil anti-poaching team members in Qinghai. They just had a shootout with poachers. One team member was seriously injured. I chatted with them all night, and I think these guys are pretty good It's easy, dealing with poachers in the wilderness all year round, with insufficient funds, extremely low salary, and life-threatening danger at all times. It is said that there are many sharpshooters among the poachers, some of whom were demobilized from the army, and started a gun battle , the anti-poaching team often suffers. I couldn’t sit still when I heard it. Hoh Xil is so lively. Why did it sound like a story in a western movie? So I decided to join the anti-poaching team as a volunteer. I also demonstrated my marksmanship to them, and the captain showed great enthusiasm at that time and approved me to join the anti-poaching team. This way of life is very suitable for me. In a vast wasteland, I and a bunch of rough The man carried an automatic rifle, drove around in a jeep, and had a shootout with poachers from time to time. It was such an exciting day..." Gao said in a tearful voice, "Yuemin, you only care about having fun, what should I do? I don't want to hinder your way of life, but I'm a woman, and I miss you, what should I do?" "I haven't finished yet, can you listen first? As soon as I joined the patrol, I found a group of poachers. These bastards did too much. Four people killed more than 600 Tibetan antelopes. They skinned the Tibetan antelope and threw the carcasses on the wilderness. The dead bodies are strewn all over the field. It's a horrible thing to look at. For a little money, it's so outrageous. It's fucking... well, let's not talk, let me tell you something Seriously, I'm out of money, can you send me some money? We're on a tight budget here, and I got in with a "Cherokee," which is the best car we have here, but now The "Cherokee" is already in disrepair. It was lying on the ground yesterday. We have no money to repair it. Brothers usually live very hard. I bought food with the little money I brought. Now I only have 20 cents in my pocket. I called you from a small town on the edge of Hoh Xil, look..." Gao's tears finally flowed down: "You homeless man, let me tell you what's good about you? Listening to your words, you are so weak, are you already starving? Yuemin, hold on, I'll take a plane tomorrow Xining, I will rush to you as quickly as possible, just wait for me..." (full text)