2020.10.11 (D6), the two-day stay in Dunhuang is over, and today I will go to Mangya, which is a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province. Driving route: Dunhuang → National Highway G215 (red grid line) → Aksai County, Jiuquan City → Lenghu Town, Mangya City → Provincial Highway S305 → Cugualiang → National Highway G315 (Xisha Line) → Mangya City (Huatugou Town ). According to the data provided by the electronic map, the whole journey is 558 kilometers, and it takes 7 hours and 33 minutes to drive. Including lunch and sightseeing along the way, it is estimated that it will be close to dark to reach Mangya.
Leave Dunhuang Hotel at 9:10, go west along Yangguan Middle Road, pass the statue of "Bounce Pipa" at 9:13, she is a landmark of Dunhuang. 9:16 Cross the Dang River via the West Bridge and drive onto West Yangguan Road. The scenery along the Dang River is beautiful, and you will see a hotel with a unique shape called "Jinjiang Inn". After leaving the urban area, take the national highway G215 and drive towards Yangguan. This is also the road we traveled yesterday when we visited Yumenguan and Yangguan.
9:35 Pass by the "Dunhuang Ancient City" film and television base, and soon saw a tall "lighthouse" on the right side of the road. It is the famous "Super Mirror Power Station" in Dunhuang, which is China's first 100-megawatt molten salt tower Photothermal power station. The "Lighthouse" is actually a heat-absorbing molten salt tower used by the power station to absorb solar energy. There are 12,000 heliostats under the tower, which gather sunlight to the top of the tower, heat the molten salt in the tower, and then use the heat of the molten salt to turn the water converted to steam power generation. It is said that even at night, the molten salt tower can provide sufficient reserve heat to keep the power plant running normally. Dunhuang is dry and rainless, with strong sunshine, which is especially suitable for solar power generation. This power station is the largest solar thermal power station in the world today, and its radiant tower top has become a famous landscape in Dunhuang today.
At 9:47, I arrived at the intersection of "West Thousand Buddha Caves", turned left and got off the national highway, and drove up the fork road leading to the scenic spot. I had a closed door yesterday, and I will try again today. The West Thousand Buddha Caves were excavated on the north wall of the Danghe Canyon. The Danghe Canyon is a canyon located on the Gobi Desert. You can only see the flat Gobi, and you can't detect a deep valley hidden under the flat land. The car arrived at the parking lot. After getting off the car, I couldn’t find the entrance of the scenic spot. Yesterday, I mistook a small door for the entrance of the scenic spot. Today, I found out after inquiring that it was the exit of the scenic spot. The entrance is the three signs at the west end of the parking lot. Next to it, there is a downhill passage leading directly to the bottom of the Danghe Canyon. However, if you don't look carefully, you can only see three signs on the parking lot, and you can't detect that there is a downhill road next to the signs.
"West Thousand Buddha Cave" is named because it is located in the west of Mogao Grottoes (commonly known as Thousand Buddha Cave). The time span has gone through the Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, Song, Shazhou Uighurs, and Yuan Dynasty. It is an important part of Dunhuang art, and it is attached to the Mogao Grottoes and is listed as a national key cultural relic protection unit. The current (Dunhuang tourist season) opening hours are 9:00-17:30 (ticket sales stop at 16:30). We arrived at 18:00 yesterday, and it is not surprising that we were shut down.
Go downhill along the corridor and walk into the deep canyon. The ticket office is only a small wooden house. I guess there should not be too many tourists here. The full price of tickets is 30 yuan per person. I am over 70 years old and free of charge. In the canyon, there are verdant green shades and towering trees covering the sky and the sun. If you want to come here, it should be a place with abundant water.
The Western Thousand Buddha Caves are under the jurisdiction of the Dunhuang Research Institute (Mogao Grottoes). The operating purpose is mainly research and protection, supplemented by tourism. The guides are also from the research institute. The caves are usually closed, and the temperature inside the cave is quite low. A young lady wearing a long down coat led us to visit. Every cave had to be unlocked, and the cave door was locked after the visit. The caves here are all small, and the content is mainly murals, which did not leave much impression on me. However, the Danghe Canyon where the grottoes are located is quite spectacular. The valley wall is like a long high wall.
10:45 On the ground again, X.J. flew the drone on the parking lot. The aerial view showed that the West Thousand Buddha Caves Scenic Area is a small oasis on the vast Gobi Desert. The surrounding land is vast and barren, and almost no grass grows. The side scenery is unique, full of green shade and full of vitality. However, because the towering trees here are all grown in the canyon, we can only see the tops of the trees exposed in the parking lot, and feel that they are just some inconspicuous "small trees". Standing on the parking lot, you can also overlook the "Dunhuang Solar Thermal Power Station". However, from this angle, there are two light spots in front of you. Obviously, this power station has two molten salt heat-absorbing towers.
11:02 Leave the West Thousand Buddha Cave Scenic Area, go westbound on National Highway G215, and soon arrive at the Y445 (Yangguan Road)/G215 three-fork intersection. Continue westward from here, which is the Yangguan we visited yesterday. Today we are going from Turn left here and head south towards Aksai. This time I came to the Northwest, since I got off the plane in Lanzhou, I basically repeated the old road I walked in 2008. However, from now on, it is all a new journey, and I have never walked before.
Going south along the national highway G215, the Danghe Reservoir appears on the left, and the railway is on the right, leading to Golmud, Qinghai. At 11:21, we drove past the intersection of Provincial Highway S302 (leading to Subei Mongolian Autonomous County), and then we drove into the real desert. The sand hills on both sides of the road are undulating, and the railway is still parallel on our right side. Walking out of the desert at 11:40, "Yardang" began to appear on the side of the road. Obviously, the landform of Yadan is the prelude to the evolution of land weathering into a desert.
At 11:42, we arrived at Hongliuwan Town in Aksay Kazak Autonomous County. This is a small oasis in the desert and the residence of the Aksay County Government. A huge "1954 (Aksay Kazak Autonomous County)" stood beside the road. sign. "1954" is the year when Aksai was first established as a county. The county government was first established in Zhuanjing Town, Boluo, at the foot of Dangjin Mountain, and moved to Hongliuwan Town in 1998. Aksaiha Autonomous County is under the jurisdiction of Jiuquan City, Gansu Province. It is located on the border of Gansu, Qinghai and New Zealand provinces (regions), with a large area and few people. The territory of 31,000 square kilometers has a population of just over 10,000, and Kazakhs account for 35%, mainly engaged in animal husbandry.
Driving into the county town, the national highway G215 turned into an urban section, and the surrounding scenery changed immediately. Greenery can be seen everywhere. There is a tall statue of a warrior riding a horse on the roadside square, presumably it should be a certain hero of the Kazakh nationality. At 11:45, we drove past the cross-street archway of "Aksai People Welcome You", and then arrived at the intersection of G215/G571. There is a "Halal Dun Laishun Restaurant" here, and we stopped for lunch. The restaurant has a small facade, but it is very spacious to enter. Each person has a bowl of beef noodles and a plate of lamb with scallions. Compared with the mutton with scallions that I ate at the Dunhuang Night Market the day before yesterday, I feel that this place is more cost-effective. .
The national highway G215 goes around the outer edge of the county, and the main urban area is on the right side of the national highway. We drove along the national highway, but we did not actually enter the real urban area. At 12:20, after lunch, I set off on the road and drove towards the direction of "Dangjin Mountain". As soon as I left the city, the scenery changed drastically. The surrounding area was empty, and the trees immediately became very sparse.
Moving forward, it becomes even more desolate, with endless vegetation on both sides of the road, sparse vegetation, and not a single tree. Right in front of the road is "Dangjin Mountain", which is the intersection of Qilian Mountain and Altun Mountain. The two long mountain ranges in the northwest of my country are bounded by a valley in Dangjin Mountain. The Qilian Mountains are in the east and the Altun Mountains are in the west. . National Highway G215 goes over the Dangjin Pass (3,648 meters above sea level) along this valley, connecting the Hexi Corridor with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Continuing forward, we drove up the fan-shaped alluvial slope at the foot of Dangjin Mountain. It may be because of the alpine snowmelt and the relatively dense weeds on the slope. It should be the pasture of the local Kazakhs. At 12:40, I saw a harbor-style parking area on the side of the road. I drove in and stopped for a while. The so-called "harbour-style" parking area means that the road surface of the national highway protrudes outwards, forming a strip-shaped area that is large enough to place many large vehicles. There are no service facilities inside, only a trash can.
Arriving at the foot of Dangjin Mountain at 12:47, I saw a fork in the road leading to "Boluo Zhuanjing Town". At the entrance of the fork road, there is a steel frame shaped like a movie projector, with red characters "Film and Television Base" on it. The movie "Nine-story Demon Tower" was filmed here. Looking from the national highway, the buildings in the county town still stand tall, but the buildings are empty, and now they are in ruins. It is said that the relocation was due to the poor drinking water source here, and the new county is Hongliuwan Town where we just stayed and had lunch. After the relocation of the county seat, Boluo Zhuanjing Town was also dismantled, and the buildings in the city were abandoned in the wilderness. Later, the film and television crew of "Nine-story Demon Tower" took a fancy to this deserted city without management and chose it as a shooting base. It was demolished for filming. A large number of private houses have also been added to some scenery that did not exist here, such as traffic guard boxes, gas stations, etc., making this abandoned city a unique local tourist attraction in Aksai. We are short of time today, so we just looked at it from a distance and took pictures, without entering this "ghost town".
From the intersection of Zhuanjing Town, Boluo, you can go to the "Changcaogou Public Security Checkpoint" not far away. There is also the "G215 Line Emergency Security Point" of the Jiuquan Highway Bureau, equipped with public toilets and other facilities, where you can stop for a rest. If a passing vehicle encounters a breakdown, it should also be able to get help. However, although notices were posted at the checkpoint asking passing vehicles to stop for inspection, there was no one on duty inside the checkpoint, and no one answered our call to stop, so we boldly "passed through the checkpoint".
Going forward, even if you enter the big mountain, when Jinshan is east-west, its north slope connects the Hexi Corridor, with a large drop, with overlapping peaks and steep mountains, while the south slope connects with the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with a small drop and relatively gentle mountains. We climbed up a valley with a small river, but at the moment there was no water. The steep valley twists and turns, and the road turns with steep slopes and many bends. Along the way, there are many blind roads for avoiding danger. It is said that the section of National Highway G215 from Dangjin Pass to Aksai County is known as the "Devil Highway" and is listed as one of the top ten dangerous road sections in China. However, compared with the curves and dangerous roads we walked across the Hengduan Mountains in western Sichuan in 2019, it feels like a "little witch".
Intersection with the railway at 12:57, and then another intersection. The railway leads to the direction of Dachaidan and Golmud in Qinghai. At 13:08, I drove through the Dangjin Pass, and then even set foot on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the field of vision became very wide, and there were some low hills in sight, so I couldn't feel that it was a pass of a big mountain in front of me.
After crossing Dangjin Mountain, you will immediately see the northern edge of the Qaidam Basin. All you can see along the way is the Gobi Desert. However, such an environment is particularly suitable for wind power generation. At 13:35, we saw a huge array of windmills, and there should be hundreds of them in total.
The Altun Mountains lie on the right side of the national road. It is the boundary mountain between the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang and the Qaidam Basin in Qinghai. The main peak in the east (Altun Mountain) is 5,828 meters above sea level. There, you can also see two snow-capped ice peaks. At 14:06, I saw a large area of water in front of the left. According to the map, I judged it to be "Dasugan Lake". Dasugan Lake is about 60 kilometers away from Dangjin Pass. This place is still under the jurisdiction of Aksaiha Autonomous County, Jiuquan City, Gansu Province.
Moving on, windmills began to appear again at 14:28, and soon we arrived at a three-way turntable, where we followed the national highway G215 and turned left and headed south. At 14:42, we saw the sign of "Lenghu Wind Power Station" on the side of the road, which indicated that we had entered Qinghai, which is under the jurisdiction of Lenghu Town, Mangya City, Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. Mangya in Qinghai is similar to Akesai in Gansu Province, and is also sparsely populated. It connects Akesai, Gansu to the east, and Ruoqiang County, Xinjiang to the west, with a total area of nearly 50,000 square kilometers and a population of only 60,000. It governs three towns of Lenghu, Huatugou and Mangya, and the municipal government is located in Huatugou Town.
Continuing to the south, the ruins of the original "Lenghu City" suddenly appeared on the right side of the road. When we entered the abandoned city at 14:50, the first thing that caught our attention was the two stone tablets at the intersection of entering the city. The first is the vertical monument "Lenghu Petroleum Base Site", inscribed "China Petroleum Enterprise Spiritual Education Base" and "Lenghu Patriotism Education Base"; the second is a horizontal monument, using a short article to describe this abandoned oil city past experience. The article introduces: Lenghu Oilfield was originally an important oil base in my country. Tens of thousands of oil workers and their families once worked and lived here. In 1959, the State Council decided to establish "Lenghu City" here. However, after the 1960s, with the eastward shift of my country's oil development strategy and the gradual depletion of local oil, the operation of the Cold Lake Oilfield gradually fell into difficulty. In particular, Gasikule Oilfield (Huatugou, Mangya City) was successfully developed in 1977 and Qinghai Oilfield "Dunhuang Oil Base" was built in the 1980s. The small town gradually became deserted, and eventually turned into an empty city. However, history will never forget that the petroleum industry in Qinghai originated from Lenghu Lake, which also made indelible contributions to the economic development of Gansu, Qinghai, and Tibet, and to the national defense construction of the northwest frontier.
Driving into the town, a large number of abandoned buildings appeared in the field of vision. The roads were spacious and criss-crossed, and rows of houses were row upon row. However, all the houses had no roofs, and beams, gates, door frames, window frames, etc. All the wooden components are gone, only rows of adobe walls still stand neatly by the roadside. It used to be a place where tens of thousands of oil ancestors dragged their families to donate oil to the motherland, but now people have gone to the house, leaving only this large area of ruins. There are still writings on some walls, such as "This is our home", and some house owners have returned visits after leaving. The latest message we saw is "Song's former residence 2019.9.7", the owner of the Song family was a year ago Had a return visit here. The words "Oil Town" are also placed on the ground with adobe bricks. I don't know when and who did it?
Reversing time and space to more than 50 years ago, Daqing Oilfield has not yet been discovered. Lenghu Oilfield, Karamay Oilfield, Yumen Oilfield, and Chuanzhong Oilfield are listed as the four major oil fields in China. This town was once full of people and full of life. Schools, Hospitals, cinemas, hotels, and shopping malls are all available, and it became a municipal administrative unit in China at that time. Today, some buildings still have handwriting, which can make people roughly guess their original purpose. We saw the words "Mining Area Trading Company", and guessed that there should have been the word "Lenghu" in front of "Mining Area", which should have been a department store back then. There is also a rather large ruin that looks like an auditorium or a theater, and the walls still remain "to fight for the great (great?) leader Chairman Mao (light?)". Faced with these incomplete words, I can’t help but feel a lot of emotion. Although the small town has been abandoned, these passionate words are still silently reminding future generations, don’t forget the passionate years of "I donate oil for the motherland" in the past .
In front of the "Mining Trading Company" is an open square, where X.J. chose to fly the drone. Overlooked from the air, the roads of the small town are straight and wide, and the houses are clustered in groups, neatly planned and formed into blocks of residential quarters, which shows the prosperity of the year. We didn't go in-depth, just walked casually in a small area near the entrance of the small town. The T-shaped intersection in the first photo below is the entrance of the small town, and the pedestrian in the upper left corner of the third photo is himself.
15:22 Leaving the oil town, turning around and looking back, the abandoned city under the snow-capped mountains also has a desolate beauty. In fact, it is not a bad thing for the town to be abandoned. The oil workers moved westward because of the development of the Gasikule Oilfield, so there is the current Mangya City, where the working and living conditions are better than here. The completion of the Dunhuang oil base has caused most of the employees' family members to move eastward, and they are now living a better life. Moreover, "Cold Lake" itself is just a gorgeous transformation. Although the oil resources are exhausted, the wind power is inexhaustible. We look over the abandoned city and see huge windmills turning slowly under the snow-capped mountains. The lake will still have a bright future, which is what the locals call "cold lake, not cold!".
Leave the abandoned city and continue southward along G215, and drive into the current Lenghu Town after 10 minutes. It is one of the three towns under the jurisdiction of Mangya (the other two towns are Huatugou Town and Mangya Town). The population is only a few hundred, but the facilities in the town are quite complete. There are hotels, restaurants, and street greening. It makes it hard for me to imagine that this is a deserted Gobi town hundreds of kilometers away. We walked through the town, and there was a rainbow-shaped "Mars Town" gate at the exit of the town, implying that the surroundings of the town are like the surface of Mars, and there is also a "Mars Camp" deep in the nearby desert, which is a famous local attraction.
Drive out of the town at 15:36, the road is divided into two forks at the intersection of the town, on the left is the national highway G215, which continues to extend to the southeast, leading to Golmud, we turn right to leave the national highway, turn into the provincial highway S305, turn southwest, and drive to In the direction of Cugualiang and Mangya. As soon as the car drove out of the town, the landscape in front of me changed drastically. The clean and tidy city streets just now turned into desolate desert roads. There are signs on the side of the road showing that it is 147 kilometers away from Cugualiang and 285 kilometers away from Huatugou. We are going to Mangya City, also known as Huatugou Town, X.J. estimates that we will have to drive for more than four hours.
Cars are speeding on the wasteland without seeing any vegetation. The land is severely desertified, and the wind blows sand up. The road is often covered with fine sand, causing the wheels to slip easily. There are also warnings on the roadside, "Driving carefully on the road with sand accumulation". At 15:44, it was found that there was a large area of Yadan landform in front of it. Groups and patches of tall mounds were scattered in a wide and long valley. The mounds were extended and arranged according to the direction of the valley. It looks like a huge fleet is sailing in a wide river. "Yadan" is also called "wind-eroded forest", which is a peculiar wind-eroded landform. We looked from a high place and found that there are many car tracks in the Yadan area, obviously we can enter it for a visit, so we hurried off the road and entered the Yadan Valley, carefully following the wheel tracks of the predecessors slowly. OK. In this deserted place with no mobile phone signal, there is no big mistake in being careful. If the car gets stuck in the sand, it will be a big trouble. Looking at these tall mounds at close range, they have various shapes, some are like castles, some are like warships, some are like various animals, and there is one that looks like the Egyptian Sphinx. The uncanny workmanship of nature really amazed us both.
Leaving Yadan area at 16:02, returning to the provincial road S305 and continuing on, and then passing a large saline-alkali barren beach, the surface is covered by a thin layer of white salt crust, guess this is what Baidu Maps calls " Great Salt Flats Independent Natural Area". Going forward, the salt flats are behind, and the endless Gobi and desert appear again in the field of vision. At 16:33, I saw a simple dirt road on the left, facing the south, and went straight into the depths of the desert. Soon after, I saw the sign of "Obo Liang" on the side of the road. Obviously, the dirt road that went straight into the depths of the desert just now was " Mars Highway 1", leading to the "Mars Camp".
At 17:34, drive to the triangle turntable of Cugualiang, where the provincial road S305 ends. The roads on the left and right sides in front of you are the national road G315 (Xisha Line), and turning right to the west leads to Huatugou Town (Mangya City District) ), turning left and heading east is the direction leading to Yuka (Dachaidan). At this moment, we are going to turn right and head west to Mangya City, and two days later we will turn back from Mangya, pass here again, and head east to Dachaidan. "Cucumber beam" is a high ridge in the desert. Looking from the beam, the provincial road S305 leading to Lenghu has a relatively high terrain and a relatively flat ground, with an endless view. The national road G315 leading to Mangya is in a downward slope, with undulating ground. We drove to Mangya, and encountered many bends and downhills along the way.
At 18:08, we arrived at the Laomanya parking area. There is an orange-red "Laomangya Work Area" courtyard and a public toilet. There is nothing but the vast Gobi. However, I heard later that in the early days of the oil battle in the Qaidam Basin, a large number of oil workers were stationed here, and Mangya Town was set up here in the meaning of the boundless sky. The administrative organization of Mangya Town also moved westward accordingly, and a brand new Mangya Town was rebuilt about 50 kilometers west of the current Huatugou Town (the residence of Mangya City Government). Mangya. We stopped to go to the toilet. Although it is located in a desert, the public toilets are quite clean and should be managed by a special person.
Continuing westward, at 19:08, we saw the sign "Welcome to Mangya City", and a dirt mountain began to appear on the right side of the road, with a strange shape, always accompanying us. The slope of the earth mountain is full of slender gullies, densely packed down the slope, and the shape is curved like the petals of chrysanthemums. Therefore, the oil workers in the early years called these gullies "Huatugou", and the name of Huatugou Town came from there. Come on. However, from a geological point of view, these gullies are actually a kind of Yardang landform, which is created by the continuous Gobi wind and sand erosion of the earth mountains. As the sun sets, the weird and rugged earth mountains are bathed in golden sunlight, and the scenery is also excellent. At 19:20, the sun went down, and we drove into the oilfield area. Mangya is a city that thrives on oil. You can see tireless "kowtow pumps" working hard everywhere beside the road and on the hillside.
Driving into the city at 19:30, we finally arrived at Mangya before dark and checked into the "Pinghua Building" on Kunlun Road, which is a three-star hotel. Dinner is served at the Roujiamo fast food restaurant near the hotel. Each person has a large bowl of wontons and a piece of Roujiamo, which feels pretty good. The evening temperature in Mangya this season is already close to zero, but the hotel room is well heated, but there is no humidifier, and the air is a bit dry.
