1. Start the journey of desire
Desire is a very strange thing, completely out of the control of reason. Wishes are also very personal, and one person's wishes may mean nothing to another. But realizing one's wish is everyone's ultimate wish.
In the past three years, every year I have thought about whether I should go to see the autumn in Xinjiang? But just as I was thinking about it and hesitating, the short autumn in Xinjiang came to an end. As a native of Inner Mongolia, I have lived in Beijing for more than 20 years. I am so familiar with autumn in the north, but autumn in Xinjiang still lures me like a beautiful dream. I don't know the reason for this wish.
It's just that this autumn, unlike before, I ended my 30-year career and became a retired cadre with honor. This is my own choice, and I have sufficient psychological preparation, but at the moment when I received the official notice of retirement, my heart suddenly seemed to turn into a ball of cotton, light and empty, and I lost my center of gravity. This unexpected feeling frightened me, and I was so uneasy about the relief brought by leaving a familiar job.
Between mental preparation and acceptance of the facts, sometimes it is not as simple as stepping over a threshold, but more exciting like bungee jumping. Standing on a high platform and taking a lot of long breaths cannot prevent the involuntary scream when falling.
In order to appease my unbalanced heart, my first reaction was that I had to do something. Without thinking, I went to check the air tickets from Beijing to Urumqi.
A week later, I arrived in Xinjiang, which I had longed for.
This is the first time I have traveled alone, and it is also the first time I have traveled without saying anything. Eight days later, on October 1, I returned to Beijing. The moment I entered the house, I realized that the trip to Xinjiang was also the first time that I took the initiative to realize my life wishes!
2. Look at the mountains, the water, and yourself
One person's distance is often nothing but another person's window. One person's mediocrity can sometimes become another person's poetry.
Traveling is more in the car, especially in the vast Xinjiang, from one scenic spot to another, often separated by hundreds of kilometers of vast land.
It took me 20 hours to travel from Urumqi to Kanas. All kinds of waiting between trains, cars and train cars. The most interesting thing during the period was the snowflakes from time to time on the road from Beitun Railway Station to Kanas Scenic Area. And the sunlight has been passing through the dark clouds in the east and west, illuminating the crystal of each snowflake. Sunshine, dark clouds, snowflakes, and yellow and green grass all set off against each other without any sense of dissonance, making the original ordinary scene more rare and wonderful.
Kanas scenic area is very beautiful. Snow-white mountain tops, yellow and green forests, and clear milky blue lake water, dotted with mist floating in the morning light, really look like a fairyland. Of course, I don't know what Wonderland is like, but when words are scarce, this word can make the scenery full of imagination.
Kanas is the hometown of Tuva people. The tour guide has been introducing the culture of the Tuva people, and also took us into a Tuva wooden house purely for tourists, and listened to the performance of the Tuva musical instrument Sur (also called Chuer) and a few songs. folk song. The Tuva people who received us wore Mongolian costumes, spoke fluent Chinese, and teased tourists skillfully, obviously very competent for their work.
I don't remember anything, and I don't even intend to remember anything. The ancient tradition of the Tuva people has become an eternal old legend with the footsteps of more and more tourists, and the legend is just a beautiful interpretation. I believe that today's Tuva people who no longer hunt and rely on tourism to survive, the real life is better than countless legends.
The developed tourism industry has eliminated the birth of new legends, and even tourism itself has become the same. At present, the most important thing is to raise the camera or the indispensable mobile phone in your hand. And there are always so many annoying tourists in each viewfinder. Even if I deliberately choose to travel before the National Day holiday, it is difficult to find a clean scenery with no people as the background.
I don't hate tourists at all, I'm one of them. Like many people, the most sincere admiration for the beautiful scenery in front of me is to stretch out my hand that is too cold to stretch and stretch, and keep pressing the shutter on the phone, as if once I receive the beautiful scenery into the phone, I can bring it back. exclusive to home. Although I know that when posting to Moments, I must choose the one that I have the most beautiful photo of myself, not the one with the most beautiful scenery, and it will be beautiful.
On the way back to Beitun Railway Station, I visited the colorful beach for an hour. I felt that the time was too short to even take pictures. Although it only takes five minutes to see the whole picture of the colorful beach scenic spot, it seems that if you don't take a picture of every tourist stop specially built, this scenic spot will be in vain.
The time I visited the scenic spots in the next two days became extraordinarily abundant, because I lost the interest in taking pictures, and the people in the same company didn't need me to take pictures.
The mountain of Huoyanshan is really red, but it is bare, not beautiful and not spectacular enough. I doubt that if there is no story of Journey to the West, this place will not become a tourist area at all, but it is worth seeing because it is special. The special thing is not only in the so-called scenic spots with signs, but also after walking into the red mountains, I found that although there is no grass on the mountains, in the valleys with flowing streams, there are not only green trees and people, but also a thousand-year-old hidden. Group of stone caves.
This is Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves. The Buddha cave is built in the red soil, located at the foot of the Flame Mountain, 45 kilometers east of Turpan City, on the cliff on the west bank of Mutougou. There are 83 caves, 57 of which are extant, and more than a dozen are open for tourists to visit.
According to reports, the Bezeklik Thousand-Buddha Cave was dug in the late Southern and Northern Dynasties, and experienced seven centuries of long years in the Tang, Five Dynasties, Song and Yuan Dynasties. However, all I saw were incomplete statues and murals. Each cave has a special introduction that it was stolen and destroyed by someone from Russia, Germany, Britain, Japan and other countries at the beginning of this century, but the one who carved the Chinese characters "come here" on the colorful murals should be our compatriots Bar.
I don't know anything about Buddhism, sculptures, and murals, so I also visited here, but I don't like lettering, and now even photography is prohibited here. What I am even more amazed at is the vitality of water. Just because of the small river in the valley, a culture that has been passed down for thousands of years has been bred here.
Grape Valley has passed the grape harvest season. But in order not to be completely disappointed for latecomers, there are still bunches of white and purple grapes hanging on the high grape racks in the main scenic area. Because it is already ripe, the white grapes are yellowish, and the purple grapes have become darker, which arouses the desire to taste it even more. I don’t know how sweet it will be on the tongue. After finally tasting it, his tongue stood firm, but he couldn't help but speak words that deserved his reputation.
Although the taste is special and sweet, the vines and branches and leaves of the grapes are not particularly different from other grapes, and in the autumn after the fruit is harvested, every leaf shows the tiredness and wilting after the task is completed, without a trace. There is no longer the enthusiasm to prop up a prosperous autumn landscape. My focus is more on the gates of those local houses. The faded patterns full of ethnic customs on these gates remind me more prominently that this is a unique Xinjiang.
Also representative of Xinjiang are Karez Wells and Tianchi Lake in Tianshan Mountains. Karez is no different from what is depicted in textbooks, but when the three-dimensional display is in front of your eyes, you can't help but admire the wisdom of the ancient Xinjiang people. As for Tianchi, because of the fog in the rain, although I came to the front, I didn't see it at all, and I didn't appreciate its beauty.
In order to commemorate the trip to Tianchi, I casually took a few photos of the grass in the dense fog beside Tianchi. The grass that has turned yellow is trying to convey the message of autumn and the beauty of Tianshan in the white mist. Lying on the bed in the hotel at night and looking through the photos, I found that under the entanglement of the fog, the details of the grass were blurred, and there was a feeling of being painted with a large brush of paint, which immediately gave me a sense of satisfaction of the lost mulberry.
During the eight-day trip to Xinjiang, two days were used to go to and from the airport, two days were spent walking in the urban area of Urumqi, and only four days were used to visit scenic spots. But these four days were more of walking on the road. Everywhere you see through the car window belongs to Xinjiang, whether it is the autumn colors embellished by the golden leaves of birch trees, the desolation of the black and faded mountains on the road to Turpan, or the rows of huge giants standing on the vast land. The wind turbine rotates calmly.
Perhaps, which scenic spot to go to is not the key point, and what you see in the scenic spot is not important. On the road is the life I want, and the realization of my wish is the starting point for going to Xinjiang.
As long as you walk on the land of Xinjiang, whether it is a yellowing grass on the side of the road, or a white snow mountain top on the mountains, whether it is an ordinary and simple house in the city, or an exotic gate in the countryside, no matter Whether it is a standard Mandarin greeting on the way, or a foreign language greeting on the street, to me, it means a sense of reality of dream come true.
I don't know that for Xinjiang people, Xinjiang is just the feeling of hometown, or there is something special about it. Every place in Xinjiang in my eyes has a special meaning to me. At this moment, when I flip through the photos and write these words, I know that I didn't take any scenery home, but I stayed in the scenery. And the me in the scenery has nothing to do with the scenery, the scenery is still there, I just walked through that piece of scenery, and came here in the new day.
Here, I sit quietly at the desk, but still have the feeling of being on the road: life is always moving forward.
(Unfinished, to be continued in the third section Strolling Urumqi, the fourth section old classmates and new acquaintances)
Kanas Fairy Bay
Kanas Yulong Bay
Kanas Lake
Tuva Chalet
Trees and mountains taken casually by the roadside
colorful beach
Dedicated room for drying raisins
Grape Valley Resident's Gate
passing mountain
wind turbines everywhere
Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves
autumn grass in the fog
me on the road
