Xinjiang

Author: Wang Wei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-06-01
Features: For all young people, expanding life's horizons, broadening knowledge, and learning to care for and appreciate different regions, ethnic groups, living conditions, and values are the true essence of our growth. Therefore, travel becomes inevitable. This is a land flowing with milk and honey, surging with passion and enthusiasm. Its unique, diverse landscapes and climates, its incredibly long history intertwined with pain and joy, and its countless people who have come and gone have forged the soul and character of this land. This book takes you into Xinjiang, starting from Hami, traversing the northern and southern regions, and wandering through the sea of beacons and melons. To get close to such land, you must possess excellent qualities, a broad heart, and the ability to understand. If you travel by train, crossing Gansu and experiencing the changes in light, geography, and dialects of each province, you have already entered the Gobi. If you have good patience, passing through the small station named Shiba Jiānfáng, everything in the west will become increasingly vivid. You see the "ivory-like" plains, then the red rock layers and riverbeds. After Hami, you can pay attention to the small stations along the way, such as Hongliu, Shisanyuanfang, and Dabu, where you might encounter unnamed canyons and Yadan formations, like the yellow fat secreted by the land itself. In the distance, under the midday light, purple-blue mountains emerge. If you travel by plane, what you see from above is a miracle: the unfathomable depth of nature, with traces of human construction intertwined. "As the plane ascends to the necessary altitude to fly over the Tian Shan Mountains, it flies over this unimaginably beautiful land. I rely on speculation and the map I remember to compare. I glance back at the passengers next to me, wanting to see their reactions, but I find they are all asleep—uninterested in the miracles beneath our feet." (Gunnar Jarring, a Swedish person)
Strictly speaking, the self-guided travel methods suitable for inland provinces are extremely difficult to apply in Xinjiang. Its unique geographical features and exceptionally rich, scattered content make traveling here extremely expensive. In the subsequent section on transportation, we will demonstrate the reasons for this expense and its inevitability. In an inland province with normal transportation, as someone who believes in self-guided travel, you might be able to reach a place that costs 150 yuan by spending only 15 yuan. You can approach the scenery, local characteristics, journey, and personal details with curiosity and a meticulous mindset, but in the vastness of Xinjiang, all of this becomes incredibly challenging, as if moving from a garden to a desert. We will discuss equipment in detail in the following text, and this equipment is not only physical but also refers to the mental qualities and cognitive level that a person needs to possess when arriving on this land, as these are determined by the land itself.
Xinjiang is like a place on Earth where some profound and strange elements have merged. The eastern, northern, southern, and western (Ili region) parts of Xinjiang are completely different. Even in a short journey—such as from Korla to Kuche—your perception is constantly altered by a series of neighboring yet vastly different spaces. In this book, we may be able to show you some parts of this richness, but not all of it. As an important region for traveling in western Asia, Xinjiang is comparable only to Tibet in its significance, but it is entirely different from the latter in content and temperament. Tibet presents itself as purely grand, while Xinjiang is rich and diverse—it is the colorful and mysterious Western Thirty-Six Kingdoms, the and , the medieval Kashgar and countless Muslim mosques with clean domes, the ruins and tombs left by Genghis Khan, the Tatar people returning eastward and the Sibo people migrating westward—and more ethnic groups with noble histories, music and poetry, countless Yadan formations, poplar forests, snow-capped mountains, forests, rivers, lakes, grasslands, canyons, and deserts, an infinite totality.
If you have happened to read "The Aleph" by the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, the metaphor of the all-encompassing microcosm—"the Aleph sphere"—also perfectly applies to Xinjiang. From this sphere, one can "see strings of grapes, snow, tobacco leaves, metal veins, steam, the equatorial desert rising, and every grain of sand from all angles, seeing the world within the Aleph, and seeing the Aleph again from within the world." Finally, it is the heart of Asia, it is Sven Hedin—and also an inexhaustible desire for everyone who holds any notion of it.