Deep in the Taklamakan Desert, in the middle of the endless desert, there is a small river, and on both sides of the small river there is a community that lives here. The river is called the Kriya River, and the people here are called the Kriyas. When the river is abundant, they move north of the river, and when the river is exhausted, they roost along the south of the river, which is the totem of the entire tribe, and the people here are loyal believers in the river.
It is hard to imagine a tribe surviving in such an isolated place for four or five hundred years. A hundred years ago, Sven, the author of "Travels in the Hinterland of Asia", described it this way: When I crossed the endless Taklamakan Desert and walked to the middle of the desert, I saw a small river in the middle of the desert, with poplar forests and reeds along the river, and I was surprised to find that there was another tribe here, and the people of this tribe were like wild peoples, dusty, speaking strange languages (not Uighurs and other ethnic languages), but could not write.
Later, Sven found friends in Xinjiang to explore the mysterious crowd of this tribe, and tried to communicate with them, these people do not know what year and month it is, do not know that there is this place in Xinjiang, do not know anything else about the earth where they live, they just blindly live, generations of generations in this small river to multiply.
At this moment, open the map in your mobile phone and you will see that in the center of the 337,600-square-kilometer Taklamakan Desert, only "Dariyabuyi" (Chinese translation: people living by the river) are marked alone. In 1959, the local government wanted to move them out of this barren and uninhabitable land, but they claimed that their ancestors had lived here for generations and loved the land.
In this desert sea, there are only a few thousand square meters of arable land along the river. The hot and hot climate in the desert is not suitable for raising livestock such as horses and cattle, only sheep, and sporadic grazing on both sides of this mother river.
The ancestry of the Kriyas is still unknown, and the first theory is that they were born in the heart of the desert. The second theory: they are descendants of the Guloulan people for more than 2,000 years. The third theory is: descendants of the Aligug dynasty.
People here eat something like pasta, dig a big pit, and light a fire in it until the dough is cooked.
In this community, there is a sense of trance, trance in another space, with mist leaping over rolling sand dunes and the clear and meandering Kriya River stretching into the desert. And the sheep scattered on the riverbed
They followed monogamous folklore for hundreds of years, and before liberation, the people there were nameless. At the time of marriage, a wedding ceremony is also held. The whole tribe ate together. Later, our government gave them a lot of help and food, and the government repeatedly hoped that they would move to places with good natural conditions and provide them with housing and work, but they still liked this kind of life, and later the government and the army gave them vehicles, tea, rice, oil and salt, and clothing and daily necessities.
The government has made the Kriyas Uighurs. But the leaders of their tribe have never been willing to relocate from that place, and when the reporter first went to interview, their tribal leaders said: They belong to nature, they are children of nature, under the blue sky, in the desert, they like to be free and free, and there is no dispute with the world.
With the dual consideration of ecological deterioration and poverty alleviation, in 2016, the Government of Yutian County put Dariyabuyi on the agenda for relocation. At this time, the living environment here has basically become the critical point for the survival of life. Tang Mingsheng, director of the Yutian County Poverty Alleviation Office, personally persuaded them to let them live in buildings in the county town, but they did not want to live in buildings, but forced by such a harsh living environment, they also had to relocate, and now they have moved to the resettlement houses in The town of Dariyabuyi, which has established kindergartens, primary schools, infirmaries, drinking water stations, etc., and has also built a road that can lead to the outside world.
With the growing strength of the motherland, no one can be less than one person to overcome poverty, bless our great motherland, and bless our compatriots Kriya.
Happy New Year to all of you and good health to the whole family!
References: Xinhua Net/Hotan Area Chronicle/Collection of Chen Yaqiang's Works/National Geographic Magazine/Headline Encyclopedia/Travels in the Hinterland of Asia/Xinjiang Daily/Tianshan Times/Humanistic World