Old Muden Church
Old Mudon Village in the Morning Light
In the early morning, the Biluo Snow Mountain, which has just "woken up", is still covered with a layer of mist, and the cascading mountains loom in the sea of clouds. A few black "ecological chickens" stroll along the small ditch behind the wooden house, and a thin, hunched old man of the Nu tribe walks on the winding mountain road with his back on his back. In the distance, golden sunlight poured through the thick clouds, opening the day in this small mountain village.
In the northeast of Pihe Nu Nationality Township in Fugong County, Nujiang Prefecture, there is a village located in the middle of the Biluo Snow Mountain, Laomuden Village, in which the Nu and Lemo people (Bai branch) are mixed, of which the Nu are the majority. There are two theories about the origin of "Old Muden", one is a transliteration of the Nu language, which means "the place where people like to come"; the other is a transliteration of the Bai language, which means "the place where the purple bamboo (actually the golden bamboo) grows".
On the cliffs of the village, there is a church — green brick walls, red-lacquered wooden windows, a black roof, and four large golden characters on the forehead of the gate — God loves the world. The simple and simple church and the blue sky and white clouds are reflected in the "small lake" next to it, which looks quiet and peaceful.
Founded in 1930, this village church is the largest of the 36 Christian churches in Pihe Township. Although the red and white house is not spectacular from the outside, it is a sacred place of worship for Christian believers in the surrounding area. Every Wednesday and Saturday, believers gather here to sing and pray, and for those who work weekdays, singing is their best entertainment.
As the sun fully rises, the wind in the canyon blows away the clouds in the mountains, and the scattered houses reveal their "true faces". The peak opposite the village, wearing a golden "crown", stands out among the mountains of the Nu River Grand Canyon. In addition to the nice name "Crown Peak", it has another little-known name - Chennault Peak.
Old Muden Village
Stone Moon
"Signposts" on the "Hump Route"
From 1942 to 1945, "Chennault Peak" and "Stone Moon", which stood quietly in the sea of clouds, pointed out the direction for Chinese and American pilots to shuttle through the ice, snow and fog on the "Hump Route" sprinkled with the blood of pilots and covered with the wreckage of the aircraft.
In 1942, the Only Passage for allied aid to China to resist Japan, the Burma Road, was cut off by the Japanese army after the occupation of Burma, and the Chinese Government and the U.S. Military decided to open an air supply corridor on the basis of the original Kunming-Kolkata route of the Chinese Airlines, and continue to provide China with anti-war materials through this new route with a total length of more than 1,100 kilometers.
The new route is to fly over the Himalayas, the "roof of the world", with a maximum altitude of about 7620 meters. Because some peaks are too high, the aircraft can only fly around them, and the flight route is like a hump, so it is called "hump route".
In March 1943, the U.S. military officially handed over command of the Hump Flight to The Flying Tigers Commander Chennault. Since then, the "Hump Flight", which is responsible for air transport tasks, and the Flying Tigers, which are tasked with fighting with the Japanese Air Force, are under the command of Chennault, and the two have gradually merged.
The "Hump Flight" was the longest-lasting, most difficult and most costly airlift in the history of world war airlift. The pilots had to face not only the blockade and interception of the Japanese army, but also the harsh climatic conditions such as strong air currents, low pressure, hail and frost. Because rudimentary navigation facilities are difficult to ensure flight safety, pilots are exposed to the danger of aircraft crashing and hitting mountains at any time during the flight.
In the more than three years from the opening of the "Hump Route" to the suspension of the route after the surrender of the Japanese army, Chinese airlines have dispatched a total of 80,000 aircraft, and the US military has invested 2,100 aircraft, with a total of more than 84,000 participants from both sides. On this route, the U.S. military lost more than 1,500 aircraft, of which the 10th Air Wing alone lost 563 of the 629 transport aircraft. At the same time, of the 100 transport aircraft owned by China Airlines, 48 were lost successively. In addition to the loss of the aircraft, there were many excellent pilots who spilled their blood and left their young lives on the route, where 168 Chinese pilots and nearly 3,000 American pilots died.
Crown Peak
Zhi Zi Luo
"City of Memory" Zhiziluo
Passing through the old Muden village and up the bluestone paved mountain road, there is a small city that has been "stopped" for more than thirty years, Zhiziluo, which people call "abandoned city" or "memory city".
This is the birthplace of the Bijiang Nu tribe, the "Nu Su". More than a thousand years ago, the descendants of a Wuman tribe of the Qiang tribe that originally lived along the Lancang River crossed the Biluo Snow Mountain and came to a good place with a warm climate, abundant rainfall and fertile land, and thrived here. It is shrouded in clouds and mist all year round, but when the weather is good, look at the Biluo Snow Mountain on the left and the Gaoligong Mountain on the right, and the roaring Nu River and the steep Grand Canyon at the foot can be seen.
Later, it became one of the first few markets in the Grand Canyon. Even the Lisu people, who lived higher and were also descendants of the Wuman tribe, came down to the market and praised it in Lisu as "Zhiziluo"—meaning "good place".
"Zhiziluo" was once the capital of Bijiang County and Nujiang Prefecture, and was once the most prosperous political and economic center of Nujiang Prefecture. However, in 1986, after field surveys, geologists believed that there was a possibility of a large-scale landslide in Zhiziluo, so the state government evacuated from Zhiziluo and relocated to Liuku Town, and Bijiang County, which had lost its central position and role, has since disappeared from the map of China.
Zhiziluo, who went to the empty building, quietly "waited" here for more than thirty years, although he did not wait for mudslides or landslides, but waited for a group of tourists looking for "memories". The architecture and layout here still maintain the appearance of the 1970s, retaining the appearance of the small county town that people remembered as a child. There are factories, schools, cinemas and banks, as well as a well-designed octagonal tower.
In recent years, villagers have moved back here one after another, and they don't like to be called Zhiziluo "abandoned city", so they have given it a new name - the city of memory. They rebuilt the road from the base of the mountain to the top of the mountain and installed brand new street lights next to the road at the entrance of the village. Pedestrians have reappeared on the streets, and buildings that have been abandoned for many years have new "owners". In the millennia, Zhi ziluo has experienced prosperity and desolation. In the future, this "good place" shrouded in clouds and fog may quietly preserve the last template of urban change in the last century in the Grand Canyon.