Dunhuang Mingsha Mountain Notes
Original Author: Azura Chenglin
Coming out of the Mogao Caves, it was already 11:30 a.m., and I discussed with Lao Zhao: After lunch, I hurried to Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Spring, and the taxi driver we hired also agreed.
The "gang" tour with me was Mr. Zhao from the Beijing Aerospace Group, 2 years older than me, I called him "Old Zhao", the chairman of the trade union of the unit, and I went all the way east from Turpan and became a good travel companion. On the way, he introduced me to his journey: he was from Beijing to Chengdu, walked around Tibet for half a month, and played in Xinjiang for a week, dunhuang was his last stop. With someone as a companion, the sense of security is much better.
The two of us chose a Chinese snack bar for lunch, and each of us ate a plate of dumplings. In the northwest region, the most Chinese food that can be eaten on the street is dumplings, very little rice, here is not planted rice, most of them are cash crops, that is, han people here are also mainly pasta, noodles have a variety of ways to eat, what ramen, mixed noodles, whistle noodles, oh, these names I do not know very clearly. I finished eating first, and I naturally paid for the meals of the two people, but Old Zhao waved his hand and said very politely: "No, we have an AA system." "I had to give up. I am not used to this AA system, but these people from big cities are used to such a way of life, although they are doing well, they are still AA systems when necessary, because after all, they are friends on the road, and maybe they will not owe anything to them.
About 15 minutes by car, we arrived at the Mingsha Mountain Crescent Spring Scenic Area. Mingsha Mountain in Gansu is a national key tourist scenic spot and a magical and magnificent Tourist Attraction in Gansu on the Silk Road. It is located seven kilometers south of Dunhuang, in the transition zone between the Badain Jaran Desert and the Taklamakan Desert. I first knew this place, in the junior high school geography class, when I was in high school, I did a reading question about the knowledge of Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Spring, and since then I have left a deep impression, but there is no geographical concept. After becoming a Chinese teacher, I saw the shadows of Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Spring in many materials, and this mysterious feeling has never disappeared, and today I want to have a close contact with this mysterious scenery.
Entering the gate of the scenic area, the eyes are no longer the Gobi, but another landscape: one after another full of yellow sand, a vast golden desert! We both cried out in amazement. There are desert cars to drive in the distance, as long as you are bold, don't have a driver's license, there is no one to hit you, a horse in the desert of Pingchuan, there is no tree, wild grass, no ravines, driving there is of course enough fun, we are both timid, worried about driving the car back, just there to watch others drive the car wildly.
There was fine yellow sand under our feet, and we both took off our shoes and walked barefoot in the sand as if we were walking in flour: soft, soft, soft, with our feet stepping on it and slowly sinking down until our calves were all buried in the sand nest. This foot is lifted, that foot is sunken in, and when people walk, it is as if they are fluttering in the wind, and when they look back, they are left with a string of sand nests...
Lao Zhao and I slowly trekked to the top of Mingsha Mountain, feeling the hot sand squirming under our feet, and I had to marvel at the divine power of nature: so many fine yellow sands were blown into such a mysterious sand mountain in the northwest wind, although the periphery was the boundless Gobi Desert, but here, even a stone with a diameter of half a centimeter was difficult to find, which was really incomprehensible. Looking at the crescent spring on the mountain, it is a little green water in the desert, there is nothing special, and even feels like it is artificially caused, and perhaps there are indeed many traces of artificiality.
The more I climbed up, I was a little scared, because it was a sand mountain, so there was no mountain road, it was all sand, we walked on the ridge, the first time we walked on this soft mountain, I don't know if it will collapse at once, but it is going to roll to the foot of the mountain. I took a visual inspection and went up to 100 meters high from the base of the mountain to the top, although it was probably much higher.