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Yellow River "several" character bay

Folk have always had the saying of "nine curves of the Yellow River and eighteen bends", in fact, for the 5464 kilometers of the Yellow River, how many bends there are, so far there is no consensus. However, the "few character bends" in Inner Mongolia, which is more than 800 kilometers long, is certainly one of the most quintessential areas of the Yellow River.

The "Yellow River Jiziwan" is basically in the place where the Yellow River flows through the Loess Plateau, forming a huge "Ji" character, formed by 20 cities and counties in the border area of Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Shanxi, covering an area of nearly 557,000 square kilometers.

On both sides of the Inner Mongolia section of the Yellow River, there is the famous Hetao Plain, where the Yellow River culture and grassland culture are intertwined; deserts, wetlands, canyons, grasslands, various landforms are gathered here, and the ruins of the Great Wall and red cultural relics tell the story of the vicissitudes of the sea; Hohhot, Baotou, Wulanchabu, Ordos, Bayannaoer, Wuhai and Alxa League are scattered along the Hetao Plain along the 7 league cities of Huang, waiting for tourists at home and abroad, including Beijing tourists, to jointly achieve the "Yellow River Zizi bend" ecological and cultural tourism brand.

(Laoniu Bay, a place of three counties of Jiming, where the Yellow River enters Shanxi from Inner Mongolia and the Jin-Shaanxi-Mongolia Grand Canyon begins here.) Photo by Ma Chao)

The ruins of the Black City on the banks of the Juyan Sea are the most complete and largest remaining ruins of an ancient city on the northern route of the ancient Silk Road. It has a history of more than 1,000 years.

On the map of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the rushing Yellow River pulls out a few-character bends with a total length of more than 800 kilometers here.

In this area known as the Hetao, deserts, grasslands, mountains, canyons, wetlands, and large rivers are intertwined; the political and economic center of today's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is located here; and the unique culture of thousands of years of farming and nomadic peoples blooms here.

The oldest art – The Yin Mountain Petroglyphs

Petroglyphs, as the name suggests, refer to the pictures engraved or painted on rocks by ancient ancestors, which are common all over the world and are precious historical and cultural heritage. Specific to Chinese petroglyphs, they circle around the mainland territory and almost all have their distribution.

As early as the 5th century AD, there was a detailed record of rock paintings in Li Daoyuan's "Notes on the Water Classics". "In modern times, due to the weakening of national strength, when the fever of rock art research was set off in many countries, the study of Chinese rock art was obviously backward." Gai Zhiyong, vice president of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, said in an interview with reporters a few days ago that it was not until the discovery of yinshan rock paintings in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 1976 that this situation was completely changed. The systematic study of Yinshan petroglyphs has allowed the world to truly understand Chinese petroglyphs, and China has also come to the forefront of the world in terms of rock painting research methods and information collection.

With its simple, rough and condensed painting style and rich and unique cultural connotation, Yinshan rock paintings express the production and life of human beings in ancient times, group activities, religious budding, psychological state, aesthetic orientation, natural concepts, etc., and have become important research objects in anthropology, communication, folklore, aesthetics, primitive religious history, art history, ethnic history and other disciplines, and are vivid and simple image epics with far-reaching artistic conceptions.

Reproduce the picture of the production and life of the ancient northern nomads

Yinshan petroglyphs are mainly concentrated in inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Wulat Zhongqi, Urat Houqi, Dengkou County and other places, about 300 kilometers long from east to west, about 70 kilometers wide from north to south, with a number of more than 50,000 paintings, with an era of more than 1,000 years, the upper limit is no later than the early Neolithic period, and the lower limit has been until modern times. The themes are also quite rich, including animals, characters, birds and hunting, riding, grazing, dancing, conquest, wizarding, as well as the sun, moon, stars, symbols, symbols, and marks. The sheer number of Rock Paintings in Yinshan, the richness of their content, and the length of their time are breathtaking.

According to reports, the Yinshan petroglyphs are one of the richest petroglyphs in the world, truly recording the realistic scenes of the production and life of the ancient northern nomads on the mainland, as well as the worship of faith and aesthetics. Creators use exaggeration, contrast and other techniques to portray the creativity they want to express. The dark and dense lines have a strong visual impact.

Researchers said that the artistic characteristics of Yinshan rock paintings are relatively simple and have a vivid and strong breath of life. Petroglyphs have different ways of expression in various historical stages, and the subject matter is mostly derived from nature and all aspects of daily life, which is the conception and expression of the creator in the living environment in which he is located, not a copy of the original situation, and has the characteristics of original artistic re-creation in performance.

"Before the invention of books, our distant ancestors used to record historical events through song dictation, through oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, and pottery carvings, but most of what we were left with was fragments of memory, and it was difficult to explore the whole picture of history from them, and petroglyphs just made a good supplement." Gai Zhiyong said that from the beginning of its discovery, the Yinshan rock paintings have attracted the attention of the world - the concentration of places, the large span of the times, and the richness of the content have made scholars excited. The life scenes, beliefs, and level of development of the nomadic people in northern China can be found in the Yinshan rock paintings.

An important research material to strengthen the consciousness of the Chinese national community

The Hetao area where the Yinshan petroglyphs are located is an area of high integration between agricultural civilization and nomadic civilization. Many ethnic groups in Chinese history, such as porridge, earth, ghost, Linhu, Loufu, Xiongnu, Xianbei, Turkic, Uighur, Dangxiang, Khitan and Mongolian and many other ethnic groups have flourished here, and this has become the cradle of multi-ethnic development to prosperity, and the content of hunting, farming, grazing, sacrifice and so on in the petroglyphs is the witness to the survival and development of these ethnic groups.

"However, the historical documents of these well-known ethnic groups are quite scarce, and the archaeological data is relatively insufficient, and the Yinshan rock paintings have become living fossils for studying the living conditions of these ethnic groups, and they are living dramas that embody the living conditions and spiritual worship of these nationalities." Gai Zhiyong said that an important reason for the attention of the outside world is that the Rock Paintings of Yinshan Reflect and Witness the Historical Trajectory of the Inheritance, Integration, Absorption and Development of the Cultures of Various Ethnic Groups in this Land, and are important research materials for forging a solid sense of the Chinese national community.