Author: Chen Qijun
Climb over the mountain of gold
Dangjin Pass is the junction of Qilian Mountain and Altun Mountain, the gateway road of the Hexi Corridor to Qinghai-Tibet and southern Xinjiang, and the necessary place for the Liuyuan Ge (Ermu) Highway, and the strategic location is very prominent. In wartime, once the Lanxin traffic artery is damaged, it will be an ideal hidden road to enter Xinjiang through here. This survey is to understand the road conditions and the support conditions along the way.
Shortly after leaving Dunhuang on May 9, he soon arrived at Bole Zhuanjing Town, the capital of Aksai Kazakh Autonomous County, and entered Dangjin Pass. When the Jinshan Pass is 32 kilometers long, the road is twisting and turning, the mountain pass is 3600 meters above sea level, the perennial snow is frozen, the cold wind is howling, every 100 meters climbed, the temperature drops by one degree, and the natural environment is very harsh.
Deputy Commander Jia of the Qinghai Provincial Military Region and his entourage had already come to the south side of Dangjin Pass to greet the survey team. After the two groups of people and horses rendezvous, the comrades of Qinghai guided the convoy to survey westward along the northern line of the Qingxin Highway at the southern foot of Dangjin Mountain, and stayed at the guest house of the Qinghai Oilfield Headquarters in Lenghu Town that night. The town belongs to the Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, and its capital is located in Delingha City, at the southern foot of the Qilian Mountains, 450 kilometers from Lenghu Town.
Lenghu Town is an oil base in Qinghai Province, with an annual output of 100,000 tons of crude oil. There are nearly 30,000 oilfield workers in the town, with very few residents. In early May, the weather in Lenghu Town was still cold, and the natural environment was harsh, so you had to go to Dunhuang, more than 200 kilometers away, to eat food. At the beginning, I was very envious of the 120% regional subsidy for oilfield workers, plus the attendance subsidy, the monthly salary of an employee was as high as 1230 yuan. As a 23-level officer, my monthly salary at that time was only 58.2 yuan. After further contact with the workers, I was moved by their sacrifice and dedication in the front line of oil production for many years, far away from their hometowns and relatives, fearless of harsh environment, difficult working and living conditions, and fighting on the front line of oil production for many years.
The town of Lenghu is named after Sugan Lake to the southeast. Sugan Lake is a saltwater lake, surrounded by abundant water and grass in summer and autumn, grazing by herders, and there is a township in Aksai County. At that time, some people in the survey team suggested that, judging from the map of the People's Republic of China and the map of its provinces, the two provinces were demarcated from the north and south of the ridges of Dangjin Mountain and Qilian Mountain.
Haixi Prefecture is vast and sparsely populated, rich in minerals, with an area of 318,900 square kilometers and a population of only 252,400. To the north of Golmud, to the east of Mangya Town, and to the west of Dachaidan, on the huge territory, except for the area around Sugan Lake, which is suitable for grazing, the rest of the place is an endless Gobi hills. For a long time, Qinghai Province and Haixi Prefecture have been busy exploring and developing the asbestos mines in Lenghu Town, Huatugou Oilfield, and Mangya Town. Aksai herders graze their cattle nearby, creating de facto Kazakh pastures. When the two provinces were disputed over this, the Northwest Bureau convened a meeting in Lanzhou in March 1953 to maintain the status quo, and in 1954 Aksai established a township here. In 1986, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the Ministry of Civil Affairs conducted an on-the-spot survey, and in 1995, the boundary between Gansu and Qingdao was finally demarcated by the center line of Sugan Lake.
On the morning of the second day after arriving in Lenghu Town, I listened to a briefing by the oilfield headquarters, and after lunch, we marched to Huatugou, an oilfield in the western part of the base, where the Lenghu Oilfield Advance Base is located and an oil refinery is built. The two places are 300 kilometers apart, although it is a gravel road, but there are few vehicles passing smoothly, and it arrives at Huatugou at about 5 p.m. At that time, the oil reserves of Huatugou were larger than those of Lenghu Oilfield, and the prospects were very promising. On the second day, we visited the refinery and some oil wells in its surroundings, among which the Youshashan No. 7 self-injection high-production well, which produces 150 tons of crude oil per day. Bowl-thick black crude oil is ejected from the ground, injected into the crude oil pool, and transported to the refinery through a pipeline connected to the crude oil pool. The kowtow machines of other oil wells are also constantly shaking up and down, continuously transporting crude oil buried deep underground to the refinery through underground pipelines, which is a busy scene.
This is the first time I have seen such a magical underground treasure benefit mankind, and I am very emotional. I remember when I was in junior high school, I read the story of geological exploration workers looking for mineral deposits for the motherland from the magazine "Middle School Students", and I germinated the dream of being a geological exploration worker when I grew up, and walked all over the mountains and rivers of the motherland with my feet to explore treasures for the country. If the ideal is realized, perhaps the development of the Haixi oil field will have its own story.
When visiting the Yumen Oilfield, I listened to an expert's introduction that Li Siguang, a well-known geologist on the mainland, predicted that the western part of the mainland would contain rich oil resources at a time when science and technology were underdeveloped and it was impossible to discover the situation of deep underground oil reserves. His inference is that the Middle East countries are rich in underground oil resources, and the geomorphological and topographical characteristics of many places in the western part of the mainland are similar to those in the Middle East, and there is oil underground in the Middle East, and there must be oil underground in the western part of the mainland. Later, the successive discoveries of the Tarim Oilfield, the Tuha Oilfield, the Lenghu Oilfield, and the Changqing Oilfield proved Li Siguang's great prophecy with irrefutable facts. What a great scientist with great foresight!
When leaving Huatugou, the survey team had a number of vehicles and filled up the base in turn. When we asked for the reckoning, the oil fields refused to accept anything. The comrades in the oil fields said that you have worked tirelessly to defend the motherland and come here to survey the terrain, and adding some fuel is fate and support for the army. Pushing back and forth, still not settling accounts and paying. Someone humorously said: "The Huatugou Oilfield has led communism ahead of us." ”
The last survey point in Haixi is Mangya Town, west of Huatugou and at the junction of Qingxin and Qinghai provinces. It is said to be a town, but it is actually an asbestos mine, and the town is born because of the mine, and the mine is prosperous because of the town. Because it is located in the Altun Mountains above 3,000 meters, there is basically no society except for the miners. However, it is a military important place at the southernmost point of the Lanxin Junction, guarding the communication artery from Haixi to southern Xinjiang. In such a remote place, the wartime Mangya Town and asbestos mines played an irreplaceable and important role in supporting the army.
The asbestos of Mangya Town is well-known at home and abroad for its high yield and good quality. For some time, there have been disputes between the two provinces and autonomous regions over mining rights, and in serious cases, armed fights have occurred. Wang Enmao, secretary of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, personally mediated, clearly shelved the mining rights dispute, took into account the interests of both parties, and jointly mined, which was stable for several years. Later, when the dispute arose again, the State Administration of Geology and Mineral Resources, together with the Ministry of Land and Resources, made it clear that the asbestos mine in Mangya Town belonged to the State Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources and was separated from the two provinces and regions. Not only was the dispute resolved, but asbestos production was also significantly increased. After the nationalization of large mines, a number of small mines in the two provinces and autonomous regions came into being, which further developed the production of asbestos on the mainland.
Ruoqiang explores
Ruoqiang County, located in southeastern Xinjiang, is a mysterious land in the Tarim Basin, with an area of 202,000 square kilometers, which is larger than the area of some inland provinces. It was the "Wuqiang State" of the ancient Eastern Han Dynasty, the main road through which the ancient "Silk Road" must pass, and was once the rear base of the Xinjiang Military Region in the 20th century. The territory is vast, connecting Haixi Prefecture and Hexi Corridor in the east, Hotan Kashgar in the west, and Korla in the north. It guards the main transportation route from southern Xinjiang to the interior, and is the transportation key point of the four provinces and regions of Gansu, Qingdao, Singapore and Tibet, and has always been a battleground for soldiers.
The road we take from Dangjin Pass, Lenghu Town, Oboliang, Mangya Town, along the southern foot of Altun Mountain to Ruoqiang, is the northern route of Qingxin Highway. From Yuka, Chalingkou, Cucumber Liang to Mangya Town into Ruoqiang, it is the southern route of Qingxin Highway. There is also a simple war preparation road, from Dunhuang through Annanba, Suoerkuli, Bashkaogon, Milan to Ruoqiang.
After entering southern Xinjiang from Mangya Town, there was a section of road that was seriously damaged by water, and the car was blocked by rocks from time to time, making it difficult to pass. Fortunately, this road is not long, and it was quickly conquered by us. Once in the mountain valley, the road meanders along the Milan River, stretching south of the Altun Mountains. The deputy chief of staff of the Bayingolin Military Division, who went to Mangya Town to meet us, led the way, and when he crossed Taxi Daban, he reminded the driver: "It is 27 kilometers up to Daban, 32 kilometers to Daban, and the summit is 3,894 meters above sea level. "The actual climb was smoother than expected, and it took an hour and a half to pass safely.
It is said that the construction of this war-ready highway was approved by Chairman Mao. At that time, the Central Committee and the Central Military Commission judged that China would not have air supremacy in the early stage of the war, and that the lines of communication in the Hexi Corridor would inevitably be paralyzed by the enemy's first round of air raids, and Qinghai was a large rear area, which could not only hide but also facilitate roundabout maneuvers, and entering Xinjiang from Haixi was the most ideal route for covert maneuvering.
When Ye Shuai was reviewing the operational plan of the Lanzhou Military Region, he clearly told Yin Zhichao, director of the operations department of the Military Region, that he would manage Qilian Mountain well. Ye Shuai pointed out that "the Qilian Mountains are deep in ravines, the water and fuel are sufficient, the concealment conditions are good, the advance can be attacked, the retreat can be defended, and the left and right can be maneuvered in a roundabout way."
From east to west, Jiutiaoling, Biandukou, Liyuankou, Binggoukou, and Dangjin Pass all built a highway leading to Qinghai, and connected with the east-west horizontal road in the mountains. Among them, the Ninging (Xining) Zhangye Highway and the Liuyuan Ge (Ermu) Highway have been completed in history for a long time, and have been further renovated and upgraded in accordance with the development needs of war preparedness and economic construction.
After a short rest over Tasidasaka, the convoy continued on its way. From time to time, small patches of grass appeared between the mountains and valleys on both sides of the car window, and I was full of freshness to everything in front of me. Herds of wild donkeys, yellow sheep and green sheep, disturbed by the vanguard, appeared in front of and on both sides of the convoy, running along the valley to escape, climbing over the hillside and hiding in the valley, or running and stopping to see if these sudden battles would threaten their safety.
At that time, the yellow sheep and the green sheep were not protected, and suddenly there was a gunshot in front of the march, and following the sound, I saw a group of frightened yellow sheep on the other side of the river fleeing along the hillside into the distance, and the convoy stopped to rest again. At the same time, I heard the comrades in front of me shouting loudly: "Good marksmanship! Hit!" I ran to the front in three steps and two steps to find out. Good fellow, what a sharpshooter, he actually hit two yellow sheep with one shot! The shooter was the deputy chief of staff of the Mongolian ethnic group of the Bayingolin Military Sub-district who led our team, and I can't remember his name now.
At dusk on May 11, we arrived in Ruoqiang County, where the Xinjiang side arranged to stay in the county guest house. Although Ruoqiang County has a large area, its population is very small, only 15,000 people, which is typically a vast and sparsely populated area. The county seat is also very small, east and west streets, and some people exaggerate that they can walk from one end to the other without finishing a cigarette.
We are here mainly to investigate and understand the terrain, roads and rear construction of Xinjiang troops around the county seat and Milan, and to investigate the problems related to the support of Xinjiang and the joint department during the war.
Among the staff officers who participated in the survey at that time, Yang Xuhua, a staff officer of the Operations Department, and I were relatively young, and of course I was a new recruit in front of him. Staff Officer Yang is a native of Anhui, the same nationality as my lover, and his lover is a native of Shaanxi. One self-arranged afternoon, he took my camera and asked me out to take a photo shoot. I suggested that it would be very memorable to go to the nearby Ruoqiang First Nationalities Primary School and take a photo with the teachers and students of the ethnic minorities, and he happily agreed. After we went to the school to explain our intentions, the teachers were very hospitable and immediately gathered a group of lively and lovely Uyghur primary school students to take a group photo with us. Because the teachers don't know how to use cameras, the main thing is that Staff Officer Yang took pictures of me, and I took pictures of him, which was very happy.
To this day, I still keep the photos I took with these minority teachers and students, and I still keep the autographs given to me by the lively and lovely children. It is a historical witness of the unity of the military and the people and the unity of the nation. When I think of that scene more than 40 years ago, I am always immersed in beautiful and happy memories for a long time.
I have always had great respect for my fellow ethnic minorities. Both Zhangye and Jiuquan have ethnic counties, and I have made many ethnic minority friends during my work in both places. For example, An Weitang, former vice chairman of the Yugur nationality of the Zhangye CPPCC, Qin Zhiguo, director of the Tibetan nationality of the Sunan County People's Congress, Kang Jingguo, director of the Tibetan Bureau of the Archives Bureau, Cha Ankou, former deputy director of the Mongolian nationality of the Jiuquan City People's Congress, Min Jige, director of the Mongolian Nationalities Committee, Selik, former member of the Standing Committee of the Jiuquan Municipal Party Committee and head of the Kazakh United Front Work Department, and Hao Sheng, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Kazakh People's Congress, have all been good friends of mine for many years. "Ethnic equality, national unity, and national prosperity" cannot be just shouted as a slogan. Only by being intimate, communicative, and intimate can we be heart-to-heart.
Group photo with students of Ruoqiang County First Nationalities Primary School
These veteran comrades who came from the war years are generally around 50 years old, and it is said that there should be public service personnel to take care of them during the survey period, but in those days, the army strictly implemented the establishment, and the organs did not occupy more soldiers, and the ministers did their own things. Except for the chiefs at and above the army level, who are arranged to live in a single room, the ministers, like the staff officers, live in one room for two people, and there is no special person to take care of them.
Along the way, I was assigned to share a room with Shi Dingwen, director of the artillery department of the Xinjiang Military Region. He joined the army in 1937, a native of Yunxian County, Hubei, tall and burly, humble and enthusiastic. He seemed to have a fear of light and wore a very distinctive pair of wide-legged color-changing glasses with rims that were almost as wide as narrow lenses, and I had never seen such wide rims. When Hami first came into contact with him, I always stared at his glasses, and he seemed to understand my eyes, and explained that the glasses were specially made, the chroma could be automatically adjusted with the intensity of the light, and the wide temples were mainly used to prevent wind.
The watch he wore on his left wrist was also unusual to me, a rectangular watch, which was rare among watch models of the time. On the one hand, being able to observe the chief in such a subtle way reflects that I am young and informed, and I have a strong sense of curiosity. On the other hand, it also reflects my desire to know more about and familiarize myself with the chief, so as to better serve the chief.
Minister Shi embodies the sentiment and demeanor of the older generation of revolutionary soldiers, as well as the style and spirit of the old Eighth Road. He was strict with himself everywhere and took the lead in abiding by the discipline of surveying. Throughout the survey activities, he always appeared as a staff officer, walked ahead of everything, and always mingled with the staff officers. In particular, I was deeply impressed by his style of managing himself and not letting others take care of him. The survey team arranged for me to live with him, more or less with the old and the young, so that the young people could take care of and help the old comrades in their daily life and life, and he was about the same age as my father, and he was my elder. At first, I thought in my heart that I must do as much service work as possible for Minister Shi, lay quilts for him at night, get up in the morning to fold quilts, polish shoes, wash and change clothes, etc., and began to do this.
The result was quickly discovered by him, and he told me seriously: "Staff Officer Chen, thank you for your kindness, you don't have to take care of me." We are all staff officers, and we all have a lot of things to do, so we can do our own things and concentrate on completing the survey tasks. "From now on, as long as you lay a quilt for him today, make the bed, and wash the clothes, he will surely do the same for you tomorrow. If you act ahead of schedule today, he will surely finish these things tomorrow before you act. So I changed to wash and change clothes for him, who knew that he also washed me, sometimes I took off the clothes because I was too busy to wash and hide them and wait for time to wash again, but he could also find them, it was really touching, and they formed a deep relationship with each other along the way.
During the survey in Milan, Minister Shi pulled me with my back to the Altun Mountains to take pictures. During his tenure as deputy chief of staff of the Urumqi Military Region, he was briefly stranded at the station due to a railway collapse while passing through Zhangye on a train. In 1987, when I read the news of his death in the People's Army Daily, I also faced the direction of Xinjiang and bowed deeply to this old-timer who was deeply loved by officers and soldiers. The photo I took with Minister Shi and I back to Altun Mountain has become a permanent memory of him.
In the future, in all leadership positions, I will follow the example of Minister Shi, insist on doing my own things, and do not let others do it for me. This is not only a question of one's own requirements and habits, but also an essential embodiment of the equality and unity of our officers and men.
The survey of Ruoqiang lasted for 3 days, and the topographic survey of the Lanxin Junction Department organized by the General Staff was also successfully concluded here. Next, it was transferred to the reconnaissance operations organized by the two military regions themselves. Before the breakup, under the auspices of Staff Officer Shen Qianyu, Deputy Commanders Zheng and Liu respectively made brief summing up speeches, urging the organs to step up the implementation of all matters reached in the course of the investigation, to report the problems to be resolved by the General Headquarters, and to report to Beijing as soon as possible in the name of the joint investigation team.
Group photo with Minister Sternwin Milan
Then return to Hercynian Prefecture
After breaking up with Xinjiang comrade Ruoqiang on May 13, Deputy Commander Zheng and his entourage went to reconnoiter in the direction of Hash. Deputy Commander Liu led the comrades from Lanzhou back to the Huatugou Oilfield, and Staff Officer Shen of the General Staff Staff accompanied us all the way along the Qinghai-Tibet Highway to reconnoiter and return in the direction of Golmud, Xiangride, and Xining.
On May 14th, from Huatugou through Lao Mangya and Huangzhuliang to Lenghu Oilfield, the guest house of the headquarters was well acquainted with the road. However, it is not completely the old road, but from the cucumber beam along the middle road directly to Lenghu Town. Didn't take the northern line near the Altun Mountains anymore. I saw one more road and became familiar with the terrain along the way.
On May 15, he traveled 450 kilometers to Golmud, the second largest city in Qinghai Province. After leaving Lenghu Town, enter Liuge Highway along Chalengkou and Yuka. At noon, we will rest and eat in Dachaidan, and arrive in Golmud in the afternoon through Xiaochaidan and Wanzhang Salt Bridge. Accommodation and meals are in the Golmud Guest House at the Qinghai-Tibet Military Station.
Golmud covers an area of 124,500 square kilometers and has a population of 120,000. It is 830 kilometers east to Xining and 1120 kilometers south of Lhasa, and is a military town on the Qinghai-Tibet line. At that time, the division-level units deployed here included the command post of the Qinghai-Tibet Military Station Headquarters and the Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Headquarters.
The Qinghai-Tibet Military Station Headquarters is stationed in * regiment-level units and * battalion-level units, mainly for transportation, medical care, automobile repair, and military supply. The oil pipeline command post has * regiment-level units and * battalion-level units under its jurisdiction. At that time, there was also the "5.20" project headquarters for the construction of the first phase of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and the 7th and 10th divisions of the railway corps deployed in Wulan County. It is rare for so many troops to be stationed in a single city, so much so that some people call Golmud a military city.
Later, after the completion of the oil pipeline project and the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the garrison was gradually reduced.
Our activities in Golmud are intense and abundant. He went to the railway troops to learn about the construction of the Xining-Golmud section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, visited the oil pipeline project and the Golmud airport for trial operation, and went to the command post of the Qinghai-Tibet military station to learn about the situation of military supply and support. At the same time, on the way to Golmud, we visited the 60-kilometer-long Zarhan Wanzhang Salt Bridge, salt pans and potash fertilizers, sodium chloride, magnesium metal plants, etc.
At that time, the most impressive thing was the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, known as the "5.20" project. The Xining-Golmud section of the project was officially started in 1974, and was completed and opened to traffic on May 1 in 1984, which lasted 10 years. The second phase of the Golmud-Lhasa section broke ground in 2000 and was completed and opened to traffic on July 1, 2006, which lasted six years. In order to obey the overall situation of national economic construction, the "5.20" project headquarters was converted from military to civilian in 1982, and the former 7th and 10th divisions of the railway corps were transferred to the 10th railway engineering bureau of the Ministry of Railways. In the journey spanning 32 years of time and space, China's railway troops and railway workers have built railways to Lhasa on the roof of the world in the cold and lack of oxygen, opening roads in the mountains, building bridges in rivers, crossing permafrost, and building railways to Lhasa, creating a miracle in the history of world railway construction.
The completion of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway has put an end to the history of Tibet not being connected to trains and changed the structure of the road network in the western region, which is of great significance for promoting and promoting Tibet's social and economic development and consolidating national defense. Foreign media generally believe that this is another human miracle created by the Chinese and a symbol of China's rise.
The Liuyuan Ge (Ermu) Highway, mentioned many times above, is the only transportation route from the Hexi Corridor to Haixi, and it is also the main artery for the transportation of materials between Gansu, Qingdao, Xin, and Mongolia to Tibet. It plays an irreplaceable and important role in driving the economy along the route and supporting Tibet's economic and social development, and its strategic position is very prominent. But there are also many practical problems that are difficult to overcome on this route, 674 kilometers from Liuyuan to Golmud and 1,120 kilometers from Golmud to Lhasa. The vehicle is driving on the roof of the world for 1,800 kilometers, and the burden of self-protection is heavy and difficult.
The decision to build the 1,070-kilometer pipeline from Golmud to Lhasa was to reduce the burden and cost of transporting oil into the reservoir. The pipeline transports 2.8 million tons of oil per year, which can fully meet the oil supply of Tibet. However, most of the oil transported to Lhasa via pipeline has to be transported to Golmud via the Liuge Highway. At that time, some people in the survey team suggested that if one day the railway from Liuyuan to Golmud could be built to connect with the Qinghai-Tibet line, it would be possible to fundamentally change the situation of relying on automobiles to transport oil over long distances.
At the time, this expectation could only be counted as a dream. Because our country is still very poor, and there are many places where we need to spend money, we will not spend a lot of money to build a railway in such a cold and desolate, sparsely populated, and economically underdeveloped area. With the increasing strength of the country and the determination of the strategy of large-scale development of the western region, the construction of the Dunhuangge (Ermu) railway has also been put on the agenda. In 2003, when I was still working in Jiuquan, the state invested in the construction of a railway from Yumen to Dunhuang. Subsequently, the Gansu Provincial and Lanzhou Railway Bureaus reported to the state the construction project of the Dunhuang Ge (Ermu) Railway, which was approved. Construction officially started on December 21, 2012, and was completed and opened to traffic on November 18, 2019, which lasted 7 years.
The Dunge Railway runs from Dunhuang Station in the north to Yinmaxia Station of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway in Golmud in the south, with a total length of 509 kilometers. What a huge change, the sleeping lion has awakened, and the Chinese dragon is taking off!
The completion and opening of the Dunge Railway is of great significance and plays an unprecedented role in improving the structure of the railway network in the northwest region, opening up new transportation channels for the five provinces and autonomous regions of Gansu, Singapore, Qingdao, Mongolia, and Tibet, strengthening inter-provincial exchanges, enhancing national unity, promoting economic and social development, and strengthening and consolidating national defense.
Nowadays, the construction of railways in mainland China is developing rapidly, and high-speed railways are leading the world. The criss-crossing railway network radiates all over the country. This was unthinkable in the past. If the independent detachment of the Northwest Military Region led by Pham Minh had been able to climb mountains and rivers by train instead of a long journey during the liberation of Tibet in those years, there would not have been many comrades who had been buried there because they had climbed over the Tanggula Mountain, which was more than 5,000 meters above sea level and lacked high cold and oxygen, nor would they have been killed by the cold and turbulent torrents, still less would some martyrs die before they could leave the army because of their long distances, lack of supplies, lack of medical treatment, lack of food and cooking, and lack of food. The picture scroll of history, current situation and development emerges in front of us from time to time, which is encouraging and inspiring.
In the course of the large-scale development of the western region, the construction of railways and highways on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and in southern Xinjiang has advanced by leaps and bounds, and historical and fundamental changes have taken place in the transportation conditions. The ruins of the ancient city of Loulan, the mysterious Lop Nur, the Altun Mountain Nature Reserve, and the Uygur style villages are waiting for you to visit. Ruoqiang jujubes, naan pit meat, wood-fired barbecue, spicy sheep's trotters and other flavorful delicacies are waiting for you to feast.
(To be continued)