Travels on the Flaming Mountains

After a tour of the Qan'er Well in Turpan that day, the second stop was the famous Flame Mountain. Take the 312 National Highway by car, pass through The Grape Valley Township, and walk about 40 kilometers in the direction of Shanshan, and then you will reach the bottom of the Flame Mountain. The Flame Mountain is like a huge "fire dragon" lying there. It is red peak bald ridge, no grass, birds disappear. The hillside is full of road channels, and the wrinkled red rocks on the mountain resemble burning flames under the red sun, and sway with the fiercely active hot air currents. If Turpan is likened to a huge brazier, the Mountain of Flames is more like a burning flame in a basin.

There is a beautiful myth in Journey to the West about the legend of the Flame Mountain. In that year, Sun Wukong was imprisoned in the Bagua furnace by Taishang Laojun for smelting, Sun Wukong stomped on the furnace, and several fire bricks fell from the sky and fell to the netherworld, becoming today's Flame Mountain. In fact, the Flame Mountain is formed by the transverse folding of the earth's crust, and the exposed strata are mainly Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary conglomerate layers and red mudstone. It was cut into many ravines by the precursor rivers of geological formations. Such as the name of the grape ditch, wood ditch, Tuyu ditch, Lian Muqin ditch and so on. Our car stopped at the Shengshekou Gorge, where the main peak of the Flame Mountain is located. Here are layers of mountains, cliffs like cutting, due to the age of weathering, a variety of shapes, the weather is varied. No wonder the poet Cen San once had a poem cloud "Volcano protrudes from chiting mouth, volcano May fire clouds thick." The clouds of fire are all over the mountains, and the birds do not dare to come." The Ming Dynasty scholar Chen Cheng wrote in the "Flame Mountain": "A piece of green smoke is red, and the flames of the flames want to burn empty." The spring light is not half as muddy as summer, who said that the West has a blessing." It can be seen that there have been literati inkers who have sung the Flame Mountain in successive generations.

The temperature of the Flame Mountain can reach 47.8 degrees celsius at its hottest, and the surface temperature can be as high as more than 80 degrees, so it is widely said in the local area that "eggs are boiled in the sand, and flatbreads are burned on the rocks". The Flame Mountain has witnessed the ancient and modern of Turpan, and symbolizes the increasing development of the "Fire Continent", and the raging flame, like the passion for poverty alleviation, is constantly being ignited.