Artash is a small village deep in the Kunlun Mountains. She was hidden far away among the mighty mountains of the upper reaches of the Yarkand River, and most people were unaware of her existence. But whether it is geological geography, ecological water conservancy, or history and humanities, she carries rich connotations and attracts me to visit many times.
The car traveled southwest from the southern township of Kaqun in Shache, over the barren mountains, bumping for nearly 40 kilometers on the gravel road, and finally climbed the ochre-brown Artash Pass. Below the pass is a cliff, and Artash is on the bank of the river below the cliff. In the distance, you can see mountains on three sides surrounding a wide and flat riverbank valley, forming a small oasis. The scenery of kunlun mountains is undoubtedly desolate and magnificent, but Artash is an exception, and she is full of life by the Yarkand River. The crooked Ye River runs through the villages, tree-lined fields and farmhouses, and cooking smoke in the air.
It was spring, the wheat seedlings in the riverbank valley were returning to green, the trees had not yet sprouted, the bare poplar trunks, the green wheat seedlings, and the ochre brown mountains in the distance just formed a bright watercolor painting. The oasis is small but fertile, suitable for a variety of fruits and vegetables such as badam, apricots, walnuts, dates, corn, wheat, carrots and Chamagu, and the products are not rich but enough to feed the locals. Because the Flow of the Yarkand River in Artash is semi-circular, the locals also call this place "Moon Bay".
Unusually carefully followed the winding road and entered the village for more than 10 minutes. Artash has only 100 households, all Of which are Uighurs, who have lived here for generations, and it is not clear when the ancestors arrived here. In fact, as early as the Western Han Dynasty, from Yangguan along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert through Ruoqiang (Shanshan), Hotan (Khotan), Shache and other places to the southern route of the ancient Silk Road of the Onion Ridge (Pamir Plateau), along the Yarkand River Valley west out of the Onion Ridge, Artash is a must-pass place, here is an important post, then the ancestors of Artash should have settled here.
The scenery of the village is not only the tranquility and beauty of the paradise, but also a boulder standing majestically in the Leaf River. Shaped like a giant lion, the roaring river slammed into the boulders, stirring up splashes. The boulders stand in the middle of the Ye River and act as a sluice, dividing the wide river into two strands, forming many small islands cushioned by fine sand and pebbles on both sides, and the small islands are tenaciously overgrown with many red willows.
There are beautiful myths and legends here. A god rode a great white horse from the depths of the Kunlun Mountains to here, blocked by the steep mountains, he pitied the mountain people for the inconvenience of travel and drought and lack of rain, so he got off his horse and kicked at the mountain with enough strength, and suddenly a wide road and river suddenly appeared in the middle. A boulder flew down to the horse's feet, the white horse raised its front hooves to the sky and hissed, the folds on the horse's back fell into the water, the gods picked up the folds and casually smeared them on the mountain, and a large piece of light slippery stone surface was exposed, and he put the folds on the stone surface to dry. The mountain people were so grateful to the gods that they called the huge footprints he left on the mountain as the footprints of the gods, the smooth stone slabs that were coated with clothes were called the sun-folded stones, and the boulders that frightened the white horse were named Artash.
Artash is also unique in that at the mouth of the village there is a mountain with marine shellfish fossils, which is a rare geological museum. The main component of the mountain is gypsum rock, there is a slurry limestone sandwich in the gypsum layer, and a large number of small shellfish fossils such as short-toothed clams, whisker clams, orchid clams are distributed; there are a large number of bivalve solid clam (horsetail clam) fossils at tens of meters from the bottom surface of the gypsum layer; at the top surface of the gypsum layer, a large number of Betels oyster fossils are distributed. Most of these shallow sea creatures lived in the Mesozoic Cretaceous Period, 70 million years ago, when Artash was supposed to be a semi-isolated bay. Who would have thought that Xinjiang, which is now located in the hinterland of Eurasia and far from the sea, was still a vast ocean.
Today, a huge water conservancy hub project is being built in Artash, known as the "Three Gorges Project in Xinjiang". It is believed that in the near future, the scenery of The High Gorge out of Ping Lake and Artash will be more beautiful because of the water conservancy project benefiting the people of southern Xinjiang.