This article was originally published in the First Issue of Western Prose Anthology in 2020
Western Travel - the eleventh stop of the re-walking Ban Chao Road
Huiyuan Ancient City remembers the general
Lang Chun
From Nala to the ancient city of Huiyuan, all the way through the picturesque scenery.
The Gongnais River in August, like a princess who tearfully bid farewell to her relatives, took three steps and turned around, rubbing the delicate shame into the sparkling river bend. Flocks of gray herons swim in the water, wandering among the willows on the shore, like playful children. The green carpet of grass cascades up the hillside from the river to the pine forest on the mountainside. The summit is snow that has not yet melted, vaguely touching the white clouds in the sky. Cattle and sheep graze quietly, hounds chase in the meadow, white felt houses smoke from cooking, and majestic long tones echo through the valleys.
Unconsciously, the valley gradually opened up, and the painting style immediately changed. Golden sunflowers sink low to the head of the meadow, and the purple lavender resembles a bride in a green yarn tent. The wheat is being harvested, and the strips of gold are dotted with the red of the harvester. The round watermelon has a humorous face, basking in the sun with a slippery braincase. The white-walled, red-roofed farmhouse is hidden in the shade of green trees. At the edge of the tent next to the road, the red-faced beekeeper held up the nest skin full of bees and smiled like silk. The fellow donkey friends issued heartfelt exclamations again and again: Mei Ya, Yi Li!
When a quaint "Jingren Gate" appeared in front of the eyes, the car's navigator announced: Huiyuan Ancient City has arrived.
Huiyuan Ancient City is not a pure scenic spot, here sits the Huocheng County Huiyuan Town Government, there are not many residents, but there are many merchants, the electric horn of the watermelon shed keeps shouting "not sweet and no money", and horse-drawn carriages and taxis compete to attract customers. There are four avenues in the east, west, south and north, which are wide and clean, and the houses are lined up. Although the city wall is broken into several sections, its former inherent pattern is still faint. According to the female officer of the garrison who received us, this is actually the new Huiyuan City that was rebuilt after the repossession of Ili in 1882, and the scale is slightly reduced compared to the old city, but the main functions are all available.
The most majestic building in Huiyuan Ancient City is the Bell and Drum Tower. A tall pedestal made of green bricks, above which is a wooden structure with three eaves on the top of the mountain, red columns and green tiles, cornice arches, inner ladders hovering, carved beams and paintings, more than 20 meters high, below which are arches leading to the four avenues of east, west, south and north. The overall image is similar to the bell tower in Xi'an, but much thinner. It is said that this bell and drum tower is the only remaining wooden structure historical building in Xinjiang, and it is also a punching point for tourists to take photos, but it is far from the soul of Huiyuan Ancient City.
The soul of Huiyuan is in the house of General Ili. The name of Wakasan, the Dragon of Wakasan, also has the city and the prefecture jointly called "Huiyuan General's Mansion". The gatehouse is not large, and the threshold is quite high. Entering the door, I saw a huge stone in the courtyard, rising from the ground, with several strong characters engraved on the "Ili General's Mansion", and on the grass behind it, there were two "red-clad cannons". Only when you enter the courtyard in the back can you see the true face of the General's Mansion.
The courtyard was the cardinal of the General's House. The old trees in the courtyard are towering in the sky, and the sun is shaded. A few rays of sunlight poured out from the gaps in the branches and shot into the main hall facing north and south. The main hall is the place where the generals deliberate, far less than the conference rooms of ordinary township institutions, so it can be seen that there are not many officials who can sit in this room. There are several pieces of old furniture symbolically arranged in the temple, which are somewhat vicissitudes. The east and west compartments connected by the cloister, hung with signs of the grain and salary office, the camp office, the camel and horse office, the merit office, the printing room, the study room, the book room (book) and other institutions, are undoubtedly the residences of the staff and the soldiers. The exhibition room converted from the barracks is decorated with some pictures and objects, including a "Map of the Territory of the Qing Dynasty" and a "Schematic Map of the Political Areas of Xinjiang in the Qing Dynasty". Judging from the map, Huiyuan City is basically in the middle of Ili-Tacheng, with the central collar and the eight spokes, which is the essence of Confucian culture. The large areas of homeland that were later demarcated beyond the borders of the country on the map made people pay attention for a long time, and it was difficult to calm down.
The female officer seemed particularly sympathetic, saying that every time she followed the chief to the border, the chief would take the lead in sorting out the stones along the river to prevent floods from entering other countries. Her words made my veteran's eyes light up, and looking at the slim figure wrapped in camouflage clothes, she also instantly became tall. I suddenly remembered that when I was traveling in Busan, South Korea, I picked up a palm-sized volcanic stone and wanted to take it home as a souvenir, but the female tour guide who taught us how to pick up The Koryo Sister suddenly became serious, grabbed the stone and threw it back to the beach, and urged us to get on the car. My face was hot, and I was thinking all the way about what is called home and country feelings.
Shuttling through the small rooms of the General's Mansion, I waited for a group, and all of them were silent. Thinking back to the military and government offices of the powerful side of the year, the core activity area was only the courtyard of a small landlord, and the institutions were so streamlined, we cannot help but lament how empty the national treasury was and how difficult it was for the supply of soldiers on the border to "compensate" for the Qing Dynasty after Tsarist Russia!
In fact, the Great Qing Dynasty still attached great importance to the defense of the western region. After the Qianlong Emperor completely pacified the Jungar Department, he decided to set up "President Ili and other generals" (also known as "General Ili") to control the military and political power in the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, and ensure the smooth flow of the Silk Road to West Asia and the grassland Silk Road to Central Asia. However, after surveying the Ili River Valley, there was no suitable city for the garrison.
This is not surprising. According to the Book of Han, this area was home to the Wusun people during the Qin and Han dynasties. The ancestors of the Wusun people, who migrated west from the Qilian Mountains to the Helan Mountains, said that the great historian Ban Gu said that they "did not plant trees in the fields, and followed the animals to chase water and grass." During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he married Princess Xiaojun and Princess Xie to Wusun and his relatives, and the relationship between Wusun and the Central Plains was close. Ban Gu's younger brother Ban Chao, who was in charge of the Western Regions, also crossed the Tianshan Mountains through the Muzat Valley Road, discussed the wine with Wusun Kunmi, and swirled towards the Fire Temple, and thus turned to the North Garden and inspected the eastern part of Tianshan. Later, with the rise of the Xiongnu, Turkic, Xianbei, Mongol and other forces in the north of the desert, most of the Wusun people were forced to move westward, far away from the Fergana Basin and south of the Onion Ridge. The people who remained and migrated one after another, after complex integration and division, lived and multiplied in this treasure land, and their habit of living by water and grass has never changed.
Although the Manchu Qing Dynasty also won the world on horseback, but after entering the customs, it gradually integrated into the advanced Han culture, and its understanding of the city has reached a new height, so it was decided to build a city on the grassland and create a city-led grassland civilization. The first Ili general, Mingrui, was the nephew of Empress Xiaoxianchun and had a fondness for the boxy city, so he found someone to design a miniature version of the city of Mingxi'an. Just in time for The Old Master of Qianlong to take a boat to jiangnan, the interest is high, and the royal pen mentions it, which is called "Huiyuan", which is intended to "benefit the distant places with kindness".
The Qianlong Emperor was brilliant, overlooking the world, and somewhat narcissistic, but a beautiful Huiyuan City still rose rapidly on the north bank of the Ili River. The streets and alleys in the city are crisscrossed with red and green lights, shops and temples. The Ili General's Mansion, as well as the Counsellor's Minister's Office, the Leader Minister's Office, the Green Battalion General Office, the Current Affairs Tongzhi and the Fumin Tongzhi Office, were all gathered in the city, and for a time the military and the people gathered, merchants and merchants gathered, goods were prosperous, and traffic was busy, and it was known as "Little Beijing".
At the same time as Huiyuan City, there were eight satellite cities, namely Ningyuan (present-day Yining City), Huining (present-day Bayandai Town), Suiding (present-day Huocheng County), Guangren (present-day Lucaogou Town), Zhande (present-day Qingshuihe Town), Gongchen, Xichun, and Talechi, collectively known as the "Nine Cities of Ili". They are like giant beacons, watching over each other, not only connecting the rich Ili River Valley, but also having military, political and economic functions, so that a strong sense of national consciousness is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
Unfortunately, the good times only lasted for one hundred and ten spring and autumn seasons. In 1871, Czarist Russia took advantage of the revolt of Bai Yanhu and Ma Hualong in China to "retake it on behalf of the people and conveniently send troops to garrison" the Ili-Tacheng area, and brutally destroyed the nine cities of Ili. Fortunately, the national hero Zuo Zongtang, after quelling the rebellion, led his troops to defeat the British and Russian-supported Agubai and recovered southern Xinjiang, and the Qing court reluctantly demanded a bite of burnt cake from the robbers in 1881 with the humiliating "Sino-Russian Ili Treaty". However, the Red Valley Castle, which Wusun Kunmi had built for the princess to relieve her worries, had become an unreachable place, and the herders who had transferred to Xia Mu could no longer return to Dongwozi to visit their relatives, while the Huiyuan City, where the General's Mansion was located, suddenly leaned on the border. When the province was established in 1884, inspector Yamen was directly renamed Urumqi, the word "Ili" was replaced by "Xinjiang", and the subsequent Ili generals were also demoted from Zhengyipin to Congyipin, only in charge of the defense of Ili- Tacheng.
After "knowing the Destiny of Heaven", I often thought: In the era when the law of the jungle prevailed, civilization often could not resist barbarism, let alone modern barbarism. Between countries, in the final analysis, there is not much axiom to talk about. The fist is the king, the strength is the power, and the range of the cannon is the border. From grain, grass and livestock to large land and oceans, if they are robbed, they will be robbed, and if they occupy them, they will occupy them, and the victims will be weak and powerless, and what can others do! After World War II, the United States led the establishment of a United Nations, which was nominally a place of reasoning, but even a number of small countries filled the Atlantic Ocean with saliva, and they did not see a poor country that was bullied to get one or two dollars or two for justice. The various controversies and negotiations that we are familiar with are, in the final analysis, nonsense, and how can we get things that cannot be obtained on the battlefield through the negotiation table!
Many people who did not know the truth were indignant and pushed the responsibility of the Qing Dynasty for losing a large area of Xinjiang's territory to Yan Chonghou, who was in charge of negotiations, not knowing that negotiations with unequal strength were compromises of the weak, and all compromises were reluctant. The representatives of the weak, because of the lack of strong backing, even if they stand on the commanding heights of jurisprudence and argue according to reason, they have no bargaining capital! That is to say, just like the current Sino-US trade war, after decades of peaceful development, our Chinese great power has become rich and strong, and the earth hegemon is still aggressive, "I raise taxes, you must not retaliate!" "Not to mention the Qing Dynasty, which was worried about internal and external troubles at that time and went downhill!
Articles can be rewritten, history cannot be repeated. The water of politics is far deeper than that of Peach Blossom Pond, and "governing a big country" is not as easy as "cooking small fresh food." As classics, the "Tao Te Ching" and "Zizhi Tongjian" all put forward many theories of the scriptures, but in the final analysis, they are just sitting and discussing the Tao, which is far less practical than the general Ren Yili and led the general Tuntian Gubian.
General Ili is in charge of the military and political power in Xinjiang, and his rank is set to Yipin, which is already the highest realm of the people's subjects, and he is full of dignity in and out, but he is not allowed to bring his family. This point follows the control system since the Han Dynasty, and has its reasonable considerations. The Qing court sent a total of thirty-four and forty-eight Ili generals, most of whom were Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners, who were promoted from Shangshu or viceroys, such as Zenghai, Yishan, Jinchang, Changqing, and others, and even more clan nobles, who could give up the good life in the capital and leave their homes and leave their homes. There are also Jinchang, Mingming, Deying'a, Chang Gung and others twice, Songjun three times, Iletu and Baoning four times to serve in this post, Deying'a, Iletu, Zhirui and others even loyal to the office, the real Ma Ge shroud.
The first Ili general, Mingrui, was a famous general and the founder of the northwest defense system. He led the survey and planning of the nine cities of Ili and established the defense structure of Ili-Tacheng. However, soon after he took office, he encountered the rebellion of Ush Little Burke, and fought for two years with his deputy Ah Gui, and when he encountered an incident in the south, the imperial court transferred him to the Burmese front. Ah Gui, who was born in the Blue Banner, has been walking in the northwest frontier for many years, and he is also considered to know the border faction, and he has made up for the lack left by Mingrui. Who knew that less than a year later, Mingrui was killed in battle, and he was transferred to Burma to engage in Mingrui's unfinished business. Therefore, the founder of the Ili General's Palace was actually the third General Iletu.
In the early years of Qianlong, he was awarded the third class bodyguard by Shi Guanzuo, and gradually moved to the deputy capital of Mongolia with the red flag, stationed in Urumqi, and then moved to Aksu. In the thirty-second year of Qianlong, when the first Ili general Mingrui took office, he was appointed as the counselor of Ili and moved to Kashgar. Two years later, with Fu Heng's conquest of Burma, the Battle of Jiajiujiang captured three villages in a row, killed 5,000 thieves, and returned the division to the general Shangshu of the military department, fujia Ili general, because the emperor ordered the reorganization of the military department, and a year and a half later Fang took office. Illetu's term of office was two years, he rotated back to Beijing for two years, the third time he served for ten years, and he only rested for two months when he returned to Beijing. The Qianlong Emperor was full of emotions, and added his crown prince Taibao, gave him a dazzling eye, and made an exception to let him take his wife and children with him, and went out of the town of Ili for the fourth time. Nine years later, Illertu fell ill and died on his way to inspect the defenses of Khorgos.
When Iletu first arrived in Ili, he encountered the Turks returning to the east. Originally a tribe of the Chagatai Khanate, the second son of Genghis Khan, turks left the area around Tarbahatai (present-day Tacheng) at the end of the Ming Dynasty due to war, moved west to settle down on the lower Volga River, and established their own khanate there. A hundred years later, with the strength of Tsarist Russia, the living space of the khanate was constantly compressed, and the life of the herders fell into a dilemma, and in desperation, Wolbasi Khan decided to lead his people back to the East protected by the ancestral gods. When these people reached the border of Lake Balkhash after great hardships, only 70,000 of the 170,000 people remained, millions of livestock and property were lost, and the Qing government did not even have any news beforehand.
Suddenly, faced with so many uninvited guests, Illertu sent Yi Chang, the commander-in-chief of the Xibe battalion, to receive him, while playing the imperial court. At that time, the court was in dispute, and many ministers did not want to offend the Russians and accepted these penniless refugees. But Illethu believed that these Descendants of The Mongols were heroes who, in the interests of humanitarian and national righteousness, should be accepted, placed and given preferential treatment. The Qianlong Emperor vigorously defied the public opinion, supported Iletu, received Wolbasi, and ordered the Ili General's Palace to give preferential treatment to his people and properly resettle them, so that the torch of Turgut could be passed on from generation to generation. Mongolian director Seff's TV series "The Legend of the Hero of Donggui" tells about this history.
Illertu guarded the border for nearly thirty years and has always taken Ban Chao of the Eastern Han Dynasty as an example. He did four things during his tenure as General of Ili: Tun Tian, Fortification, Minting Money, and An Min. He ordered the establishment of reclamation and tun tian institutions in the two major areas of Ili and Tacheng in the thick waters of the water to ensure the basic supply of Qing troops; he personally surveyed and built castles in the lands of Ukolbosuk, Dongchahan Usu, Khorgos, and Bayandai outside the mouth of Tarqigou (present-day Guozigou), and sent troops to guard them, so that there were borders and defenses, and most of the "nine cities of Ili" were built during his term of office; he saw that the garrison was time-consuming and laborious to transport coins from the interior, and it was not safe, so he applied for the opening of the Baoyi Minting Bureau, and the minting of the Halhatu (present-day Haba River) copper mine was added to the minting of Puer It was used together with the coins minted by ush, Kuqa and Halashar, saving more than half a million taels of silver for the imperial court every year; he also advocated not competing with the people for profits, reclamation and water extraction, and not affecting the production and life of local residents.
Illetu worked diligently, worked hard and complained, and was called a model of loyalty to the king, and after his death, he was honored as Xiangwu, was given the title of first-class uncle, and entered the Ancestral Hall of The Virtuous. After him, General Boryeong also served four times, for thirteen years, and was a competent official.
Boryeong is indeed as its name suggests. He was born in the Mongolian Zhengbai Banner, resourceful, brave and good at war, so he was a young man, and was appointed the governor of Sichuan at the age of twenty-seven, and the general of Ili at the age of twenty-eight. He adopted the policy of "heavy production inside, heavy friendship outside", and during his tenure, he doubled the size of The Tun Tian in Illetu and accumulated grain and grass that could last for ten years. He also hired translators from Kyoshi to train Russian talents in the local area, and let these Russian-speaking people go to the ranch to rationally deal with the problem of cross-border grazing from a practical point of view. During this period, the border areas were peaceful and tranquil, and there was never any war. Even the Qianlong Emperor praised him for being "impartial, having the heart of a foreign domain, and having nothing to do in the west", so that after he went to rest, "the imperial court encountered the frontier and made every decision."
During his tenure, Boryeong also did a thing of winding. There was a Turk muku slave named Sanji who tried to rape the widow of the master of the house, Berkmuku, but Berkmuku did not comply, and Sanji actually twisted the neck bone of Berkmuku and killed him. After the death of Sanji Lingchi according to the law, BaoNing felt that all the women and virgins in the interior had a watch in the imperial court, and the folk called the Lizhen Festival Arch. Berkmuku is a Solon woman, who knows righteousness, sacrifices her life and refuses adultery, which is very commendable, and should be seen by herself. Therefore, he went to the imperial court, gave commendations, and in this way, he popularized them, and later the tribes jointly assisted more than seventy people in the Ming Dynasty.
Alternate with Boryeong is SongJun of mongolia's Zhenglan Banner. SongJun was appointed general of Ili three times, and twice, serving for ten years. This man showed his talent when he was doing Zhang Jing, and once led troops to quell the disasters of the White Lotus Sect and the Bagua Sect. When he was thirty-two years old, he was ordered to investigate and handle the Hubei tax case, and when he encountered a heavy rain disaster when passing through Henan, he immediately made a decision, opened a warehouse to relieve the disaster, and gathered people's hearts for the imperial court, which was deeply appreciated by the Qianlong Emperor.
Sadly, one manger cannot tie down two stalls. He yan, who was only two years older than Song Yun, was already in the middle of the day, and this powerful minister kicked and bit him, and Song Yun was injured all over his body, so Qianlong had to let him go out, first letting him handle trade with Russia in Kulun (now Mongolia) for seven years, and then serving as the minister stationed in Tibet for five years with the title of Shangshu of the Ministry of Works, until He Yan was convicted and died, and the Jiaqing Emperor recalled Song Yun to the capital and took charge of the household department, and two years later he was put in charge of the general Ili.
Song Yun's tuntian training measure for Boryeong was "Xiao Zhi Cao Sui", but he felt that the distance and cost of blindly moving people from the interior to Tuntian were long and expensive, so he asked the imperial court for approval to gradually relocate some Uyghur peasants from the southern part of the Tianshan Mountains, where irrigation conditions were poor, to the Ili River Valley, to cultivate land and cultivate land, and to help the local herders in agriculture and animal husbandry. Seeing that the land in the Ili River Valley is fertile and irrigation is convenient, the first movers pass on relatives to relatives, friends invite friends, set up fences and build houses, so that the river valley can appear in the prototype of villages and towns, providing sufficient human resources for the cause of Tuntian. The Uighurs north of the Tianshan Mountains were immigrants at that time.
Song Yun has long supervised border trade, is well versed in the significance of commodity circulation, and also understands the balance between management and release; during his term of office, Ili's trade with Russia was unprecedentedly active, and when the switch was opened, the border people on both sides were active, the market was prosperous, "after the retreat, the border was strictly forbidden and not disturbed", and the society was stable. Song Yun mentioned many times in his fold to Qianlong above: The border trade and trade sides have profited, but the northern neighbors are envious and jealous of me, and there is covetousness, so we must remain vigilant in order to prevent them from suddenly invading in the name of trade. As a member of a closed-door elite clique, Song Yun had such insights in the heyday of the Qing Dynasty and half a century before the "Foreign Affairs Movement", and he was definitely far-sighted.
There is also a person who is worried about the country as Song Jun, a national hero who "profits the life and death of the country, and avoids it because of misfortunes", his name is Lin Zexu, and wei Yuan, a thinker who put forward the "law of no harm in the world for hundreds of years", called "the first person to look at the world squarely". Although Lin Zexu did not serve as a general of Ili, his views on the cause of border defense deeply influenced the then general Bu Yantai of Ili.
Lin Zexu was famous for "selling cigarettes at Humen", but the next few battles of the Qing army lost to the British army, and the Qing court, which was eager to seek peace, chose to sacrifice him, first demoting Zhenhai, and then exiled Ili. Fortunately, the then Ili general Bu Yantai, a pragmatic minister who had been fighting for a long time, was very sympathetic to Lin Zexu's plight, and not only did not regard him as a "criminal minister", but repeatedly consulted him on the "Tuntian Cultivation War", and later simply proposed that he be put in charge of water conservancy construction in Aksu, Kashgar, Hotan and other places. Lin Zexu, grateful for Buyantai's friendship, disregarded his old age and physical decline, and in three and a half years he "traveled 30,000 miles throughout the western region," inspected eight cities in southern Xinjiang on the spot, deepened his understanding of the importance of border defense in the northwest in the process of building water conservancy projects and popularizing spinning wheels, put forward the national defense ideology of resisting Britain and defending Russia, and became a pioneer in the modern "theory of anti-congestion."
Later, Lin Zexu was reactivated and successively served as the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu and Yungui, but his concern for the defense of the northwest was not lost for a moment, and he still cried out on his deathbed, "Finally a Chinese patient, its Russia!" Unfortunately, Lin Gong's words became a proverb, and although the Ili general in the late Qing Dynasty had a clear man like Chang Gung who was bound to fight for every inch of land and reclaim The Balkru Mountain, the helpless building would fall, and the heavens would be powerless, and millions of Chinese territories would be swallowed up by tsarist Russia and the great powers.
The last Ili general of the Qing Dynasty was Zhirui. Zhi Rui was diligent and self-disciplined since childhood, knowledgeable and knowledgeable, entered the Qingliu, was incompatible with the decay of the officialdom, and always rebelled against the magnates, and it was difficult to grant a right attendant of the ceremonial department, and because of the main battle of Jia Wu, he accused Li Hongzhang of following the stubborn things and provoking the Western Empress. In time for the Guangxu Emperor to escape from the control of the harem, he failed and was imprisoned by Cixi, and even his favorite concubine Was pushed into the well. As a cousin of Zhenfei, Zhirui's career was even worse, first he was assigned to UriaSutai as a counselor minister, and then he was demoted to Ili as the leader of the Solon battalion.
According to the Qing Dynasty system, the leading minister only took charge of leading the troops, and had no right to inquire about the major affairs of the DPRK and China and local government affairs, nor was he allowed to send the recital to the imperial court alone. This made Zhi Rui, who had been determined to "generously promise the country" since childhood, suddenly become an "outcast". However, this poet who was good at bamboo branches, on the surface, drank and hunted, his heart did not sink, and in the face of adversity, he still firmly believed that "for the sake of the imperial court, it will be properly repaid, Yu Wu Zhiye", so he carefully examined Karen and Obo in various parts of Ili, and became familiar with the mountains and rivers and dangerous fortresses in various places, and in the past ten years, he successively entrusted his superiors to transfer the music, and put forward national policy suggestions such as "Han-Manchu integration", "border troubles, imperial foreign insults, raising salaries and training troops to save the crisis situation", and prohibiting foreign spies from entering the country as "traveling".
The most lamentable thing is that the fifty-eight-year-old Zhirui was awarded the title of General of Ili when the Manchu Qing Mansion was about to fall. At that time, the waves of the Wuchang Revolution were already raging, and he knew that he could not do anything, and before leaving, he planned to "promise the country with his own body, and not to think of entering the Yumen Gate", and after arriving at Huiyuan City, he also took a series of measures to control the situation, but the tide that swept in was unstoppable, and he was killed by the revolutionary party less than two months after arriving in office. At first, because Zhirui was repeatedly ostracized in the Qing court and had a clear name, the revolutionary party wanted to push him to be the governor of Xinjiang, but he refused; he also proposed to let him go to the Chamber of Commerce to take a name, but he also refused. There is a saying: "If I do what I do, I can't go to the Northern Imperial Court, Ancestor Chen, and die quickly!" His integrity of treating death as a homecoming is a portrayal of his "generous promise to the country."
The Qing Empire was dead, but Huiyuan City was still there. The Ili General's Mansion is ruined, but its history will not be erased.
Coming out of the General's Mansion, we drove several kilometers to the ruins of old Huiyuan City. Here are pieces of corn, with a few pieces of wheat stubble in between. Slightly higher than the ground, the road-like strip is the ruins of the northeast side of the old city, about a few hundred meters each. Most of the southern and western parts of the old city have become riverbeds. The Ili River, which flows through the city, not only accepts the clear current of the Gongnais River, but also flows into the decay of Huiyuan City.
The wild winds are blowing, and the temperature begins to drop. As the sun sets, the river shines brightly. A group of gray ducks came ashore in the bend of the river, shaking off a muddy water, croaking, as if torturing us: Do you know which Tuntian soldier reclaimed the fertile land under our feet, and how many people have been provided with the fruits of the desk and the meal on the plate for hundreds of years?
I was speechless and ashamed. We naturally live on the foundation created by our ancestors, enjoy modern civilization and its rich material wealth, and even spend days and nights, drunken dreams and deaths, have long forgotten the ancestors of hard struggle, in order to defend the homeland, we have long faced the threat, blood and sweat. The air around us is filled with "little fresh meat", "little luck", "little husband" and "mother cannon", is there still the arrogance to face the robbers and not hesitate to fight? In a vague trance, I seemed to see the figures of the soldiers of the past, shining in the waves of the painted sunset, or galloping on horseback, or supporting the plough staff and sword, even if the dust was not washed, the unkempt face was dirty, but also a righteous, full of expectations, faintly, flashing out of the back of time, swarming from the depths of history. They shouted, they shouted, they turned all their hopes and unwillingness into the chants of jingo iron horses, gathered in the rolling Ili River, passing on the blood and veins, moisturizing the people, and warning their children and grandchildren: Don't forget where you came from and where you will go...
2019.8.20