Encountering the 'Beautiful Xinjiang' in Summer

Cool Encounter at Lake Selim

In the scorching summer of July, the off-road vehicle drove out of Urumqi, with dust flying all the way and the carriage stuffy and stuffy, making people feel drowsy. Just as I was beginning to waver in my understanding of the word 'Xinjiang', a nearly transparent blue lake, Lake Selim, suddenly unfolded outside the car window. The lake water formed by the convergence of snow and water has no impurities, and the sunlight shines like broken silver rolling.

I took off my shoes and socks and stepped into the water. It was so cold that I took a deep breath, but it instantly dispelled all the tiredness. My colleague poured a handful of lake water at me, and the water droplets were crystal clear in the sunlight. We started a water fight like children, and our laughter was blown far away by the wind of the plateau. At that moment, I remembered the sudden freshness of the mountains and the stunning scenery hidden behind the desolation of Xinjiang.

Kanas' Forest Fairy Tales

Leaving Lake Selim, we will continue northward. Arriving in Kanas in the evening, the temperature drops sharply, and Beijing is still wearing short sleeves, but here we have to wrap ourselves in cotton jackets.

The next morning, clouds and mist wrapped around the pine forest, and the local car crawled along the winding mountain road, as if rushing into a ink painting. After 1068 steps, I stood on the fish watching platform and looked down: the dark green forest bordered the lake, and the emerald colored lake lay quietly at the bottom of the valley, like a pearl necklace strung together by nature.

On the way down the mountain, I encountered a wooden house belonging to Tuwa people, where the smoke from cooking wafted and the fragrance of milk tea wafted. The host brought out hot milk lumps, and in one gulp, the sour aroma mixed with the scent of pine resin melted the coldness and exhaustion on the tip of his tongue.

Family Memories of Dushanzi Grand Canyon

At the last stop of the journey, we followed the footsteps of the five sisters in Qingdao to Dushanzi.

Standing at the edge of the canyon, the reddish brown rock layers seem to have been cleaved by a giant axe, and the wind howls up from the valley floor, carrying a story from seventy years ago. Wang Minsheng once counted money in the bank here, rode a horse with a gun, and the oath of "people are in the money" echoed among the cliffs.

Now his daughters are walking slowly along the path their father used to take, tears drying up in the wind and gushing out. They poured the Qingdao seawater they brought into the canyon, where two types of "blue" that were thousands of miles apart met. I pressed the shutter next to it. In the camera, the vastness of the canyon and the white hair of sisters intertwined into a group photo across time and space. At that moment, the grandeur of Xinjiang is no longer just a landscape, but a family epic that can be touched and inherited.