There were three cars in total this time. Lin Qing, I and Zhou Jing shared one car, Yi Shiting took Qingyi in one car, and Zhang Jinya and Cao Yuan in another. We set out from Yujiang County, Yingtan City, and headed straight to the northwest.
This trip was really not short. From the East China region to the Northwest region, it almost spanned half of China, which was much longer than the last time we entered the Qinling Mountains. Fortunately, the first half of this road was relatively easy to walk. After all, after the slogan "If you want to be rich, have fewer children and build more roads" was put forward a few years ago, our country's transportation network is still well woven, at least in the East China region, so we didn't suffer at the beginning. The real ordeal began when we entered the Hexi Corridor a day later.
The Hexi Corridor is the main road from the Chinese mainland to Xinjiang. Starting from Wushaoling in the east and ending at the ancient Yumen Pass in the west, it lies between the South Mountain (Qilian Mountain and Altun Mountain) and the North Mountain (Mazong Mountain, Heli Mountain and Longshou Mountain) in the north and south. It is about 900 kilometers long and several kilometers to nearly 100 kilometers wide. It is a narrow flat land running from northwest to southeast, shaped like a corridor, called the Gansu Corridor. Because it is located west of the Yellow River, it is also called the Hexi Corridor.
This corridor has always occupied a very important position in the history of our country, because it is the throat that must be taken from the east to the west of China, and it is regarded as the real starting point of the ancient Silk Road! !
More than 2,000 years ago, the Hexi Corridor had no connection with the Central Plains. At that time, it was occupied by an ancient country in the Western Regions-Yuezhi!
Yuezhi could be said to be a big country in the Western Regions at that time, but although it was powerful, it was still a little too immature compared to the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period in the Central Plains, so at most it could only pretend to be a calf with some surrounding small countries, and it had never been connected with the Central Plains.
When did the Hexi Corridor really begin to attract the attention of the emperors of the Central Plains?
This probably started with Maodun Chanyu, the pride of the Huns.
After Qin Shihuang conquered the six kingdoms and unified the Central Plains, Touman Chanyu, the father of Maodun Chanyu, once led his troops southward, trying to challenge Qin Shihuang, the terrible lion dominating the Central Plains. The First Emperor was furious and asked Meng Tian to lead an army of 300,000 to attack the Huns in the north. When the First Emperor was in power, the combat effectiveness of the Qin army was well known. The old Qin people's military orders were as strong as mountains, and they swore to go forward to the death. The fierceness of the army once shocked the entire era. How could Touman Chanyu be a match? In the Battle of Hetao, the Qin army decided the outcome of the battle. The corpses of Touman Chanyu's subordinates were scattered all over the field, and they fled north in panic. It can be said that if Yitian does not come out, who can compete with him! After this incident, Tuoman Chanyu developed a great fear of the Qin people in the Central Plains. He did not dare to herd horses southward for ten years and indulged in wine and sex. Because he was too fond of a wife named Yanshi, he wanted to depose the eldest son and establish the youngest son. He sent his eldest son to the Yuezhi Kingdom as a hostage and then attacked the Yuezhi, hoping that the Yuezhi people could kill Maodun.
Unfortunately, although the Yuezhi people wanted to kill Maodun, they did not succeed in the end. Instead, Maodun fled back to the Xiongnu, killed his father with a whistling arrow, and became the great Chanyu of the Xiongnu in one fell swoop.
Since he became the Chanyu of the Xiongnu, how could Maodun let the Yuezhi people go?
So, Maodun Chanyu attacked the Yuezhi and drove the Yuezhi people to move west with their entire family. From then on, the Xiongnu people became the masters of the Hexi Corridor!
If the Yuezhi people could kill Maodun in time, perhaps the whole history would be rewritten. If Maodun died, there would be no Maodun Chanyu, the leader of the Xiongnu who conquered the entire Western Regions in the future. The Xiongnu people would probably not become strong. The Yuezhi might become the overlord of the grassland and enter the Central Plains during the chaos at the end of the Qin Dynasty. Although it is impossible for the Yuezhi to unify the Central Plains with their national strength, it will accelerate the integration with the Western Regions. When the Central Plains is unified again, the Central Plains and the Western Regions will be integrated. At that time, the Western Roman Empire will directly face the most powerful empire in the East. At that time, can the West really stop the East with its extremely brilliant civilization?
If Maodun died, perhaps the world we live in now would be a completely different world. Unfortunately, history does not have so many ifs. The Hexi Corridor eventually fell into the hands of the Xiongnu.
During the Western Han Dynasty, the relationship between the Han and Xiongnu deteriorated. During the reign of Emperor Wu, Emperor Wu wanted to destroy the Xiongnu, so he finally set his sights on the Hexi Corridor.
The Hexi Corridor... It was at this time that it entered the eyes of the emperors of the Central Plains. In order to contact the Yuezhi people who migrated westward to fight against the Xiongnu together, Zhang Qian passed through the Hexi Corridor and walked out of the famous Silk Road...
In other words, the real glorious starting point of the Silk Road should actually be in the Hexi Corridor, not in Xi'an.
Arriving at the Hexi Corridor, our journey really began. Everywhere we looked, we saw the desolation of the northwest Gobi Desert, and the road was extremely bumpy. The more than 900 kilometers of road were extremely difficult to walk. When we arrived in Jiuquan, my body was almost falling apart, and the others were also very tired, so we could only rest in Jiuquan, Gansu for a night before setting off again, and arrived in Hami, Xinjiang the next day.
Arriving here, we knew that our comfortable days were over.
The ancient Silk Road is actually divided into two routes, the southern route and the northern route. The southern route is from Dunhuang through Loulan, Yutian, Shache, across the Pamirs of the Pamir Mountains to Dayuezhi, Anxi, and west to Tiaozhi and Daqin. The northern route is from Dunhuang to Jiaohe, Qiuci, Shule, across the Pamir Mountains to Dayuan, and west through Anxi to Daqin.
The end point is Daqin, which was the Roman Empire at that time, but the path is completely different!
We took the southern route because Zhang Qian took this route on his second mission to the Western Regions, and the ancient river channel of the Peacock River also flows in this direction. Fatty and his friends disappeared while following this route to track down Prince Duolun. We can only follow this route.
Now that we have crossed the Hexi Corridor and Dunhuang, if we want to continue along the Silk Road, the next step must be to Loulan!
Where is Loulan? In Lop Nur! !
Today's Lop Nur is no longer the huge lake where the Tarim River and the Peacock River converged. It is a desert that is connected to the Taklimakan Desert, forming the largest dry desert in our country, or a quicksand desert. It is called the Sea of Death. Why is it called the Sea of Death? Because this place is too vast, there are few desert oases, and there are quicksands everywhere. If you don't have the ability to get in, you can't get out. Anyone who has been to the desert knows that if a car drives into a quicksand desert, it is no different from seeking death. Most quicksand deserts have unstable foundations and the sand on them is not solid, so a sand body that flows like water will be formed. When a heavy object is placed on the sand body, it will sink directly into the quicksand, and there is no life! There is only one way to cross this desert - camel! Camels are also called desert ships. They have strong survival ability in the desert, good sense of direction, and can identify quicksand. As long as you ride a camel, it is generally not easy to get stuck in the quicksand. We all knew that we probably wouldn't have the leisure to sit in the car and listen to music. Once we entered the Sea of Death on camels, life and death would be left to Allah.
But we had to go to the Sea of Death!
Because both the fat man and the rescue team lost contact after entering the Sea of Death. If something went wrong, it would probably happen in this desert. The Sea of Death has always been mysterious. The ancient city of Niya and the old land of Loulan in the ancient country of Jingjue are all in it. Moreover, before this place was desertified, Lop Nur could be said to have carried countless historical vicissitudes. In other words, several ancient countries were buried in this Sea of Death, and it was probably dangerous.
This time, we came here just for these. We must figure out what exists in this quicksand desert before we can figure out the whereabouts of the fat man.
In order to find camels and guides to enter the desert, we stayed in Hami for two days. During this period, Yishiting went out several times and found an old man named Alayi. This old man Alayi was a foot merchant who often went in and out of the desert area. He had his own camel team. He mainly went into the desert to do business with the villagers of some small villages in the oasis. He was very familiar with the desert environment.
It was a pity that when the old man Alayi heard that he was going to enter Lop Nur, he immediately shook his head and refused to do it. He said that it was a place where Allah had once brought down his anger and he could not go in no matter what.
The name Alayi comes from the Koran, which probably means noble and outstanding. However, although the old man Alayi has a good name, he doesn't seem to be very authentic. When he heard that Lop Nur was in trouble, he said no at first. Later, Yi Shiting bid 50,000 cash, and the old man immediately changed his mind. His two small eyes sparkled, and he told us like a charlatan that we provided wealth and income to an upright and kind Islamic family, so even if we entered the Sea of Death, Allah would forgive us.
So, the old man Alayi fell under the offensive of money and agreed with us to take us to the Sea of Death the next day.
That night, several of us had a big meal in Hami, because we all understood that once we entered the Sea of Death, our lives would be determined by God, and we would not be able to eat or drink, and it was unknown whether we could come back or how many people could come back...