Just an hour after the convoy left the city of Engels, I looked out the window of the car and saw the open and vast fields, with endless mechanized farmland intertwined with a small number of woods, which is also an important agricultural region in Russia.

Now that Ukraine is divided and Russia wants to feed itself, the grain-producing regions here are more important than they were in the Soviet era, and agricultural production on both sides of the highway is thriving compared to the rapidly declining industrial capacity.

But unlike those agricultural areas in the western United States, where the farmland is boundless, the sky and the earth here have a touch of vastness, and it is easy for people to think to outer space and even run into history.

Zhang Nan felt this way, but she didn't expect Charlize Theron sitting next to her to have a stronger strange feeling, perhaps because she is a celebrity with a movie star flavor, and she usually pays attention to professional cultivation.

Cultivation is learning, cultivation is self-improvement, for serious people, a careful look at "War and Peace" can be affected by the style of Russia, and even the perspective of looking at the Russian land will become different.

Charlie is a studious child, at least she has studied Tolstoy's masterpieces in depth, and not long after the convoy set off, Zhang Nan found that her mood today was a little different.

Ask her what's wrong, the girl herself can't say clearly, anyway, she feels that she is very emotional today, and she is a little worried about her mental condition, is there something wrong.

After thinking about it, Zhang Nan smiled and told her: "You are affected by the new empty environment, a very mysterious reflection, but there is no problem, get familiar with it or leave here, this feeling will disappear."

We're pretty good in this area, but if we go to Volgograd, 200 kilometers away, or Leningrad from Moscow, we feel it even more strongly than here and in Siberia. ”

"Why? Is there any place in the world that is emptier than Siberia? And the environment in Volgograd is special?"

Charlize Theron was puzzled.

Zhang Nan smiled and told her: "What was Volgograd called before?"

Stalingrad!

There is something wonderful about the fact that in our lives it is generally people who change the environment, but in this part of Russia it is an exception, and sometimes the humanities change the influence of the environment on outsiders.

Don't ask me why, I don't know, maybe it's because of the space here and the fact that too many people have died. ”

Not to mention earlier, in Russia, more than 70% of Russians said that someone in their family had paid for their life in World War II, both in proportion to the population and in absolute numbers, it was absolutely terrifying!

There are many inexplicable things in this world, which cannot be explained by science, but many people do not pay attention to them. Just like Zhang Nan today, every time he comes into contact with a new cultural relic, he now seems to be able to have a distant dialogue with the former owners of the object, and faintly grasp the fragment of life on the other side of the long time and space.

Maybe this is a problem of people with a strong sixth sense, just don't develop into a neuropathy.

Charlie's subtle feeling was interrupted by the noise of a helicopter in the sky, Zhang Nan glanced at the sky a few times, it had to be quite high, it should be 8 meters or 17 meters, and asked Alexander, who was driving: "How far is it to the station?"

The convoy's destination is Alexandrovgay, a small town not far from the border with Kazakhstan, and tomorrow Guan Xingquan's spacecraft return capsule will land in a large area of wasteland and farmland within several thousand square kilometers on the northwest side of the town.

Alexander heard the question and said, "Boss, there are almost 50 kilometers left, and it will take about 45 minutes to arrive." ”

The whole journey takes about two hours, and half an hour by helicopter is enough - the Russian side has given a helicopter option, and the Russian Air Force stationed in Engels City has helicopters, but Zhang Nan doesn't like it.

For more than 100 kilometers, he didn't choose a train, let alone an annoying Soviet-style helicopter, and he hated to wear annoying soundproof headsets when riding a helicopter.

The landscape on both sides of the road is becoming more and more desolate, the proportion of farmland is gradually decreasing, and the distance between the settlements is getting farther and farther apart.

"This area has been a landing site for spacecraft for a long time, except for the planes of domestic aviation, it has not been opened to the public, it is all in the service of manned spaceflight, and there is a small landing field command center there in Aleksandrovgay ..."

The landscape outside the window changed quickly, and by the time the convoy arrived in the town, it had quickly entered the Central Asian landscape from the lush greenery along the Volga River, and the vast plain stretched as far as the eye could see, except for a small river that flowed through the town of Alexandrovgay.

Empty, flat, unobstructed.

Stay in a guest house-style hotel in the town, which is the accommodation for the landing site personnel on their missions, and usually have only a few personnel on duty.

Zhang Nan didn't expect the living conditions to be so good, so he would have run a guest house in 86 - it was really similar, with a narrow wooden frame bed, and the most luxurious house was actually a two-person room.

It is not a standard room, with large white walls, and the bathrooms are shared.

The beds in the room are not placed left and right, and they are arranged in a very "guest house-style" front and back, which makes the guys from Huaxia feel a sense of nostalgia.

Zhang Nan deliberately looked at the floor, there are few double rooms, basically four-person rooms, fortunately, they are relatively clean, and the covers are still deliberately dried in advance.

Of course, Tom the housekeeper and the servants brought special covers for Zhang Nan and Miss Charlie, just in case the conditions of some corners were too poor.

Others are busy, the boss is idle, take a walk outside the guest house and look at the wilderness here - the guest house is in the west of the town, and beyond the walls is the endless plain.

I also walked around the town at will: except for my own group of invited guests, foreigners are strictly forbidden to enter here, and there are no dangers in front and back.

This is a taste of one of the more remote places in Russia, which is very different from Moscow and Leningrad, and still has a strong Soviet flavor.

Needless to say, young people go to big cities to find opportunities, the same situation as rural and small towns in China.

Take a turn and come back, and it's time for dinner.

There are still restaurants and they are simple, but at least they don't have to take their own lunch boxes to eat.

Part of the restaurant has been taken over by a small team of private chefs led by Danny, and knowing that the owner has a habit of wandering around a new place, he is ready to do so.

The beef of Kazakhstan, cabbage, greenhouse cucumbers and tomatoes from the Engels City farm were all prepared at the airport in advance, and a lot of fresh food from the Volga River was specially prepared for the boss.

Unfortunately, the owner has no interest in the eel caviar.