The train travels all the way, passing through two formations in between. In addition to their green cars, they were all hung up on stuffy tankers. During the break in the train, Xiaoyu noticed that the entire train was full of soldiers in green uniforms. The eldest sister told her, "It's peaceful." Now the country is dismantling the army. These are all retired soldiers, and they have also been transferred to Xinjiang en masse. ”

The further the train went, out of Shanhaiguan, there was an endless desert in front of you. The desert with no grass growing, no signs of human activity, only undulating sand dunes, makes people feel particularly desolate. The train drove further on, and Xiaoyu felt the air start to dry, and her lips began to bleed. After drinking more water, my throat is still sore, as if my tonsils are congested due to inflammation. The climate also seems to be against them, and the heat in the carriage during the day is unbearable, and at night it seems like winter all of a sudden. She watched the doctors and nurses in the car as if they were all the same, their faces showing painful laziness. Only the eldest sister is in better condition. Walking back and forth in the carriage, observing everyone's condition. Comfort everyone, bring water and food.

A week later, the train arrived at a station that had no village in front of the village and no shop in the back, and was not a station at all. The track in front of the train was at the end, and a large bag of dirt was piled up at the end of the front track. All the personnel got out of the car and formed a team, and the leader who led the team briefly explained the precautions, and the team lined up in three columns and marched to the depths of the desert.

The sky is cloudless, the sun is like fire, the march in the desert is unobstructed, and the sun here is more poisonous than the interior. The light rain felt that the backpack was thousands of pounds, and the sweat soaked through the clothes. The most uncomfortable thing is that there is a shoe of sand in the marching shoes, stand and take it off and pour it, and it is filled again after a few steps. Everyone showed signs of dehydration, and everyone found the leader who led the team and hoped to arrange a break and find a way to get some water for everyone to drink.

The leader of the team pointed to the sand dunes in front of him and said, "It's sandstorm season, and it's very dangerous to rest here. Over the sand dunes in front, there is an improvised road we have built, and there are cars waiting to pick us up. ”

The eldest sister has never seen a sandstorm, but she has heard that a sandstorm covers the sky and can devour life in an instant, so she no longer argues. I just saw Xiaoyu's face flushed with heat, her messy hair stuck to her face with sweat, and she looked tired. She took Xiaoyu's backpack, put it on top of her backpack, and handed Xiaoyu the kettle. Xiaoyu had already drunk all her water, took the eldest sister's kettle and took a sip, feeling that it was full of water, knowing that the eldest sister was reluctant to drink it.

The breeze blew, and everyone felt a lot cooler. The climate in the desert changed in an instant, and in a moment the breeze turned into a violent wind, rolling up the sand and hitting people's faces, as if they were being pumped in the mouth. Suddenly, a female nurse let out a scream, her face changed dramatically, and she pointed into the distance. In the distance, a sandstorm had formed, and a huge sand wind was rolling in the waves. These people are all from the mainland and have never seen sandstorms. Looking at the sand waves like a wall, they only panicked and didn't know what to do.

The dust screams of female doctors and nurses are even more disturbing. The head of the sand wave has arrived, the sand wave blocks the sun, and the sky begins to darken. At this time, the words came: "Pass down, sit down in the lee, hold your head in your hands, and protect your face with your elbows!" "This is the words of the leader of the team, and the soldiers know the traditions of the troops.

The eldest sister pulled Xiaoyu to sit down, took off her mask and covered the heads of the two. The sand waves obscured the sky and the sun, and it was dark. The center of the sandstorm flew sand and rocks, like someone scooping up sand and throwing it at people's heads. Large and small pebbles flew in the air, smashing on people's heads from time to time, and the smashed heads broke the blood. The air is filled with a choking smell of sand, almost suffocating! Xiaoyu was frightened and lay on the eldest sister's lap, and the eldest sister protected her with her body.

I had never heard of sandstorms in the past, but before coming to Xinjiang, I heard the eldest sister say that Xinjiang was windy and sandy, and I didn't think that there were sandstorms. I felt that the wind was blowing outside the smock, and the eldest sister blocked the flying sand and rocks for her, and she must have suffered a lot of injuries. Her head was inside her gown, and it felt like the sand was no less than outside. Her mouth and nose were full of sand, and her upper and lower teeth were full of sand in her mouth.

I don't know how long it took, but the wind and sand gradually decreased, and the sun reappeared smiling. The eldest sister lifted off the coat with a thick layer of sand, Xiaoyu raised her head and was startled, hundreds of people were gone. After a while, they slowly emerged from the sand one by one, as if thousands of troops had suddenly emerged from the ground. They were all earthies from head to toe, with only two eyes rolling.

I can't see my own embarrassment, and I can't see the human form when I see others. Pointing at each other and laughing, no one complained after the sandstorm, but laughed. Xiaoyu was infected by laughter, and laughed out loud while patting the sand with her eldest sister.

The leader of the team notified the unit to count the number of people, and except for a few who were injured by flying stones, no one was seriously injured or died. The eldest sister arranged for doctors and nurses to work together, and quickly cleaned and bandaged the wounds for the wounded. Then the whole team set off, the team climbed over two sand mountains, saw more than a dozen trucks parked on the simple road below the mountain, everyone cheered and rushed down the mountain as if they saw a green state in the desert.

The car pulled everyone, and the sun of the Mercedes was westward to the ground. As soon as he got out of the car, Xiaoyu's heart was half cold. Where is this work unit, it is simply a wild land in the middle of the desert, and there is a water beach in the middle, in which some water plants are sparsely stretched. Under the influence of the slogan of working first and living later, some houses called dry bases were built at that time. This kind of house is on the ridge, digging down two-thirds of the way, beating a rammed earth wall of more than one meter with soil, putting up the roof, and covering it with two to three feet of soil.

This is done to reduce the erosion of wind and sand, but also to keep warm. It's just that it's damp inside, and it's easy to get rheumatism after staying for a long time. It's the kind of house that not everyone can live in. The trainees who came today will camp in the open air at night, and tomorrow they will do it themselves and build their own homes. Doctors and nurses are a special group, especially female doctors and nurses, who were assigned houses on the same day. The eldest sister and Xiaoyu were assigned to a row of No. 6, which was a row of houses built for cadres, because the eldest sister was a cadre at the county regiment level.

The officer who divided the room took them to the front of the house, pointed to the house and left. Because of the lack of timber, all the dry fortified houses here have no doors, only thick straw curtains to keep out the wind and sand. The two of them went down more than a dozen steps, and the grass curtain was two inches thick, and Xiaoyu couldn't lift one hand. Because the wind and sand are too strong, there are no windows in the dry base room. When I entered the house, it was dark and mushy, although there were electric lights installed, and the electricity was supplied at a fixed time, but now it was not dark and it was not yet time to supply electricity. The two of them were not familiar with the situation inside, so they snuggled up to each other and waited for the eyes to get used to it.

The cadre's room was several square meters larger than the worker's room, with two beds on the floor. In the middle of the ground against the wall was a table made of wood sawn in half. The room had only been built for a short time, and it was a mess, with small mounds of rammed earth falling from the walls; In the middle is the mud that has fallen from the roof. The eldest sister urged to clean up quickly, otherwise it would be dark and you wouldn't be able to clean it up. There were no tools, so the two of them had to hold them out with their hands.

Outside, a car goes from far to near. Someone shouted, "Come out every house to get cow dung!" ”

A dump truck unloaded a cart of dried cow dung. And men came out from every house to bring cow dung into the house. The eldest sister and Xiaoyu also came out, and Xiaoyu didn't know what this thing was for. When he saw this black thing, he asked, "What's the use of this thing?" ”

The young man driving the car smiled: "I ran more than 50 kilometers and went to the pastoral area to ask the herdsmen to buy it. You don't think it's working. ”

Although the eldest sister has never lived in Xinjiang, she has heard of herdsmen cooking with herdsmen. Tell her: "Xinjiang has a large temperature difference between morning and evening, and if you have a cow dung fire at home, you can go to the house to get wet, and it won't be too cold at night." ”

Two young men went door-to-door to install a stove, a stove used by the locals to burn cow dung. They don't know how to use it, and they've never seen it. The eldest sister went to the room where she came first and asked, but she barely managed to light the cow dung fire. Some of the cow dung is not dry, and the light smoke does not catch fire. The smoke came out of the ring of fire, and it generally smelled of grass and sour animal feces.

Xiaoyu hadn't smelled this before, pinched her nose with her fingers, and ran outside the house to get some fresh air. By this time it was already dark, and the sudden sound of a machine could be heard in the distance, which was the sound of a generator. Under the general principle of production first, then life, it is a luxury to have electricity in private houses. In an instant, all the rooms were lit up, and all the rooms seemed to return from primitive society to civilized society, and cheers were heard almost simultaneously from all rooms.

Xinjiang has a special geographical location, and the temperature plummets after the sun goes down. A few wolf cries were heard in the distance, and the animals also came out to catch their prey in the night. Xiaoyu shuddered in fright, screamed, and hurriedly ran back to the house.

The smell of cow dung in the house was still strong, but it was much warmer. Cow dung is not like the charcoal fire in the mainland, which can burn the stove red when it is burned. After the soot is gone, the red charcoal does not smoke much. Cow dung is the excrement of cows after eating grass and absorbing nutrients through the stomach. Because it is not easy to dry thoroughly, there is smoke in the stove, and at the same time, a blue flame with not many kcal is produced. When the smoke is gone, the part that can be burned is burned as much as possible, and the flames are naturally gone, and the heat is gone.