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After Xiao An finished counting, he closed the wooden window outside the store, inserted the iron pin into the small hole in the wooden window frame, and then inserted the iron pin from the inside, which was a security measure to prevent thieves in the environment at that time.

There are two locks to close the store, Xiao An and a Mongolian boy Bat each have a key, and they can only open the door when they come every morning.

The days of working as a salesperson in the store department are very fulfilling, Xiao An is cheerful and diligent, and the Mongolian guy Bart is refreshing and quick, and the two work together and cooperate tacitly, and the farmers and herdsmen of Tianshan Commune like to associate with them.

The long winter has finally passed, and in the blink of an eye, summer is coming, and the eldest daughter Yi Yuhuan was born, a small famous product, Yi Lixian chose this name for his daughter because he tasted the truth of the world in Tianshan Commune and the helplessness of not being able to teach and solve doubts.

Xiao An did not go to work in the store department after confinement, and the work of the sales clerk was replaced by an intellectual youth who went to the countryside to go to the countryside.

In the early morning of this day, every household in the small mountain village was cooking with smoke, Yi Lixian was busy carrying water and chopping wood, and his wife Xiao An was carrying her daughter tied with cloth strips, busy cooking milk tea, and the milk in the iron pot boiled out a layer of yellow milk skin, overflowing with fragrant milk fragrance.

Five-year-old son Yi Yuxin was playing with Hali, the son of the Kazakh neighbor Usman's family, when Yi Yuxin's sheep stone knocked down the other party's sheep stone, I heard his little mouth boasting: "Hari, your sheep is the stone Hamas (all) I have won." ”

Sheep stone is the small bone that connects the joint of the leg of the mutton, playing the sheep stone is a kind of gambling game played by the children of the ethnic group on the grassland, just like the boy in the county town playing with the paper.

Draw a line under the soles of your feet, people stand outside the line and keep a certain distance from the sheep stone in front of you, use your sheep stone to touch the sheep stone placed on the ground by the other party and stand firmly, the opponent's sheep stone falls, even if you win, on the contrary, do not lose or win.

This gambling-like mini-game is a childhood memory of the children of the prairie.

In addition to wrestling and wrestling in the grassland, it is this kind of collision game of sheep and stones, which is single and fun, and the children of the grassland never get tired of playing.

The boys, who have been playing all day, come home every evening to show off the number of sheep they have won, which is the most proud time of the day.

The secretary of the commune, Selik, rode his horse to the house of Elixian, jumped off his horse, and tied the reins to a wooden stick at the door.

"Hi----- Mr. Xiao, Garggs (good), Mr. Yi, Garggs." Selik greeted in a hearty voice.

Seeing the joy on Selik's face, Elixian stopped what he was doing, and held the long handle of the axe with both hands, deeply infected, and he happily asked, "Darcy (comrade), is there a good thing?" ”

"The county has arranged for the Tianshan Commune to go over the mountain to deliver wheat tomorrow, won't you go?" Selik asked with interest, pointing to the Khan Tengri Peak in the Wusun Mountains not far to the south.

As soon as he heard that he was going to turn over Wusun Mountain, Yi Lixian became interested, "What are you doing over the mountain?" Tamashire goes? (Go play?) ）”

"Send grain, send grain to the people in southern Xinjiang on the other side of the mountain, why don't you go?" Selik smiled and asked for his opinion.

Yi Lixian looked at his busy wife, Xiao An turned his face and said, "Go, don't worry about me and the child, so many villagers take care of it, you go out and relax." ”

After living in Tianshan Commune for nine years, the young Zhibian couple had long heard from local herders that there was an ancient sheep herding road leading to southern Xinjiang on the mountain, and that it was Wensu County in southern Xinjiang.

This ancient road was once the most important passage connecting the north and south of the ancient Silk Road, and it was also the only ancient road that crossed the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains and connected the ancient Wusun Kingdom and the Qiuci Kingdom.

Yi Lixian, who loves to read, knows this history, Wusun had been nomadic for a long time in the Hexi Corridor between Dunhuang and Qilian, and was later destroyed by the Dayue clan.

The leader Nan Doumi was also killed, and his son Hunt Jiaomi was adopted by the Xiongnu Mao Dunshan Yu, who controlled the Western Regions at that time.

After Hunting Jiaomi grew up, he asked the Xiongnu monarch Shan Yu to lead the troops to expel the Dayue clan and move his troops to the Ili River valley to establish a state.

This past of Wusun was seen and heard by Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty when he first sent an envoy to the Western Regions to be detained by the Xiongnu, and after contacting the Yueshi people to attack the Xiongnu failed, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty accepted Zhang Qian's suggestion of "contacting Wusun and attacking the Xiongnu" in the fourth year of Yuanzhan (119 BC), and sent him to envoy Wusun, after that, Wusun Kunmo successively married the princess of the Han Empire and the princess of Xie Wei as his wife, and cooperated with the Han Empire to defeat the Xiongnu and unify the Western Regions.

According to the herdsmen of Tianshan Commune, it is a beautiful ancient road, as beautiful as a fairyland, but along with the beautiful scenery along the way, there are landslides, mudslides, high cold, flying stones, plateau permafrost thermal subsidence, avalanches......

Yi Lixian, who is nearly 30 years old, followed Selik and other 20 men to ride their own high-headed horses and set off from Tianshan Commune to Pochengzi, Wensu County, south of Tianshan Mountain, according to the requirements of his superiors, with a total length of about 120 kilometers.

Riding a big horse on this difficult ancient road, dragging grain and needing to wade through the raging and brutal Muzart River, passing through the Hatamuzi Dahan at an altitude of 3,500 meters on the main ridge of the Tianshan Mountains, how difficult it is can be imagined.

Everyone was ready to go, more than 50 horses, more than 20 men of different nationalities, Yi Lixian looked at himself and several neighboring herdsmen's horse coats loaded with dried naan and ghee, and two or three horses carrying a large pot stove, rapeseed oil, no mutton at all, could it be that the time came to cook dry naan in a cauldron?

Elixian voiced the doubts in his heart, and Selik laughed and sold the guanzi, "When the time comes, you will know." ”

Starting at 12 a.m., the caravan, led by 50-year-old shepherd al-Baghdati, swayed southeast.

As a teenager, Baghdat followed his father back and forth through this ancient road, and was quite familiar with this ancient road, and was the guide of this horse team.

Even if the summer is hot, the grassland is still very cool, and although he has lived on the grassland for more than eight years, Elixian is still fresh and curious about everything in the grassland, and he can't get enough of the beauty of the grassland.

In the middle of the horse team, Yi Lixian chanted aloud, "Eilechuan, under the Yin Mountain." The sky is like a dome, covering the four wildernesses. The sky is blue, the wilderness is vast, the wind blows the grass and sees the cattle and sheep. ”

The secretary of the Tianshan Commune, Selik, knew that this was an ancient poem describing the scenery of the Western Regions, and over the years, in the evening literacy class, Mr. Yi taught them a lot of ancient poems.

Selik will recite the song "Goose Goose Goose, Song to the Sky, White Hair Floating Green Water, Anthurium Sweeping Waves." "This one is easy, the others are too difficult.

Watching the kind and bold Han men flourish in poetry, the Kazakh and Mongolian men who can recite this poem follow Yi Lixian and roar this poem together.

Even the Hazakh and Mongolian men who don't know this poem are also learning and using it, and this horse team roared hysterically with all their strength in their throats, startling the vultures on the grassland, flying and falling.

The blue sky and thick clouds flew a few vultures, their huge wings strong and powerful, and they circled in the air a few times and landed on the grassland to grab food with their companions.

Vultures are used by herdsmen as sacred birds in the snowy region, messengers from heaven and cleaners of the grasslands, with a keen sense of smell and sight, which allows them to hunt the most ideal food, thereby relieving the pressure on the grasslands and maintaining a good ecological cycle.

In a green grass, the bloody animal carcasses are particularly conspicuous and abrupt, and more than a dozen vultures are tearing, showing the power of the wild and the charm of nature.

The vast expanse of grassland on the alpine pasture, surrounded by lush pine forests, from time to time wafting with bursts of refreshing grass and trees, as well as the gurgling and flowing forest streams, large clouds within reach, and horses, cattle, sheep and camels walking on the grassland, make the boundless grassland appear more pure and quiet, like a paradise.

Seeing that in the evening, the leading horse of Baghdat suddenly roared, and the other horses also neighed in response, and the horses suddenly became jubilant, and Elixian saw a herdsman's wooden house not far ahead, which turned out to be the place where he was staying for the night.

A galloping hound barked at the horse, and the owner heard the movement and came out of the hut, and called back the hound in a harsh voice, and greeted the team warmly, "Just west, just west." (Drink tea, drink tea.) ）

It was on the border of the Shata Commune (Shata is the Mongolian word for staircase), and the hospitable herdsmen began to slaughter five sheep to welcome their guests from afar, and the commune secretary Selik took two jugs of rapeseed oil from a horse and gave them to the herdsmen.

Selik took out five bottles of Yili Daqu from his horse jacket and quipped at Elixian: "In the evening, we drink headache Daqu, and you drink mare's milk wine." ”

Yili Daqu is a strong liquor, and after drinking, there will be a headache and brain swelling, and the local farmers and herdsmen jokingly call it "headache Daqu", while Yili Xian is allergic to alcohol, and does not stick to the wine.

At night, eating finger lamb and drinking mare's milk wine, Yi Lixian, who was not good at drinking, got drunk before he finished the second bowl.

He sang the children's song "I Love Beijing Tiananmen" at the top of his voice, and sang a Kazakh song "The Sea Sails by the Helmsman", the big guy listened to it and laughed, laughed and drank, a wine glass rotated, drunk and drunk, and was drunk in the middle of the night.

Accustomed to the slow-paced life of the Kazakh compatriots, Elixian got up early in the morning, rode around the steppe on a big horse, and when he returned to the herdsman's house, Selik and the others got up slowly, had a simple breakfast, and everyone started the day's journey again.

The caravan passed through the alluvial plain formed by the Shata River, which is dotted with human-shaped rocks, and was once home to the massive Wusun Tombs and the ruins of the ancient city of Shata.

After walking a few kilometers, the terrain gradually becomes flat and vast, and the herds of horses on the grassland wetlands are unrestrained, sometimes running, sometimes drinking and resting.

Due to the high altitude, the snow-capped mountains are not far away, and the white snow on the top of the mountain can be seen as the snow melts in summer.

From the Shata Ancient Road over the Muzart (Bingdahan), the misty Muzart Snow Peak lies in front of you, which is the famous "Gongyue Road" in the Tang Dynasty must pass through the Bingdahan Pass.

According to legend, the "Lingshan" that Tang Xuanzang crossed in his westward journey was the ancient Silk Road, an important passage connecting the north and south of the Western Regions--- the Xiata Ancient Road, which is also known as the "Tang Monk Road".

The Shata River is turbulent, rolling and milky white, and the mountains on both sides of the river are stacked like straight axes.

Due to the inaccessibility of the area, along the way, you can see squirrels, marmots, snow hares, pheasants, swans, red deer, yellow sheep, wolves, foxes and other animals and birds.

On the way to Qiongdahan (the largest pass), the real alpine pastures of the hinterland of the Tien Shan Mountains are gradually plunged into the narrow and steep mountain paths, where the horses crawl towards the high slopes, which is bumpy and laborious.

Yi Lixian didn't dare to look at the cliff under the ancient road, for fear that he would accidentally fall into the abyss and break his bones.

The mountains on both sides of the narrow ancient road have turned red, and the mountains here are mainly composed of sedimentary rocks, and the faults and crustal movements of the Tianshan Mountains, coupled with the erosion of wind and rain for many years, the side walls of the canyon appear obvious folded curves and fault lines, making the mountains on both sides look like knives and axes.

At an altitude of about 3,600 meters above sea level, the horses always perform more than people imagine in the mountains, walking one foot deep and one foot shallow.

Under the reminder of Bagdati, everyone pulled away and crawled carefully, it seemed that everyone held their breath, only heard the sound of the horses clucking, and from the sound of the horses' hooves, they could feel that the horses under them were also nervous and careful, and when they reached the peak, after crossing the 3-kilometer ridge, Elixian's hands were full of sweat.

When they reached the downhill slope, the horse riding was still very bumpy, after all, it was labor-saving, and the road down was still very steep, so the men dismounted, and went down all the way down the rocky pile tumbling along the stream, and finally reached a flat meadow, and Elixian and the others dismounted and continued to set off after resting for a while.

After descending the mountain and crossing the river 8 times, we arrived at Paradise Lake, where we spent the night at Paradise Lake.

In the early morning, Elixian rode a horse to watch the surrounding scenery, and howled excitedly, the Paradise Lake was surrounded by snow-capped peaks, and the morning light painted the beautiful Paradise Lake with a mysterious color.

The yellow sheep eat grass slowly, not afraid of people at all, Baghdat led a few herdsmen to besiege and kill five yellow sheep, the big guy began to cook on the fire, breakfast and lunch together, the members of the horse team worked together, the speed was very fast, and at one o'clock at noon they ate the hot, fragrant hand-grasped yellow mutton.

This is the first time Elixian has eaten yellow mutton, he ate several pieces in a row, yellow mutton is chewier than sheep meat, and it is extremely delicious, which may be related to the fact that yellow sheep is good at sports.

Just after lunch, before the stall has time to close, rain and snow, I can't enjoy the beautiful scenery of Paradise Lake in the wind and rain, and continue to set off south.

The bad weather of the wind and snow made the crowd who had been happy just now silent, the wind blew the body of the big guy who had nowhere to hide, the mountains covered with snow and stood silently, and in the vast world, it seemed that only this lone horse team was left.

The ascent became muddy and slippery, and the horses were stumbling on the meadows, and the team faced an even greater challenge to climb the almost 3,900-metre-high Ekbulak Dahan (Mongolian, pass to the top of the mountain).