The Black Market in My Eyes (600 words essay)

I took the plane from Shanghai to Urumqi at 9 a.m. When we left Shanghai, it was about to rain but not yet, and the sky was gray. The plane passed through thick clouds and reached an altitude of 10,000 meters, with bright sunlight shining through the portholes. Under the overlooking window, there is a vast sea of ??white clouds. The Jiangnan area was shrouded in mist and rain.

After boarding the passenger plane from Shanghai to Urumqi, the stewardess first handed me a small bag of raisins, and then a lunch box marked with the word "halal". This was how I began my half-month trip to Xinjiang. trip.

It wasn’t until I passed Xi’an that the sky became transparent and the loess soil appeared in my field of vision. After passing Lanzhou and entering western Gansu, the sky was dark blue and the vast desert spread out like a yellow carpet. When the wave-like snow-covered peaks of the Tianshan Mountains appeared under the wing, I knew that Urumqi was close at hand. I looked at my watch. It was already past two o'clock in the afternoon. After a long five-and-a-half-hour flight, we finally arrived in the lush green Urumqi. In Uyghur, the original meaning of Urumqi is "beautiful pasture".

On June 17, 1980, Shanghai scientist Peng Jiamu disappeared during a scientific investigation in Lop Nur, Xinjiang. I wrote a long documentary for Peng Jiamu and rushed to Lop Nur, Xinjiang for interviews. At that time, there were only two flights from Shanghai to Urumqi per week, and they stopped in Lanzhou. Today, there are several flights from Shanghai to Urumqi every day, and they no longer stop in Lanzhou.

The plane still landed at Diwopu Airport in the northwest suburbs of Urumqi, but the airport has been "changed from shotgun to cannon." The newly built Urumqi Airport Building is already of international standard. Diwobao Airport is not far from Urumqi city, only 16 kilometers away.

Urumqi has undergone earth-shaking changes. When I arrived at the top of the Red Mountain, the commanding height of Urumqi, what appeared in front of me was a modern and beautiful new city with many high-rise buildings. At that time, there were only two or three-story old houses on both sides of the street.

When the car turned around, I happened to see the words "Kunlun Hotel" across the road. I quickly asked the driver to stop. With a strong sense of nostalgia, I walked into this familiar hotel. I have lived here since 1980. At that time, Kunlun Hotel was the leading hotel in Urumqi, known as the "Eighth Floor" - because this eight-story building was the tallest building in Urumqi. However, today's "eighth floor" is submerged in the forest of high-rise buildings. This time I lived in the Bank of China Building next to the People's Square in the city center. It has more than 20 floors, and the "eighth floor" has become my little brother.

Xinjiang was peacefully liberated in 1949. The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was established on October 1, 1955. Urumqi is the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, with a current population of 2 million. Urumqi was called "Dihua" during the Qing Dynasty, which means "enlightenment and enlightenment", which contained racial discrimination. After liberation, it was named Urumqi in Uyghur language, fully reflecting respect for ethnic minorities. In Shanghai, there are Urumqi North Road and Urumqi South Road. To my surprise, I saw a street in Taipei that is still called "Dihua Road" and is completely behind the times.

In Urumqi, I saw the tourism promotion slogan "This is the city farthest from the ocean in the world." In terms of geographical location, Urumqi is at the center of the Asian continent and is indeed the furthest away from the ocean. The climate here is dry, and thick towels are completely dry early the next morning after being used at night.

The Uighurs call the market "Baza". In Urumqi, there is the "Grand Bazaar", where small businessmen and hawkers gather. When I got there, it was crowded and lively. I found that most of the stall owners are Uighurs. They spoke not very fluent Chinese, and their intonations were just like what Chen Peisi said in the sketch "Selling Mutton Kebabs". The local specialties of Xinjiang sold at the stalls include a variety of wool and cashmere products, silk scarves, dried fruits, Kazakh knives and so on. You can usually get a discount of one-third, half or even less. Han tourists often deliberately speak Chen Peisi-style Chinese to bargain with Uyghur girls. Their voices, expressions, intonations, and postures are all particularly interesting, as if they are rehearsing a sketch.

The streets of Urumqi have become a flow corridor for various ethnic groups: the Hui people wear white hats and are easily identifiable. Mongolian people have square faces. Uighurs have a high nose bridge, similar to Russians. The Kazakhs are somewhere between the Han and Uyghurs. As for other ethnic minorities, I can't tell them apart.

I once visited the Nanshan Mountains in Urumqi. It is about two hours drive from Urumqi city.

Nanshan is covered with lush green lawns, the tall dark green poplars are like long shawl hair, and the white Aobao dotted on the hillside. Kazakh herdsmen live in pursuit of water and grass, and make Obo their home. Usually, two people can build an Aobao in one hour. I noticed that there was always a copper kettle filled with water at the door of Aobao. Kazakhs wash their hands with a pot before eating - even though there is no running water in Ovo, Kazakhs still maintain good hygiene habits.

The Kazakhs are a "people on horseback." The herdsmen waved their whips and galloped their horses across the pasture, performing superb equestrian skills. "Horses are released on Nanshan". The horses on Nanshan are good at running and move like the wind.

The characteristic of tourism in Xinjiang is that "the travel is long and the travel is short". Xinjiang is so big. It took me almost 11 hours to take a bus from Urumqi to Yili that day, and it also took 10 hours to take a bus from Kuqa to Turpan. Xinjiang accounts for approximately one-sixth of the country's area. The area of ??Bayinguoleng Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture alone is equivalent to the combined area of ??Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian, and Jiangxi provinces, reaching 480,000 square kilometers. Although "Brigadier", fortunately, Xinjiang's highways are quite good, and cars can travel quickly and steadily. The green railings of the highway bring spring to the vast desert.

Xinjiang is vast and sparsely populated. The total population of Xinjiang is only the same as that of Shanghai, with 20 million people. The huge Bayinguolengzhou has a population of only 1.04 million. In the vast Gobi Desert, there is often not a house or a person for dozens of kilometers, and there are not even toilets on the roadside. Travelers can only find a slope in the wilderness for "convenience". I once asked why not build a toilet? Local friends said that building a toilet is not difficult. The problem is that there is no water to flush the toilet, so we have to not build it.

Where there are rivers and lakes, there is green and there are cities. Almost all cities in Xinjiang are built near water. The exception is Turpan, which relies on building karez wells to draw groundwater and then bring the spring of life there through underground pipes. If open channels are used to divert water, it will evaporate halfway. It is said that if sufficient water sources are introduced into Xinjiang, there will be no problem for 300 million people to live there.

The fruits in Xinjiang are particularly sweet. It is precisely because of the dry climate there that the water in the fruits evaporates and the sugar is concentrated.

When I turned on the TV, what surprised me the most was that the CCTV "News Network" program broadcast there, although the announcers were Luo Jing and Xing Zhibin, whom I was familiar with, actually spoke Uyghur. , and the mouth shape is so consistent! According to my friends in Xinjiang, when CCTV broadcasts the "News Network" program at 7 p.m. every night, Xinjiang TV Station immediately translates and dubs it, and broadcasts it at 10 p.m. that night. The action was so fast and efficient that it was unexpected. In Xinjiang, the population of ethnic minorities is larger than that of the Han people, with about 8 million Han people and 12 million ethnic minorities. Xinjiang is a place where 47 ethnic groups live together. Xinjiang TV Station has dedicated Uyghur and Kazakh channels. It is a very huge project to translate a large number of Chinese TV series into minority languages ??and dub them. The Uyghurs are the largest minority group in Xinjiang, so highway road signs are all marked in Chinese and Uyghur. As for store signs, they vary from city to city. For example, in Urumqi, signboards are usually in Chinese and Uyghur, but in Korla, where the majority of residents are Kazakhs, signboards are usually in Chinese and Kazakh. At Xinhua Bookstore in Karamay, I noticed that the four characters Xinhua Bookstore in Mao Zedong’s handwriting were written in Uyghur above and in English below. This shows that Karamay City, which has a large oil field, is a city with more foreign exchanges. In Urumqi, I also saw many signboards marked in Russian. This is because Xinjiang is adjacent to Russia, and many Russian businessmen come to Urumqi to do business.

People who have never been to Xinjiang will think that it is very backward. In fact, Xinjiang's cities today have skyscrapers rising, roads are wide, and they are advanced in many aspects. Let me cite two details to illustrate the point:

First, I went to the supermarket near the People’s Square in Urumqi and had to deposit my bag as usual. When depositing bags in a supermarket in Shanghai, I usually have to insert a coin and get a small piece of paper with a long series of numeric passwords printed on it. I have to impatiently press the long series of numbers every time I pick up the bag. However, in Urumqi, I just pressed the deposit button and immediately got a small piece of paper with a barcode printed on it. When picking up the package, put the barcode in front of the inspection light and "swipe" it, and the door of the small iron box will open automatically with a beep, which is much more convenient than in Shanghai supermarkets.