Excuse me, is Westbound going to Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang?

Chu Shaobin, an old reporter from Xinhua News Agency, 1960 went to Xinjiang to report on traffic and commerce, and wrote newsletters such as Eating Station on Iceberg and Driving Horses. 1in the autumn of 962, in order to report the opening of Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway, he made an in-depth investigation of the traffic and commerce between Xinjiang and the mainland in history and interviewed Suiyuan Gang with more than 300 camels. Now, the old man has opened a memory and witnessed a history.

The old reporter of Xinhua News Agency recalled the interview with the "Westbound Exit" and learned that the actual purpose of the "Westbound Exit" was Urumqi.

Not long ago, the hit TV series "Going West" caused a heated discussion. As a feature film, the plot festival is tortuous and vivid, and the performance is delicate and touching, showing the customs of the Loess Plateau and the simple, sincere and hardworking spirit of farmers in the north. However, it is somewhat specious to name the play "Walking to the West" and list it as one of the three major spontaneous migration activities in the history of China, alongside "going east" and "going to South Asia".

Historically, "going west" was a major trade channel active in the north of China, running through the east and west. Its main body is businessmen from Tianjin and Hebei, and camel caravan hired by herdsmen from Inner Mongolia, east of Hohhot, Baotou, Hetao Plain and Alashan, entered Xinjiang from Balkun in Xinjiang, and arrived in Urumqi along the farming and pastoral area at the northern foot of Tianshan Mountain. During the prosperous period, farmers and herdsmen in northern Shaanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia also joined the pack transport team. Tens of thousands of commercial camels enter and leave Urumqi every year, which can be said to be "a thousand commercial camels heading west". It has played an important role in the development of grassland economy in northern China, the construction of border cities and the promotion of the unity of all ethnic groups. After the national liberation, the camel team "westward" flourished for a while, and it was not until the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway 1963 was completed and opened to traffic that it gradually faded out of society. I personally interviewed one of the commercial convoys that claimed to be Suiyuan Gang and owned more than 300 camels, so I can witness this history.

I was transferred from the domestic department of Xinhua Corporation to Xinjiang Branch on 1960, and I was engaged in traffic and business reporting. He has written newsletters such as "Eating Station on the Iceberg" and "Catch Horses". 1962 Autumn, Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway will be laid in Urumqi. In order to cover the opening ceremony, I began to investigate the original traffic and trade situation in Xinjiang and the mainland. In the past, there were two main traffic routes from Xinjiang to the mainland: one started from Gansu at the southern foot of Tianshan Mountain, which is now the route that Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway passes through, which was called "Silk Road" in ancient times. In addition to Wushaoling's "Hundred Miles Wind Zone" with sinister terrain and bad climate, there is also a vast Gobi called "Eight Hundred Miles Han Sea", which is seriously short of water and barren, which is extremely unfavorable for livestock to carry through. Only a few cars pass through the Gobi Desert except gravel. Another passage into Xinjiang is located at the northern foot of Tianshan Mountain, bordering Mongolian grassland in the east. It was called the "fur road" in ancient times, that is, the "westbound" road. Only local camel herders who are familiar with deserts, oases and water sources can successfully cross this road. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, due to the regime change, civil wars continued, warlords in the northwest region became independent, and there was a constant struggle to raise their salaries, occupy roads and control vehicles. Military disasters and bandits are the taboos of trade logistics, so most of the folk businessmen moved to the "folk trails" on the northern grassland, forming a "westward" trade army.

According to Ma, the leader of Suiyuan Gang, three generations of his grandparents and grandchildren were camel carriers. After liberation, they organized and established Urumqi Camel Transportation Advanced Cooperative, with more than 0/00 camel workers and more than 300 camels. At the age of seventeen, he took the job from his father and has been running transportation for more than twenty years. He said that his grandfather and father shipped goods from Zhangjiakou in their early years. Later, due to the emission of dirt roads and tire wagons in the eastern region, merchants and camel drivers gradually moved the commodity distribution centers to Hohhot and Baotou in order to save freight and time. At that time, there were "Dongkou" (Zhangjiakou) and "Xikou" (Baotou), but the source and destination of the goods remained unchanged in Urumqi. He said: Because of the cold weather in the north, camel teams are sent from the east and west when the grassland turns green in March and April every year. After autumn, the climate is getting colder, and camel transportation is gradually stopped, only once a year. Because of the long distance, long time-consuming and high freight, the freight is basically equivalent to the value of the goods transported. For example, a piece of tea can be exchanged for a fat sheep in Urumqi, and a piece of cloth is equivalent to two thousand kilograms of grain, which is two or three times higher than the price of origin, which can be said to be "high consumption". The goods entering Xinjiang are mainly silk, tea, cloth, knitted cotton goods and daily industrial products. The goods leaving Xinjiang are mainly wool, high-grade fur (mink, silver fox), a small amount of dried fruits and medicinal materials.