Urumqi in my eyes (600-word composition)

Fly from Shanghai to Urumqi at 9 am. When I left Shanghai, it didn't rain, but it rained and the sky was gray. The plane passed through the thick clouds and reached an altitude of 10,000 meters. The bright sunshine entered the porthole. Overlooking the window, there is a vast sea of clouds. Jiangnan area is shrouded in misty rain.

After boarding the plane from Shanghai to Urumqi, the stewardess first handed me a small bag of raisins, and then sent me a box lunch marked "halal", so I started my trip to Xinjiang for more than half a month.

It was not until after Xi 'an that the sky became transparent and the yellow land appeared in my field of vision. After passing Lanzhou and entering the west of Gansu, the sky is dark blue, and a large desert spreads out like a yellow carpet. When the Tianshan peaks fluttering with snowflakes appeared under the wings, I knew Urumqi was just around the corner. I looked at my watch. It's already past two in the afternoon. After a long flight of five and a half hours, I finally arrived in a thick green Urumqi. In Uyghur, Urumqi originally meant "beautiful pasture".

On June 7th, 1980, Shanghai scientist Peng disappeared during a scientific investigation in Lop Nur, Xinjiang. I wrote a long documentary for Peng and went to Lop Nur, Xinjiang for an interview. At that time, there were only two flights a week from Shanghai to Urumqi, with a stopover in Lanzhou. Nowadays, there are several flights from Shanghai to Urumqi every day without stopping in Lanzhou.

The plane still landed at Diwobao Airport in the northwest suburb of Urumqi, but the airport has changed guns. The newly-built Urumqi airport building has reached international standards. Diwobao Airport is not far from Urumqi, only 16 km.

Great changes have taken place in Urumqi. Arriving at the top of Hongshan Mountain, the commanding height of Urumqi, a beautiful modern new city is presented, with many high-rise buildings and only two or three-story old houses on both sides of the street.

As soon as the car turned the corner, I met the word "Kunlun Hotel" across the street. I quickly stopped the driver. With a deep homesickness, I stepped into this familiar hotel. I live here at 1980. At that time, Kunlun Hotel was the premier hotel in Urumqi, and it was called the "eighth floor"-because it was the tallest building in Urumqi. However, today's "eighth floor" is submerged in high-rise buildings. This time, I lived in the Bank of China Building next to the People's Square in the city center, with 20 floors and the "eighth floor" as my little brother.

1949 Xinjiang was peacefully liberated. 1 95565438+1October1Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was established. Urumqi is the capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region with a population of 2 million. Urumqi was called "Dihua" in Qing Dynasty, that is, "enlightenment and enlightenment", which implied racial discrimination. After liberation, it was named Urumqi in Uygur language, which fully reflected the respect for ethnic minorities. In Shanghai, there are Urumqi North Road and Urumqi South Road. To my surprise, I saw a street in Taipei, which is still called "Dihua Road", completely out of date.

In Urumqi, I saw the tourist slogan "This is the farthest city from the ocean in the world". Geographically, Urumqi is in the center of the Asian continent and is indeed the farthest place from the ocean. The climate here is dry, and the thick towels used at night are completely dry the next morning.

Uighurs call the bazaar Bazaar. In Urumqi, there is a "Grand Bazaar", where vendors and vendors are concentrated. I'm coming. It's crowded and lively. I found that most of the stall owners are Uighurs. They are not fluent in Chinese, and their intonation is just like what Peisi Chen said in his essay "Selling Mutton kebabs". Xinjiang native products sold at the booth include all kinds of wool and cashmere products, silk scarves, dried fruits, Kazakh knives and so on. You can usually bargain for a third or half or even less there. Han tourists often deliberately speak Peisi Chen-style Chinese and bargain with Uighur girls. The voice, expression, tone and posture are particularly interesting, as if rehearsing a sketch.

The streets of Urumqi have become corridors for ethnic groups to flow: Hui people wear white hats and are easy to identify. Mongolian square face. Uighurs have high noses, which are similar to those of Russians. Kazak is between Han nationality and Uygur nationality. As for other ethnic minorities, I can't tell them apart.

I have been to Nanshan in Urumqi. It's about two hours' drive from downtown Urumqi. Nanshan is covered with a lush lawn. Tall, dark green poplars are like long shawls, and white Aobao is scattered on the hillside. Kazakh herders live on weeds and take Aobao as their home. Usually two people can build an Aobao in an hour. I noticed that at the gate of Aobao, there was always a copper pot filled with clear water. Before eating, Kazakhs will wash their hands with pots-although there is no running water in Aobao, Kazakhs still maintain good hygiene habits.

Kazakhs are "people on horseback". Herdsmen galloped on the grassland waving whips and performed superb equestrian. "Put the horse in Nanshan", the horse on Nanshan is easy to run and walk, like the wind.

The characteristic of Xinjiang tourism is that "the brigade commander travels short". Xinjiang is too big. From Urumqi to Yili, it took almost eleven hours by car that day, and from Kuqa to Turpan, it took ten hours by car. The area of Xinjiang accounts for about one-sixth of the national area. Bayinguoleng Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture alone is equivalent to the total area of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces, reaching 480,000 square kilometers. Although there is a "brigade commander", fortunately, the highways in Xinjiang are quite good, and the cars are running fast and steadily. The green railings of the expressway bring spring to the vast desert.

Xinjiang is vast and sparsely populated. The total population of Xinjiang is only equivalent to that of Shanghai, with 20 million people. The population of Bayinguoleng is only1040,000. In the long Gobi desert, there are often no houses and no people for dozens of kilometers, and there are no toilets on the roadside. Passengers can only find a slope in the wild. I once asked why we didn't build toilets. Local friends say it is not difficult to build toilets. The problem is that there is no water to flush the toilet, so they have to stop building.

Where there are rivers and lakes, there is green and there is a city. Almost all cities in Xinjiang are built on water. Turpan is an exception. It draws groundwater by building karez, and then takes the fountain of life there through underground pipelines-if the water is diverted by an open channel, it will evaporate halfway. It is said that if enough water is introduced into Xinjiang, there is no problem for 300 million people to live there.

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

When I turned on the TV, what surprised me most was that the CCTV News Network broadcast there, although the announcers were Luo Jing and Xing Zhibin whom I was familiar, actually spoke Uighur, and their mouths were so consistent! According to my friend in Xinjiang, CCTV broadcasts News Network at 7: 00 every night, and Xinjiang TV immediately translates and dubs it, which is broadcast at 10 that night. The speed and efficiency of the action were unexpected. In Xinjiang, the population of ethnic minorities is larger than that of Han nationality, with about 8 million Han nationality and ethnic minorities12 million. Xinjiang is a place where 47 ethnic groups live together. Xinjiang TV Station has special channels in Uygur and Kazakh. It is a huge project to translate a large number of China TV dramas into minority languages and dub them. Xinjiang has the largest number of ethnic minorities, so the road signs of expressways are marked in Chinese and Uyghur. As for the signs of shops, cities are different. For example, signs in Urumqi are usually written in Chinese and Uyghur, but in Korla, where residents are mostly Kazakh, signs are usually written in Chinese and Kazakh. In Karamay Xinhua Bookstore, I noticed that in Mao Zedong Calligraphy Xinhua Bookstore, Uyghur language is above and English is below. This shows that Karamay, which has a large oil field, is a city with more foreign exchanges. In Urumqi, I also saw many signs indicating 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 Xinjiang is very backward. In fact, today's cities in Xinjiang are full of tall buildings, wide roads and advanced in many aspects. I give two details, which can be seen:

First, I came to the supermarket near the People's Square in Urumqi, and I had to deposit my bags as usual. In Shanghai supermarkets, I usually flip a coin and get a small piece of paper with a long string of digital passwords printed on it. Every time I pick up a bag, I press the long list of numbers impatiently. However, in Urumqi, I just pressed the registration button and immediately got a small note with a barcode printed on it. When picking up the bag, put the bar code in front of the inspection light and "brush" it. With a beep, the door of the small iron box will open automatically, which is much more convenient than the supermarket in Shanghai