Historical weather in Guazhou county

Yulin Grottoes are the sister grottoes of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes and an important part of Dunhuang Grottoes' artistic system. Yulin Grottoes, located 70km south of Guazhou County, were built in the Tang, Five Dynasties, Song, Xixia, Yuan and Qing Dynasties, about 65,438+0,000 years ago. There are 43 grottoes, more than 270 painted sculptures and more than 5,600 square meters of murals. If it is a treasure, it is a grand view.

Although all belong to the cultural heritage managed by Dunhuang Research Institute, Yulin Grottoes are far more desolate and remote than Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes.

The entrance to the cave area The picture in this article is provided by the interviewee.

Driving from Dunhuang to the east, all the way to the Gobi Desert is deserted. After more than an hour, there began to be running water and several dazzling Populus euphratica trees. Continue to drive along the Yulin River, the car suddenly stopped on an empty flat in the fields. The driver pointed to the entrance with no road ahead and said, Go down, it's Yulin Cave.

National treasure tablet

The silent and splendid Yulin Grottoes are hidden in the valleys and cliffs of this vast desert. Walking down the stone steps, the world suddenly becomes clear, and Yulin River looks like a paradise under the sunshine and elms.

Song Zizhen stayed in Yulin Cave for 14 years. When he was transferred from the security office of Dunhuang Research Institute to the director of Yulin Cave Cultural Relics Protection Institute, he never thought that he would stay in this desolate and lonely place for so long.

The road from Dunhuang to Yulin Grottoes in Guazhou is now a semi-high-speed and semi-dirt road. Although it is still remote and inconvenient, it is already a route to go on road trip. Before that, the staff of Dunhuang Research Institute went to Yulin Cave, and it was bumpy for several hours. If a young and inexperienced girl prepares a pack of snacks to eat on the road before getting on the bus, she will probably throw up on the bus halfway.

Song Zizhen's work photo

14 years ago, in the winter around Christmas, Song Zizhen came to work here. As a staff member of Dunhuang Research Institute, he often came to Yulin Cave before, and most of them left on the same day. This time, he wants to live forever.

He remembers that it snowed heavily and was cold when he came. In the middle of the night, I lay in a simple room with brick and soil structure. Like the local adobe house, the roof is not a tile, but a wooden mat covered with mud. Burning coal to keep warm in the middle of the night, the sound of the river running makes me unable to sleep. I think this place is really desolate.

The leader told him to come back in three years. He didn't expect that this stay was 14 years.

Song Zizhen came to Yulin Grottoes in 2007. At that time, it was already a network era extending in all directions, and Dunhuang had long been in line with international standards. However, Yulin Cave, which is more than 0/70 kilometers away from home, is still deep in the desert Gobi, inaccessible and isolated. The conditions here are not much different from those decades or even hundreds of years ago.

Drink water from the river. When you return to the county seat, you need to find a ride from your hometown. Tractors, motorcycles, scooters and ox carts with wheels are all acceptable. If you have no car, you must walk. At that time, there was no telephone, not to mention the internet, leaky earthen houses, and earthen toilets that made people run away. Snow should be swept in winter, trees should be planted in spring and vegetables should be planted in summer.

Because there is no through train, it takes three or four days to get from Dunhuang to Yulin Cave by various means of transportation. This life lasted for many years. Song Zizhen often goes back to his hometown in Dunhuang every ten and a half days, and it is normal to go back in January. Since the child entered junior high school, he seldom took care of his family.

But now, it is hard for people who have been to Yulin Cave to imagine that life would be like that after only ten years.

When I met Song Zizhen, I warmly invited him, led the way and visited Yulin Cave.

Daytime cave area

The river is gurgling, birds are singing and flowers are fragrant, and the grotto plank road has unlimited scenery. A low-key but artistic signboard "Yulin Building" hangs on the wall of the office rest area of the newly completed Yulin Cave Cultural Relics Protection Institute. The design concept of the whole building area is rich, which is integrated with the grand grottoes on both sides of the canyon, but the internal space is extremely simple, modern and comfortable.

Grottoes plank road

The splendid Yulin Cave is now a destination for many tourists to come to Dunhuang. Outside the cave, the environment here is exquisite in the desert Gobi, which makes people linger.

Song Zizhen was very satisfied with the newly renovated Yulin House, which took more than four years to complete with the strong support of Dunhuang Research Institute and social welfare forces and the participation of many designers.

In Yulin Cave for more than ten years, in addition to guarding this precious human cultural heritage, doing cultural relics protection, cultural propaganda and comprehensive management, Song Zizhen said that she has been troubled and rushing around for these trivial lives all the year round. "In the first few years, I dug wells to find water for employees to drink, took the shuttle bus home, then called and connected to the Internet. Up to now, I have finally built a home for my employees. " He sighed with emotion, "More than ten years have passed."

Talking about the career of "guarding the cave" in these years, Song Zizhen spoke vividly. He is a typical northwest person. He speaks slowly and straightforwardly, and often grins, but the pictures he describes are sometimes vivid and can't help laughing. Speaking of suffering, he also said "forbearance", but a large part of his memories are the benefits of Yulin Cave.

At this time, the snow is too thick in winter, and the staff often go to sweep the snow after explaining. After sweeping the snow, throw down the broom to explain, and the girls cry while doing it. He suddenly said, "Oh, the winter in Yulin Cave is also particularly beautiful, and the snow scene is particularly beautiful. You should come and see it in winter. Populus euphratica is also beautiful in autumn, and the scenery of the four seasons has its own characteristics. "

He said, "I like this place after a long time. This place is really nice and quiet. It can make people think and study quietly. Sometimes when you are busy during the day, you can organize yourself at night. "

External position of cave area

Although life was hard in those days, it was also accompanied by spiritual happiness. Song Zizhen missed the days when she often had tea and chatted with her colleagues at Dunhuang Research Institute until late at night. Everyone loves his family like a brother. Now, the environment of Yulin Grottoes is completely new, and the material hardships are gradually drifting away. But he also began to worry about the feelings and efforts of the younger generation here, and worried that there would always be new challenges in the protection of grottoes.

In a few months, Song Zizhen will reach retirement age. Looking back, he described his generation as a "blue trail" and came here by simple means of transportation, which opened the indissoluble bond between this life and Dunhuang Grottoes.

"I haven't thought much about staying here for so many years. First, protect Yulin Grottoes; Second, do a good job in serving Yulin Grottoes; The third is to provide services and guarantees for employees and tourists. No matter what work you do, whether you can do something meaningful in this position and whether you can change and develop this place, I think it is the most important. "

Now, he feels that he has realized his original wish and handed over a brand-new Yulin Cave to future generations. He sighed with emotion: "My task has been completed, and it is worthwhile to work in Yulin Cave for so many years."

Buddha statue in the sixth cave

1. Find water to drink

Song Zizhen is from the northwest, and the desert Gobi is his familiar daily life. However, as soon as she arrived at her new post, Song Zizhen was caught off guard by the desolation and loneliness of Yulin Cave.

He had been to many places before that. His hometown is near Mackey in Tianshui. He came to Dunhuang to attend middle school when he was 12 years old. After graduation, because his father worked in Qinghai, he went to Mangya, a scenic spot that is now a network celebrity, but it is still a place thousands of miles away. Song Zizhen became an educated youth there. Then, work in the local public security system 18 years. 1994 Dunhuang research institute needs people with public security experience to set up a security office. Under various coincidences, Song Zizhen returned to Dunhuang from Qinghai and became a member of the security department of Dunhuang Research Institute.

After spending 13 years in Mogao Grottoes, Song Zizhen was transferred to Yulin Grottoes. Although it still belongs to Dunhuang Research Institute, as we all know, Yulin Cave is a remote and hard place. Most importantly, I can't take care of my family.

At that time, the child had just entered junior high school, but his wife said, well, I support you. Song Zizhen is here.

However, he did not expect that there would be so many problems in life in the ravine.

It was winter when I first came, and it was very cold. The problem of going to the toilet is quite puzzling. At that time, there was only one open-air dry toilet in Yulin Cave. As long as you go out to the toilet in winter night, you will catch a cold immediately. For this matter, Song Zizhen herself caught a cold several times.

But the most troublesome thing is the draft.

pagoda

At that time, there were less than 20 people in Yulin Cave Cultural Relics Protection Institute, but all of them drank the water from Yulin River. Because the upstream grazing pollution is small, the water here will rise when they drink it, and it will be loud and sometimes upset, but it will get better after getting used to it for a while.

In addition to scooping water from the river, the staff of Yulin Cave Cultural Relics Protection Institute also made a water tank on a pickup truck and pulled it back to Suoyang Town, 30 kilometers away. Pull once every five days in winter and once every three days in summer. At that time, the duty room was still a simple straw house, with uneven bricks on the ground, tables piled up with bricks and a stove in the middle. When everyone was on duty, they scooped water from the bucket and burned it.

Song Ziyu saw this scene, this water is ok to wash and rinse, but drinking it for a long time is really unsanitary and bad for everyone's health. "We must ensure our drinking water problem. Even drinking water is so difficult. How can we let everyone work with peace of mind?"

So, the first thing he did in Yulin Cave was to buy a set of water purification equipment from other places for 65,438+10,000 yuan. No matter the water from the river or the water pulled back, it is purified before drinking, which finally temporarily solves the drinking water hygiene problem of employees.

In this way, two years passed. Song Zizhen learned from a friend of the Provincial Water Resources Department that as long as he made a report for funds, he would have the opportunity to drill wells in the surrounding area. However, the trouble is that Guazhou County has no water resources exploration data around Liuyuan Town and Yulin Cave abandoned halfway in the 1950s.

So, Song Zizhen took a professional prospector and drilled a well in Fiona Fang for more than ten kilometers. One of the wells was drilled for more than 70 meters and there was no water. Finally, pump water 3.5 kilometers west of Yulin Cave. Because the cost was not enough, the exploration well was closed again, and the well was not officially drilled until the funds were in place. Hit more than 240 meters underground, and finally have drinking water. Then a 3.8-kilometer pipeline was pressed to pump water from the well to the reservoir, which finally solved the drinking water problem of the staff of Yulin Cave Cultural Relics Protection Institute.

Nowadays, Yulin Cave is full of flowers and trees, and vegetables and fruits are also planted by ourselves, all of which bring the river up for irrigation. And everyone's drinking water still depends on this deep well that was laid that year. "Now the water we drink can be bottled, just like mineral water." When the tea was served, Song Zizhen said with a little proud smile.

2 Cave Shuiyue Guanyin

Connecting shuttle bus

Solve the draft problem, the second problem is to go home.

Just as the staff of Mogao Grottoes couldn't return to Dunhuang County in earlier years, the staff of Yulin Grottoes couldn't return home. Yulin Cave is 70 kilometers away from Guazhou County, and the nearest Suoyang Town is 30 kilometers away. Because it is located in the Gobi desert, if there is no car in the courtyard, there is basically no car. If you want to go home, you often have to walk 30 kilometers to Suoyang Town, and then find a car from your hometown to Guazhou County. In the Gobi desert, it usually takes a whole day to walk 30 kilometers, and it is desolate and troublesome. The return trip is also to look for a car repeatedly. It is impossible to finish the task without three or four days.

So most people who work in Yulin Cave only go home once every two or three months. Single young people are fine, and getting married in the county is a big trouble.

In 2009, Song Zikai found Wang Xudong, then vice president of Dunhuang Research Institute, and applied for funds to buy a commuter car. On the opening day, all the staff were happy to set off firecrackers spontaneously, with joy and tears in their eyes. Let's cheer together and finally go home every day.

In 2009, the staff of Yulin Grottoes took a group photo.

At first, the commuter bus was a minibus with more than ten seats. It takes two hours to washboard road to Guazhou County and four hours to go back and forth. So many employees go out early and come back late, which is very hard. Now not only the road conditions have improved, but also the commuter buses have been replaced by buses. The self-driving car that came to Yulin Cave is now in an endless stream. The travel problem has been greatly improved.

The bus is connected, but there is still no phone in Yulin Cave. In the era when the outside world has been contacted by mobile phones, Yulin Cave still relies on short-wave communication of "I am the Yangtze River and you are the Yellow River". "No phone, no TV, no signal, nothing anyway", so Song Zizhen found Guazhou Telecommunications Bureau, and finally installed optical fiber in the office with the support of the college and the assistance of "bargaining". At one time, not only mobile phones were used in Yulin Cave, but people also bought computers spontaneously, so that they could not only watch TV, but also finally reach out to the whole world.

"Overnight, I feel that the space gap between us and the outside world has suddenly narrowed, and we can go home and surf the Internet. Suddenly life caught up, no different from the outside. Everyone suddenly felt much more comfortable. " Song Zizhen said with a smile, I was busy doing these things in the first three years.

In July 2020, the staff of Yulin Cave took a group photo.

3. Employees' Home

I have been working in Yulin Cave for three years. Song Zizhen went to ask Wang Xudong, the vice president in charge, if it was time to go back. "As a result, he pretended not to know. As soon as I see that he doesn't want to let me go, I'll stay. "

During this period, Wang Chuang Xu Dong often came to Yulin Cave. The two often chat in a mud house and talk about the finished works. Song Zizhen asked again, it's been five years, and time is up again. What should I say next? "As a result, Wang Chuang said, why do you always bring this up? You see, this place will develop in the future, and there are still many things to do. Who will finish it after you leave? You are the best candidate. As soon as I heard it, I said, OK, I'll keep doing it. "

"Since then, I never mentioned the transfer. It will be 14 years. "

Old photos from the 1940s.

Last year, after years of planning, design and infrastructure construction, the whole environment of Yulin Cave took on a new look. In addition to cultural relics protection and exhibition facilities, various tourism supporting facilities have completely kept up with the times. At that time, the earthen toilets that made many Japanese tourists scratch their heads and go in and out several times have long since become history. It will be replaced by brand-new tourist public toilets and tourist centers, as well as cultural and creative shops and foreign restaurants. While preserving the unique ancient aesthetic feeling of Yulin Cave, the infrastructure conditions of the whole cave area have been comprehensively improved and upgraded.

But Yulin Cave in the desert canyon still retains her serenity. Even though the number of tourists received in the past two years reached 77,000 and 56,000 respectively, when the tourists dispersed, the staff here still had to face eternal starry circulation, river turbulence, sudden sandstorms and heavy snow in winter. For young people, the loneliness and insecurity of working here seems to be deeper than the previous generation.

It is Song Zizhen's long-cherished wish that workers can have a stable home here. To this end, with the support of all parties, the newly built "Yulin House" was built day and night, brick by brick. We really built this place.

In this worker's home, there is a clean and beautiful canteen and tea room, a reading area with a glass skylight, a simple and modern conference room and Chen showroom, and a small single room in the worker's dormitory is also beautiful and modern, with shower equipment. Entering here is like an oasis in the desert, comfortable and quiet, with a hole in the sky.

Walking and watching in this "Yulin House", Soong Tzu-chen herself felt that the contrast was a bit big. I remember when I came here at the beginning of the year, the once small hut was covered with plastic sheets because of water leakage, and I couldn't take a shower. Now, young people can say goodbye to that life completely.

But after all, times have changed. Song Zizhen thinks that young people today think differently from their generation.

"At that time, I really talked about dedication, and I didn't have any conditions to talk to the unit. All we can leave is our love for this place. Young people today

Similarly, they think more about things and may think more about themselves, so they are more likely to feel lonely and desolate here. "

In Yulin Grottoes, there are also many deeply loved workers, and even generations of grandparents and grandchildren have become attached to this grotto. "We have an employee who has been in this Yulin Grottoes for 43 years. His age here is 65,438+06. His father was a policeman guarding the Mogao Grottoes before liberation. After liberation, he followed his father to guard the grottoes here. Now his son is also a commentator here. Three generations have been here. It is really a family that has an indissoluble bond with this grotto. " In Song Zizhen's view, only the love and dedication to Yulin Cave is the key to keeping and protecting it.

Panorama of Yulin Grottoes

4. Family

In Dunhuang Research Institute, many people "choose one thing in their life". It's normal to abandon your family and career.

Song Zizhen is also a typical example. Although he looks very open-minded, he admits his guilt for his family.

Family members are all supportive. But there are also complaints, pains and contradictions. Song Zikai said that this kind of guilt for his son, his wife and his family always comes to mind, and these pains cannot be resolved. "Complaining is normal. There must be a trade-off anyway. You should pay attention to things here, you can't take care of them at home. You must always choose one of the two, and you can't have both. "

Fortunately, his son didn't worry him, and his study went well. Now I am studying PhD at Fudan University in Shanghai. Usually my son opens a kitchen in Shanghai, he opens a kitchen in Yulin Cave and my daughter-in-law opens a kitchen in Dunhuang. A family of three has three kitchens. The warmest and happiest time for the whole family is that every winter, when the world is coldest, we gather in Yulin Cave to celebrate the New Year. Song Zizhen remembers clearly every year: "Our family of three spent 1 1 Spring Festival here".

Stewed assorted food

On the wall of the brand-new conference room of Yulin Academy, Zhao Shengliang, the current president of Dunhuang Research Institute, hangs his handwriting: "Stick to the desert, be willing to contribute, be brave in taking responsibility and forge ahead". 16 Chinese character is "Mogao spirit", which is also like an evaluation of a group of cave keepers in Yulin Valley for thousands of years.

Proofreading: Liu Wei