Fengzhen weather

Press: This article is taken from the second volume of Mongolia and Mongols. The author, Pozder Nieev, described what he saw and heard on his way from Beijing to Guihua City (Hohhot), and the content was quite substantial. This paper extracts the original diary written through Fengzhen area, which has certain reference value for studying the modern history of Fengzhen area at that time.

March 8

Monday

The weather is gloomy in the morning. Starting at 7: 30, our road extends along a canyon, and the terrain gradually drops to the west in the direction we are heading. The canyon is no more than 300 Russian zhangs wide, and there is a winding river flowing between the gravel-covered banks. This is the Chahambulak River. There is a long and narrow piece of cultivated land on both sides of the river, and in some places the cultivated land has been opened to the hillside. We walked out of the factory 15 minutes and saw another beggar starving to death. It is said that this man lived in the factory with his mother, wife and two sisters not long ago. Hunger and poverty first forced the family to sell two girls: one 14 years old and sold five taels of silver; A 9-year-old child sold two taels of silver. Later, the old woman also starved to death. About two months ago, this unfortunate wife ran away with a notorious Lama in Chahar. Since then, he has been begging around naked. About a week ago, people found him dead here. Probably no one gave him a place to stay, and he died of hunger and cold. It seems that the residents of Changbulang Gorge are very rare. At 8: 25, we met a poor village by the roadside. It's called Tiny, which means Koizumi. It is named after a small stream, which flows out of a ravine near the canyon and into the Chahambulak River. There are many such streams here. They flow to the canyon where we are walking and meet Chahanbulake, making Chahanbulake wider and wider, almost drowning the whole canyon not far below, leaving only a place for people to farm and walk. No village is made up of adobe houses or mud houses. From here on, people live in caves. The first village we saw was Hongshaba village. We walked to the village at 9: 0010 and took a photo immediately. At 9: 50, the canyon suddenly opened up and formed a large meadow. The local residents used this terrain to build a good village here, called Big Elm. There are nearly 60 families living in mud houses and some caves in this village. We counted the shops here, and there are twelve. There is an ancient stone temple and a stage at each end of the village. At the beginning, the two temples and the stage were magnificent, but now they are very shabby. Since then, the number of stones on the road has obviously increased, but the valley itself has been well cultivated and the stones on the ground have been cleaned up. 1 1: 30, we came to three small villages, all called Helaoer, and the distance between them was no more than 150 feet. After we left the third village, we drove for another half an hour and stopped at Shuimo Village.

After resting for a whole hour and a half, we continued on our way. After 30 minutes, we walked past a big village called Daizhou Yaozi. From here, the road slopes down sharply. Despite the bad weather, farmers in the surrounding fields are still busy working: they are all using a tool called a shovel to level the land and crush the hardened clods. Drum is a kind of stone drum, which rotates with an iron shaft in a rectangular shaft frame. It began to snow heavily at two in the afternoon. Although it is spring, the air still feels a little damp and cold. Half an hour later, we passed Miaogoumen Village, where caves were everywhere. Along the way, until I stopped, there were big snowflakes like cotton wool, and I could hardly see the place near the road. Walking like this is really boring. You can only see the mule in front of the car and a stone occasionally crushed by your wheel on the road. It snowed so hard that even the villages along the road looked like they were separated by thick fog. At 3: 40, we walked past Kulun village, where there were at least forty families, some of them were adobe houses and some were caves. At 4: 30, I walked to a very shabby village called Zhujiawan. Finally, at half past five, I finally came to the long-awaited Shirenwan Village. Actually, I'm not interested in this small village with no more than 30 households, but I heard that the name of this village comes from two ancient stone men not far from here. I wanted to photograph this historic site early in the morning and urged the driver to chase the car quickly. But now it's snowing all the time. What can you do with it? The stone man used to be in the south of the village. After passing the village, we saw them standing in the field on the right side of the road. When we looked at it, it turned out that these were two stone carving monks. They stood face to face, as if in a Taoist temple. We can't look at them carefully because the snow covers us and the stone man. Starting from Shiren Bay, the river reaches the cliff on the right. Therefore, in order to avoid difficult uphill, the road will cross the left bank of the river as usual. But now the river has almost flooded the whole valley, so it is neither possible nor meaningful to wade across the river, because the road on the left bank has been flooded and it is no better than the road on the right bank. So we had to climb the hillside and drive along the road that was at most two Russian feet wide and nearly twenty Russian feet high. This section of the road is only about three leagues, then it goes downhill until it reaches the ground. We walked on the flat ground for half an hour and arrived at Meidai Village, where we agreed to spend the night. However, we did not enter this "treasure land" at once. Next to a small temple on the edge of the village, there is a small land injection. Now it's like every time the snow melts, the water in the depression becomes a big puddle. It is said that cars can't pass. The circumference of the puddle is not more than 30 feet, but we walked around it for 45 minutes from the field and ended up entering the village from the other side of the village. I asked, "Then why not fill this land?" In this way, there will be no puddles. Whether people in the village or passers-by, isn't it necessary to take such a detour? "-"But who will fill it out? This land belongs to no one. Everyone has his own land to grow! "This is the answer, which accurately reflects the social life in China.