Li Mengtao’s trip to Beitashan Ranch

1. Reason

In 1970, because Beitashan Ranch was in urgent need of medical personnel, the division organization department decided to transfer Li Mengtao to work there as a health worker. Li Mengtao was also thinking of training herself in a more remote and difficult place, so without saying a word, she got into the car with her luggage. After several days and nights of bumpy trek, Li Mengtao finally arrived at Beitashan Ranch. As soon as he got out of the car, he was dumbfounded and his heart felt cold. Beita Mountain is a mountain range that stretches for hundreds of miles across the border between China and Mongolia and has an altitude of more than 3,000 meters. The mountains are crisscrossed and chaotic, with bare rocks and few trees. The mountainous climate conditions are harsh and the ecological environment is harsh. Someone once made up a jingle like this: "There are mountains just outside the door, and there are no crops everywhere; the wind blows the stones away, and the sand hits the teeth when you open your mouth." This is not only very different from the southern scenery that Li Mengtao was once very familiar with, but also different from what he had imagined before coming here. It is a far cry from the scene of the grassland with green grass and blooming flowers, wind-swept grass and cows and sheep. Beitashan Ranch is a regiment field established by the Sixth Agricultural Division in the hinterland of Beita Mountain in the early 1950s. It is also the most remote regiment field of the division. The ranch is more than 500 kilometers away from the division headquarters and Urumqi, and more than 200 kilometers away from the nearest Qitai County. At that time, there was not even a post office, bank office, shop, restaurant, or even a decent road. It was very difficult for people to go down the mountain. At that time, Kazakhs accounted for more than 80% of the ranch, and the others were Han, Mongolian, Hui, Tibetan and other ethnic groups.

2. Results

There are 5 animal husbandry teams in the farm, which are divided into more than 150 grazing points scattered among the mountains. Li Mengtao was assigned to the second animal husbandry team, which was based in a place called Wulastai. Li Mengtao reported to Wulastai with his medicine box and luggage. The team gave him a horse, a bare sheepskin coat, a pair of felts and a rifle, and he officially started working. Kazakhs are known as the "horseback nation". Most of the herdsmen in Beita Mountain live a nomadic life, chasing water and grass. The animal husbandry industry is vast, numerous and highly mobile, so Li Mengtao had no choice but to travel with the migration of animal husbandry areas to deliver medical care and medicine to the herdsmen. The weather in the mountains is unpredictable. Summers are dry and rainless, and strong winds can roll up yurts into the sky; winters are snow-capped, with knee-deep snow, cutting off food and grass; sudden hail can kill and injure cattle and sheep... The life of herdsmen in the mountains is very difficult, and they can't eat vegetables all year round. , that is, drinking milk tea, eating yogurt pimples, and eating cornmeal naan. Li Mengtao had difficulty adapting to life here for a while. When I ate, my esophagus was cut and bleeding, my mouth was full of blisters, and I couldn't pass stool for several days. Since I couldn't take a shower for a long time, I had a lot of lice on my body, so I had to shave my head, take off my clothes and hit him with stones.

At night, lying in the yurt with ventilation on all sides, listening to the howling mountain wind and the howling of wild wolves, thinking of his parents and brothers far away in his hometown, tears overflowed from Li Mengtao's eyes...