The Hexi Corridor

The Hexi Corridor, truly formidable, unfolds its rugged terrain. The Qilian Mountains, with their majestic peaks and ridges, reveal the lean loess skin weathered over ages, adorned with streaks of black and red hues. The mountain summits swell like vertebrae, encircling the narrow passage with a slow, imposing embrace.

Today, it serves as a natural pastureland, but yesterday, it was a treacherous gorge.

Traveling along the main road, the distant mountains loom, pressed into ink wash, with shades of ochre and cyan dominating the scene. Once vegetation is lost and the mountains no longer provide cover, the vast sky and embracing Gobi become desolate.

In this land of beacon fires and billowing smoke, tufts of grass resemble slender arrows, rudely piercing the desert’s skin at inopportune moments. In the valleys adorned with shrubs, occasional glimpses of the gentle ruins of the Great Wall emerge, nearly worn away by wind and sand, resembling mere road markers. Occasionally, a herd of horses, a group of cattle, or a few windmills appear, only to vanish behind the car window in the blink of an eye.

If Don Quixote were to behold the slender white windmill blades at the foot of the mountain, he might indeed be astonished to encounter such elegantly slender giants, wouldn’t he? Yet, who created these giants? Who nurtured the creatures in the desert? The sands of history have never ceased to erode and bury, yet some have ventured far from the encroaching desert. There are always camel bells ringing in the dryness, and the aging loess also boasts the merit of blocking the billowing smoke. Initially, no one paid attention to the flowers aging beneath the cliffs, until the monuments of history stood tall above the sands of time.

The distant sands carry no echoes, but who traversed the Hexi Corridor?