Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Chapter 1150 Heading to Yili: Appreciating it with a Vacation Perspective

Li Long planned to drive the newer 69 car there.

For long-distance driving, a car in good condition is naturally more reliable. For safety, he towed the car to a transportation company to have it serviced.

He has always had business dealings with the transportation company, and his partners have always sourced their vehicles from the transportation company, so they are quite familiar with Li Long. They are very willing to do small jobs like car maintenance.

After half a day of car maintenance, when Li Long was about to leave, Gu Xiaoxia packed his clothes and gave him some dry food to take with him.

"Bring some naan and dried meat. Although I've never been there, you mentioned there are many uninhabited areas there. It's better to be safe than sorry, so it doesn't hurt to prepare more. Anyway, we have a vehicle to transport them, so we can always bring them back in the end."

"Okay." Li Long smiled.

"Bring a coat. It should be colder over there than here, maybe even below freezing at night. Wear something warm in the car so you don't get sick."

"it is good."

"Bring some more medicine, keep some commonly used medicines on hand, so that if you feel unwell, you can take the medicine as soon as possible."

"..."

This was the first time Li Long had ever heard Gu Xiaoxia nag like this, but knowing it was all for his own good, he agreed to everything.

It would take several days to go back and forth, so that night Li Long thought about paying the grain tax several more times, but Gu Xiaoxia stopped him after just one time.

"No... You have to travel tomorrow, it's such a long way, it's too tiring and something bad could happen..."

Although Li Long could clearly sense that Gu Xiaoxia actually wanted it too, he held back at that moment.

Let's hug and talk for a while.

"I've said it many times, let's go on a trip together when we have time, but we only went to Yanjing. I think we should go on a trip when Mingming and Haohao are on summer vacation."

"How could you have time back then? You had to collect fritillaria bulbs and dried mushrooms..." Gu Xiaoxia naturally knew about the things Li Long was busy with at the purchasing station.

“Your dad can take care of it. It can’t just stop operating without me. At worst, we can store the goods we collect and sell them when I get back,” Li Long said. “I’m looking after the business all year round, can’t I have a break?”

Actually, he has free time. Sometimes when he goes out to run errands, he takes a break.

The main one is Gu Xiaoxia, who spends the whole year in the county.

In fact, this is the norm for people of this generation. Many people born in the 1960s and 70s, or even earlier, in the 1950s and 60s, have worked and been busy in their local area their whole lives, never leaving Xinjiang or even the surrounding region.

And it just so happens that people of this generation are also the ones who go abroad the most. If one person settles abroad, it can potentially lead to a whole group of people going there, to places like New Zealand and Australia. Many of these people are from the past and have some connection to each other, such as relatives, acquaintances, or classmates.

Those who went out thought it was normal, and those who didn't go out also thought it was normal.

"We'll see when the time comes," Gu Xiaoxia said, resting her head on Li Long's arm. "Once you're there, you don't need to worry about things at home. Sister Yang will take care of the food, and I'll pick up and drop off Mingming and Haohao. Everything will be as normal as before."

How good.

Li Long smiled and said, "Alright, I'll consider this a scouting trip. They say the scenery over there is very beautiful. Once I've seen it, we can go together sometime."

Actually, people at this time of year, especially those from small towns, don't particularly care about the scenery when they go out to play. Instead, they prefer to see the bustling scenes of big cities.

Li Long simply felt that if there were any good places, whether in terms of scenery or culture, he would visit them and see if he could bring his family along sometime.

I should have been living a carefree and relaxed life, but now I feel rushed and hurried. Although I'm not exactly stumbling and crawling, it feels like there's no end in sight.

There's no need.

The next day, after breakfast, Li Long put the bag of clothes that Gu Xiaoxia had packed into the back seat of the car, took a bag of dried meat, and went to the naan shop to buy naan.

He arrived a little late this time, and half of the first batch of naan had already been sold. Li Long didn't pick any, but bought the remaining seven or eight naan and drove west.

His plan for today was to drive all the way to Jinghe, stay in the county, and then cross the Guozigou Valley the next day.

The GAZ-69 has a high chassis, so even if the road conditions are bad, it's still easy to drive.

Of course, it's not as comfortable as the Volga for long-distance travel, but at least it's safer.

As for comfort, let's not talk about that yet.

Li Long didn't stop when passing through Shicheng, and he didn't plan to stop in Kuitun either. He had just met his second brother, Li Anguo, who had come back for the New Year, and Li Long had given him some dried meat when he left. Li Anguo's salary had increased recently; with bonuses, he could earn over a hundred yuan a month when work started, which was quite good.

You can tell from the fact that I brought back a lot more things for my parents this Chinese New Year that their family's life has improved a lot.

When they passed the Kuitun military post, the sun was almost at its zenith. Li Long hesitated for a moment, but decided not to stop there. Instead, he continued onward, only stopping to have lunch after exiting the national highway and entering Wusu.

At this time, Wusu beer was already in production, but its market influence was not yet that great, limited to the local area, and it was expanding to the entire northern Xinjiang region.

Because Kuitun and Wusu were once the capitals of Ili Prefecture, and the Northern Xinjiang Military Region was also located here, the area is still relatively prosperous.

After the changes, its influence diminished, and its popularity gradually declined.

Li Long ate in Wusu. By then, the restaurant already had the original version of Big Plate Chicken. Li Long ordered half a portion and added a bowl of noodles.

This is usually a portion for two people, but he ate almost all of it by himself.

At this point, the quality of the chicken is still guaranteed. Regardless of how well it's cooked, it's at least made with high-quality ingredients and tastes good.

After finishing his meal, Li Long didn't leave immediately. He sat in the restaurant drinking tea and resting, intending to get over his drowsiness before driving.

His GAZ-69 motorcycle was quite eye-catching; people who came to the restaurant to eat were all looking at this somewhat uniquely designed vehicle.

The privatization of automobiles in northern Xinjiang did not begin to take off until after the 1990s. There are not many privately owned cars now, which is why they attract so much attention.

Li Long didn't care much. After resting and feeling refreshed, he stood up, went to the store next door, grabbed a case of Wusu beer, put it in the trunk, and continued on his way.

At lunchtime, the restaurant owner recommended he drink a bottle of [something], but Li Long declined. At that time, the rule against drinking and driving didn't exist, but Li Long felt it was best to be responsible for his own safety.

We drove more than 100 kilometers west, and when we arrived at Jinghe, the sun had not yet set.

However, Li Long did not plan to continue driving. He did not go directly into the county town, but first drove around the surrounding area to see how goji berries were being grown.

There were originally a lot of wild goji berries near Jinghe, which were later introduced to the area. This is mainly because goji berries are considered a very good medicinal material in both traditional Chinese medicine and Uyghur medicine.

In addition, the autonomous region listed goji berries as a red industry in JH County in the early 1980s, so the area began to vigorously develop artificial goji berry cultivation, which is becoming more and more industrialized.

Li Long paid attention to this because goji berries are resistant to salinity and alkalinity. Planting them on the reclaimed wasteland would both save space and generate some income, killing two birds with one stone.

This wasn't his invention, of course; someone had done it in his previous life. It's just that several years later, someone tried to fraudulently obtain subsidies for the "Grain for Green" program by planting goji berry seedlings in newly reclaimed saline-alkali land, and then left it unattended after the inspection was completed.

Li Long naturally didn't intend for it to be like that. If he bought the seedlings and planted them, he would water them and fertilize them as needed, hoping they would bear fruit, whether for his own consumption or for medicinal purposes and sale.

There are indeed many wolfberry fields here. One advantage of planting wolfberries on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains is that they don't need to be buried in winter.

Why is the Ili River Valley called the "Jiangnan of the North"? It's because, apart from Ili, most other places in northern Xinjiang grow fruit trees, which basically need to be buried and protected during the winter. Otherwise, although they may survive the following year, they won't bear fruit.

Dates, walnuts, pomegranates, grapes, apricots, peaches, etc., are all the same.

Besides apples and crabapples.

In Yili, this is not necessary, so more fruit is grown there because it doesn't require as much effort.

Imagine in Ma County, there's a family with a very good peach tree, as thick as a bowl, that bears delicious peaches in the summer. But in early winter, the tree needs to be flattened and buried. How much work would that be? When burying it, you have to be careful not to break the tree. Usually, you dig a hole next to the tree, right next to it, essentially digging out the roots, and then press it down, directly into the hole.

So troublesome!
Goji berries don't need that. They're shrubs, and as long as the roots don't freeze to death, they can continue to grow the following year. They're actually the same type as wild white thorn and black goji berries in saline-alkali land.

Li Long noticed that there weren't many people in the field, but there were patches of goji berries.

He drove around for a while and soon found his target: a nursery with the words "Goji Berry Seedlings for Sale" painted on the wall.

Li Long parked his car at the entrance and heard the dog barking, but he didn't get out.

Soon a man wearing an old military overcoat came out, stopped the dogs that were rushing towards him, and looked at the No. 69 car while standing on its chain.

Li Long got out of the car and asked the man who looked to be in his forties:

Do you sell goji berry seedlings? How much do you sell them for?

Because Li Long's car looked quite high-end, the other party spoke cautiously and asked:
Do you want cuttings or seedlings?

"Cuttings, not seedlings," Li Long said. "What are the prices for each year?"

"Five cents for one year, eight cents for two years, and twelve cents for three years. The branches are bigger in three years, so the quantity is not large."

Li Long had naturally learned about this before he came. Cuttings are seedlings grown by layering original branches that can bear fruit. They can bear fruit in the same year, but because the branches are small, they can't produce many.

Seedlings, as the name suggests, are seedlings cultivated from seeds. These seedlings do not bear fruit in the first year, and although they may bear fruit in the second year, the quality of the fruit is unpredictable during the growing season.

To put it simply, a seedling is like a primitive human developing step by step from an embryo to a modern human, while a cutting is like a direct clone of a fully evolved modern human.

Li Long naturally wanted to propagate the seedlings by cuttings, since they were more productive and reliable.

"Is it cheaper if I buy more?"

"It depends on how much you want." The man could tell that Li Long was serious about buying it, so he said, "This is the real price I'm giving you, and I'll only give you a penny or two off at most."

Li Long calculated that one mu (unit of land area) would yield three to four hundred seedlings. If he were to plant them, he would need at least ten or twenty mu, perhaps even fifty mu. He then said:

"What if you want 10,000 trees or more? And they'll take two years."

"Then... six cents, six cents is the cheapest."

"Okay, let me check again. Do you have enough seedlings here?"

"Enough."

Li Long wandered around again, asking at several nurseries. He found that the prices were about the same, but one nursery was not telling the truth. They assumed Li Long didn't know anything and didn't quote any seedlings, but the price was a little cheaper. When Li Long went to look, they showed him seedlings.

He turned and left; people like that don't last long in business.

After comparing them, Li Long found that the first one was the most cost-effective and practical. So he drove to that company, paid a deposit of one hundred yuan, and said he would dig it up on his way back.

The boss also asked him when he would be back, explaining that digging up more than 10,000 seedlings would take some time, and they would need to find someone to help him then.

Li Long stayed in JH County that night. He had obtained a letter of introduction from Li Xiangqian before his arrival, so he went directly to the county guesthouse.

When traveling at this time, some hotels require a letter of introduction, while others don't. Li Long thought that for a long journey, staying in a government-run hotel would be safer.

The next day, after getting up, I had breakfast at the county hotel and then drove away.

Heading south from Jinghe, entering the Northern Tianshan Mountains from Shanshanzi, there is a Jingyi Pasture Road, which has always been a popular route for off-road enthusiasts traversing the Northern Tianshan Mountains. This road leads directly to YN County.

In his previous life, Li Long had seen many short videos introducing this route, and he also knew that the G577 highway was later built along this pastoral road, becoming the second all-weather highway connecting the Ili River Valley to northern Xinjiang (Duku does not count, because it is seasonal).

Li Long had actually considered passing through here, but then decided against it. It wasn't the right season; the snow in the mountains might have just melted or hadn't completely melted yet. He might get stuck and be stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no one around to help him.

As they drove to Sayram Lake, the temperature noticeably dropped. Li Long parked the car by the lake and got out, immediately feeling a strong wind that made his clothes flutter loudly.

If the temperature in Jinghe was around 20 degrees Celsius at noon, the temperature here has already dropped to a few degrees, and it will probably be below zero by tonight.

He saw that there were still ice crystals in the lake, bent down and touched the water. It was bone-chillingly cold. Li Long hurriedly returned to the car, put on his coat, and then drove on.

In his previous life, he always went to Sayram Lake in the summer, in May or June. At that time, the mornings were warm and the weather was cool, but the temperature was at least above zero. Moreover, the wildflowers by the lake were in bloom, which looked very beautiful. It wasn't cold even at midday, unlike now, which was pure suffering.

Although I don't know what Sayram Lake will look like in the spring of 30 or 40 years from now, I guess it should be about the same.

He admired those who came here in winter to see the ice sculptures; the wind was so strong... Wow, impressive.

Entering Guozigou, the road conditions became noticeably worse, and Li Long drove very cautiously. Fortunately, he was mentally prepared, driving as slowly as possible, avoiding oncoming vehicles, and paying close attention to his surroundings. He managed to get through safely without any major incidents.

As soon as we left Guozigou, we could clearly feel the breath of spring. The grass was already green, and there were leaves on the trees. When we rolled down the car window, we could feel that even the wind was gentle.

After having a bowl of meatball soup in Lucao Gou, we continued our journey towards Yining.

Li Long had arranged to meet Liu Gaolou in Yining, so he didn't go to Khorgos.

When crossing the Qingshui River, Li Long paused briefly here.

It must be said that compared to Qingshuihe, which was once jokingly called the number one town in Yili, the Qingshuihe in Ma County is far behind in terms of development.

There's no other way, after all, this place is located on a major transportation route. Whether you're coming out of Yili via Guozigou or going to and from the Khorgos Port, this is a necessary stop, so development is naturally going to be good.

After crossing the Qingshui River, head east, passing through Huocheng, Huiyuan Ancient City, Bayandai, and then you will arrive in Yining.

Liu Gaolou arranged for Li Long to meet at the Huacheng Hotel. He was worried that Li Long might not know the location, so he explained it to him in detail.

This is also an official guesthouse, but this time Li Long doesn't need to show a letter of introduction. Liu Gaolou has already booked a room for him, so he can just check in.

When Li Long arrived, Liu Gaolou wasn't there, but he left a message for Li Long, saying that he had gone out to take care of some things and that Li Long should rest at the hotel. He said he would be back before nightfall.

Li Long wasn't actually tired, so he simply left the hotel and started wandering around the neighborhood.

Not far from the Huacheng Hotel is the Great World amusement park. Although the weather wasn't particularly hot in early spring, the place was already very lively.

Barbecue, baked buns, people coming and going—the proportion of ethnic minorities here is significantly higher than in Ma County.

The way these people looked at Li Long varied. Some were amazed by his tall and strong stature, some greeted him warmly hoping he would buy something, some ignored him, a few looked at him with hostility, and some observed him furtively, as if trying to see if he had any money on him.

Li Long has keen observation skills and can sense that most people are friendly, but the uncomfortable gazes of a few individuals are particularly noticeable.

Li Long didn't care much. He had experienced similar looks in Ma County, but it didn't affect him much. With his size, he was intimidating enough, and those with ill intentions were usually quite cautious.

I randomly picked a stall that smelled good, told the enthusiastic owner, and ordered twenty skewers of grilled meat and two bottles of beer. It wasn't hot enough yet, so they didn't have kvass, only locally brewed beer and bottled beer.

I didn't drink any alcohol while driving, mainly for safety. Now that we're here, I can easily have a couple of bottles. My alcohol tolerance is pretty high anyway; two bottles are practically like soft drinks.

After eating and drinking to their hearts' content, they settled the bill and left. The food was really delicious, and Li Long thought he would come back to try it again when he had time.

Continuing east along Jiefang Road, you'll see men and women of different ethnicities coming and going, creating a truly exotic atmosphere.

I didn't really appreciate it last time I came, probably because it was winter and I wasn't paying attention. This time, I had the time to appreciate it properly, and it really is wonderful.

Yes, there are many beautiful women.

(End of this chapter)