But after the news event, Makgaiyi has fallen silent, which inevitably makes people a little regrettable. As a member of the team that took part in that expedition, I always thought that Makgaiyi would become a great tourist destination in Xinjiang, however, because of the transportation and other reasons, it has never been hot, and there are very few travel social groups to Makgaiyi. So what's there to see and do in Makgaiti?
We know that the southern border is an area to appreciate the Uyghur flavor, people often go to Hotan, Kashgar, Kucha, these places, Makgaiyi belongs to the Kashgar region, driving from Kashgar, although only 170 kilometers by road, more than 2 hours of driving, but Makgaiyi's Uyghur flavor is unique, and can not be replaced by any other place, because this is the hometown of the Dolomite culture.
The Dolan people were not originally Uyghurs, they were the 13th century period of Mongolian aristocrats and serfdom plundered slaves, they were either integrated into the army to fight, or forced to engage in heavy manual labor, so they rose up against the oppression, fled into the desert on the lower reaches of the Yarkand River, living a life of hunting and nomadic herding. Later, the Dolan tribes absorbed the Uyghurs living at the bottom, and they merged together, and their lives and cultural practices gradually converged, creating their own culture - the Dolan culture - in the desert with its treacherous environment. It should be noted that Dolan has nothing to do with knives, and its original meaning is "concentration, gathering", obviously related to the history of the aforementioned, and now refers to a unique cultural phenomenon.
As an important branch of Uyghur culture, Dolan culture is more embodied in the music, songs and dances, music is high and majestic, the rhythm is distinctive, the dance action is intense and often accompanied by high-speed rotation, it is said to be a reenactment of the process of the hunt, which is completely different from the Uyghur songs and dances we are familiar with the gracefulness of the Uyghur song and dance accompanied by humor, it can be said that the appreciation of the Dolan songs and dances can bring the audience a kind of shock to the soul, and this kind of shock enjoyment, only to the Maikeli, the Dolan people can enjoy the music and dance. It can be said that enjoying the Dolan songs and dances can bring the audience a kind of soul shock, and this kind of shocking enjoyment can only be better experienced in the native environment of Makgaiti County.
Maigaiti County, in addition to being the hometown of Dolan culture, is also one of the four major hometowns of peasant paintings in China, and the only hometown of minority peasant paintings. In Makgaiti County, there are a lot of active peasant painters, they are farmers during the busy season, and they become painters when they are idle. The most interesting thing about their works is extremely life-like, Uyghur daily life scenes are integrated into the works, respect for the elderly, singing and dancing to do business, driving sheep and cattle planting trees, etc., covering almost all areas of life, bold colors, techniques unconventional, but **** the same characteristics of happiness and humor.
The county has built an exhibition hall of peasant paintings specifically for these peasant painters, and the hall concentrates their best works, which you can watch or buy at a low price. I bought a pair of works of the teacher who teaches peasant painting (the teacher himself is a peasant), the painting is a few peasants uncle chatting scene, very vivid, and so far hanging on the wall of the study, see it will not worry about it. Painting is a big part of life for local farmers, and it's a good thing for tourists to buy a painting or two.
Desert tourism is also a very good local tourism resources, in order to commemorate the Sino-British joint expedition, the local also built a desert exploration museum, which displays a lot of desert exploration in kind, tells the history of desert exploration story. In Makati experience desert tourism, your feelings will be different from those in the desert park, the desert here more original flavor, pure ecology, the most important thing is that you can and the desert residents close contact, real understanding of the life of the desert people, they live in a difficult environment, but they are optimistic, simple attitude towards life, will certainly infect you, so much so that let you re-understand their own.
Speaking of the desert, in the tourism industry developed today, we are not unfamiliar, but in Makgaiyi there is a beautiful desert lakes, but will certainly make us feel overwhelmed. This lake is called Dolan Lake, Dolan Lake formerly known as Jiren Lemma Reservoir, also known as Dolan Thousand Island Lake, located in the north of Makgaiyi County, Central Tac Township, three eight villages, 15 kilometers away from the county, the surface of the water amounted to 23,000 acres. It is not easy to have such a large piece of water for people to visit in a place surrounded by a vast sea of sand.
Take a boat to cruise on the blue Dolan Lake, see the sand gulls flying set, listen to the birds singing, a time will forget that this time is in the world's first big mobility on the edge of the desert, especially early in the morning at sunrise when the sun rises, here will actually have the mood of the south of Jiangnan fish and rice country. There are quite a few desert landscapes in China, but it has to be said that this lake makes the desert landscape of Makgaiyat distinctive, so it has an alternative name - Jiangnan Water Town.
It is not uncommon to see in Xinjiang, but you may not have seen the sheep in Makgaiyat, there is a Makgaiyat Aihuaiti Meatz cattle and sheep hosting center, where there are the world's best breeds of cattle and sheep, beautiful and robust, but the price is "delightful", the most expensive sheep can be up to hundreds of thousands of a sheep, of course, all the breeding sheep. Here you can see the sheep fighting show, two big rams running at a very fast speed rushed, making a loud crash, just to compete to the right of mating.
Well, it's finally time to talk about the food in Makgaiti. You can't come to Xinjiang without eating lamb kebabs. Eating kebabs on the streets of Makgaiti County at night, we realized that there were no skewers of meat here, and that whole, slaughtered sheep were hanging from kebab stalls. The owner pointed to the back leg of one of the sheep and asked us: How many of you will eat? Is this leg enough? It turns out that meat is eaten freshly cut and skewered here, and in fact, the eight of us didn't finish this hind leg, packed it up, and came back the next morning for another meal.
But more than the lamb kebabs, I remember the grilled fish in Makgaiti, which is grilled in the same way as the Robb people in Xinjiang. Unfortunately, such a scene is difficult to see today. And the Makgaiti baked fish way, and the Robb people's way is almost exactly the same, so come to Makgaiti must not miss to eat a baked fish, I personally think that it is the most characteristic of Makgaiti cuisine.