I grew up in a small village at the edge of the Gurbanttinggnt Desert. When l was young, I used to like sitting on a haystack, looking north toward the desert for a bit and then south toward the Tianshan Mountains for a while. Sitting between these two, I had a sense of being trapped. From where I lived, the Manas River wriggles its way northwest along the edge of the desert, before finally disappearing into the desert. It is the dividing line between desert and oasis. I never went to the end of the river. By the time I grew up, it had almost vanished, its course intercepted by several dams along its upper and middle reaches. All that now remains of the famous Manas River is just a dry riverbed left as a spillway.

The Gurbantfinggt Desert is the northwest wind's masterpiece, the image of the invisible wind on the ground. From west to east, a northwest wind, as wide and as long as the desert, lies in the Junggar Basin. I have taken National Highway 2 1 7 from Kuytun to Urho and Hoboksar many times. Along the route, the Karamay Gobi is certainly the start of the Gurbantnngt Desert, as it is here that the strong northwest wind starts blowing up sand and making dunes.

The start of a large desert is not as grand as you would think: there is endless desert, but no high dunes, just an occasional small dune standing on the desert, like a solitary animal facing east. When the wind blows, it seems to run. but it is still there when the wind stops. But perhaps what we now see is not the one that was there originally. The sand. filling everything between earth and sky, runs, runs and Funs, forming the awesome Gurbantfinggtit Desert not far away.

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