Aershan Travel Diary·Wuli Spring
Every time I go to Aershan, as long as I don't leave the city, I will take a big empty water cup and wander to Wuli Spring. While wandering, I will look here and there... From the center of the city to Wuli Spring, it is only five miles. The road always makes me wonder how many miles to walk.
One day, while walking, I lost my way!
▲Autumn, in Aershan.
Aershan is one of the smallest county-level cities in China, but in my eyes, it is endlessly vast. Forests, grasslands, volcanic ruins, mountains, lakes, canyons, rivers, hot springs... The 7,408 square kilometers of land are full of poetry and paintings. Even if you have thousands of eyes and feet, you can still see It’s endless and can’t escape its beauty!
Some people joke that this is a place that requires no photography skills, you just need to take blind photos! The latest version of the "China Tourism Yearbook" rated Aershan as one of the most worth visiting places.
The "Hot Spring Street" where the Aershan Municipal Government is located is also famous as a "fairytale town". It really looks too much like a fairy tale! I personally heard a few out-of-town girls standing on the roadside pointing and pointing——
"A movie has been filmed here, right? Why does it look like a fairy tale setting?"
▲Aershan, a small town in autumn. (Picture source from the Internet.)
Throughout the year, the style of the small town changes with the surrounding natural scenery; winter and spring are beautiful and quiet, and summer and autumn are bright and colorful. The various European-style buildings in the streets and alleys are not high, but they are well-proportioned; pointed, round, and gabled roofs... From a distance and up close, they all look like they are made of colorful building blocks. They have a Nordic style and a bit of Russian landscape.
What impressed me the most is that every time I walk on the road and look across the road between every two buildings in the city, I will always see the gentle hillside right in front of me, like a huge slide, which changes with the seasons and the weather. , the colors change with the gathering and dispersing of fog, with the rising wind and clouds, with the flowers fading and blooming, with the falling rain and snow...
▲I especially like the mountain shadows between every two buildings in the city.Walking in such a small town, even though you have a clear destination in mind, your eyes and legs will not obey you as you walk, and you always want to walk and see every corner of the small town again. You might find something new. Especially during the day, most tourists go to the scenic spots outside the city. The city is as quiet as a pearl in the deep sea, the sun is shining brightly, and the air is as fresh as mints... When you are there, you feel like you are walking into a three-dimensional fairy tale. Like a book, you are in a trance. Maybe at some moment you will be lightly turned by an invisible finger outside the book, and you will immediately fall into a castle-like building on the roadside, greeted by Snow White or the Seven Dwarfs. come out……
So, one day, on an afternoon in autumn, I originally planned to go to Wuli Spring, but because I was looking around, turning left and right, I lost my way! Fortunately, when we got out of the alley, a small truck passed by, so I shouted to the driver: "Does this road lead to Wuliquan?"
"Sit up!" The driver was a girl. She said that she was going to Wuli Spring to fetch water.
I sat on it as if I were a familiar old neighbor.
The car drove quickly towards Wuliquan, with several big white plastic buckets behind it clinking like drums, singing happily all the way.
Aershan is a city named after its spring water. Its full name is "Harun Aershan" - which means "warm and holy spring" in Mongolian. As I mentioned at the beginning, the seat of the Aershan Municipal Government is It's called "Hot Spring Street"... You can imagine how rich its spring water resources are!
There are four mineral spring groups in Aershan - "Hot Spring Street Mineral Spring Group", "Jinjianggou Hot Spring Group", "Yinjianggou Hot Spring Group" and "White Wolf Mineral Spring Group"; in addition, there are also a large number of mineral springs for residents and tourists to drink for free. Wuli Spring and Wuming Spring that have not been carefully inspected and identified, etc. According to surveys, there are more than 170 springs in Aershan that can be developed and utilized!
To use the popular Internet language, it is "Too arrogant!"
There is a saying that "Mountains are alive with springs, rivers are alive with springs, all things flow with springs, and places are famous for springs." Aershan encompasses all of these - mountains, rivers, all things, places - spirits, Lively, romantic, famous...
And there are legends! Where there are springs, there are legends. But the legends of Aershan mineral springs are very special - the ones I have heard and seen are all related to the treatment of diseases!
Some people say that Genghis Khan's horse was injured in the leg, and the injury healed after passing by the hot spring. Genghis Khan exclaimed: Harun Arshan! Harun Arshan! (Historically, Harun Aershan had different names. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, all names were replaced by "Harun Aershan".); Some say that a hunter once injured a deer, and the deer passed by a place with springs. , the bleeding in his legs stopped; some said that there was once an emperor who was dying, but he recovered after taking a hot spring bath in Aershan for fourteen days; some said that Kublai Khan suffered from leg disease when he was 16 years old. Unable to lead troops to fight, he went to Horqin's Hongjila tribe to marry his bride, girl Chabi; girl Chabi helped Kublai Khan soak and scrub in a steaming spring in the Daxingan Mountains every day. Soon Kublai Khan recovered from his leg disease and married Cha will be the queen.
▲CCTV's "The Secret of Deerskin Picture" tells the legend about Kublai Khan using hot springs to cure leg problems.
…
Perhaps because these legends all have exaggerated elements of "water can cure diseases", few people believe these legends. For a long, long time, the legend about the spring water in Aershan has been circulated among the people as a "legend".
But then, one person believed these legends! His name is "Aola Changxing".
The well-documented history that Aershan mineral springs were used by people to recuperate, treat illnesses, and strengthen their bodies has since entered official history.
170 years ago, Aola Changxing, who was worried about the lack of medical treatment on the grasslands and the difficulty in protecting the lives and health of herdsmen, heard various legends about the Aershan hot springs and decided to verify these legends himself. authenticity and see if you can find the location of the legendary spring.
In 1850, after many inquiries and inquiries, Aola Changxing, then the deputy chief of Hulunbuir's Yamen, invited a lama doctor to accompany him and began a long journey to personally investigate and find the legendary "holy spring". They went south along the dense forests of the Xing'an Mountains, and after going through a lot of hardships, they finally discovered thirty-two springs under a hillside on the south bank of the Halaha River——
The layout of these thirty-two springs is like a supine giant, with its head on the hillside, its chest and abdomen on the mountainside, and its hands and feet stretched out naturally to both sides. The mouth, eyes, nose and ears are complete on the head.
The next year, Aola Changxing led Tibetan doctors, Mongolian doctors, and craftsmen to build wooden pools for 32 springs, and wrote the name and medical efficacy of each spring in Manchu and Mongolian. In 1853, because the wooden pond was in disrepair and caused great inconvenience to people who came to treat illnesses, Aola Changxing once again led people to build 32 springs into stone ponds. After the completion, a stone tablet was carved in Manchu , the inscription on the front of the stele:
▲The descendants of Aola Changxing are in Aershan. Image source: Aershan historical materials.
I read in an article about Aershan that there was a French Catholic missionary named Zhang Cheng who was appointed as the translator for the Sino-Russian Nerchinsk border negotiations during the Qing Dynasty. He wrote "Zhang Cheng's Diary". It records in detail what happened when he passed through the Aershan Hot Spring in 1689. I was very curious and managed to find a copy of "Zhang Cheng's Diary" published by the Commercial Press in 1973. The pages were yellowed and the paper was brittle. I carefully read through the pages, line by line, and word by word. In the past, I finally read the author’s diary of October 10 and 11, 1689, which contains——
In the diary on the 11th, he wrote:
▲I found this "Zhang Cheng's Diary" published by the Commercial Press 47 years ago, and I felt very warm when I read the Aershan part in it.
According to scholars' research, the "Baicha Mountain" mentioned in "Zhang Cheng's Diary" is the "Talan Nemurgesi" mentioned in "The Secret History of Mongolia" (today's Aershan region) - Zhang Cheng did not understand Mongolian, he only understands Manchu. He translated what the Mongolians called "Talan Nemurgesi" in Manchu, and translated it in French as "Bacha Mountain". "Bai" is the transliteration of "Dalan", which means many; "Chashan" refers to the composition of many peaks.
In 1202, Genghis Khan rested and reorganized his army in Taran Nemurgesi (today's Aershan), so "Zhang Cheng's Diary" supports the legend that Genghis Khan rode his horse through the springs of Aershan and it should be true (although That legend, like other legends about Aershan springs, is exaggerated).
I did the math and found that Aola Changxing discovered the location of the Aershan spring in 1850, and "Zhang Cheng's Diary" was written in 1689. There is a total difference of 161 years! It is conceivable that if the health of the herdsmen in the Aola Changxingji grassland was not urgent and they personally verified the authenticity of the legend about the Aershan spring water that has been circulated among the people, I don’t know how long those "legends" would have been spread.
Aola Changxing had a rough life. He loved poetry and lived in seclusion in his later years. According to local people, he was short in stature and had a kind face. He would sometimes ride a white horse to his original place of residence to visit his fellow villagers.
In 1885, Aola Changxing, who was riding a white horse and away from the world, died of illness at the age of 76.
Behind him, trickling spring water, "lasting for a hundred generations, lasting for thousands of years."
In the Aershan Hot Spring Museum stands a monument to the construction of hot springs. It is the original monument, original location and original inscription in 1948.
When the Northeast People's Liberation Army was fighting in alpine areas, they discovered that the hot springs in Aershan could heal diseases and injuries despite the extremely poor medical conditions at the time, so they sent soldiers who were injured on the front line here for treatment. After bathing in the hot springs, the soldiers recovered quickly and returned to the front line. The Logistics Department of the Northeast Field Army erected a monument here.
▲Aershan Hot Spring Construction Monument.
Maybe when people see this monument and learn about its origin, in addition to being grateful for that glorious history, they will also ask -
The volcanic rock formations from 880 meters to 3500 meters underground (converted based on the height of a floor of 2.8 meters, 3500 meters is almost as high as a 1200-story building) have been circulating for half a century (each cycle is fifty years After completing a surge), what did the mineral springs that arrived in Aershan bring to mankind to have such an effect?
Experts say that the Aershan hot springs are volcanic mineral springs, one of the few in the country, and their formation is related to the ancient volcanic movements here. The groundwater stored in underground rock caves and faults continuously dissolves the mineral elements of the rocks. Different rocks contain different mineral elements, and the groundwater also contains different minerals.
The springs in the Aershan hot springs are densely distributed and arranged mysteriously, each with its own origin and different functions. The two closest springs are only 30 centimeters apart, but the temperature difference is more than 14 degrees Celsius. Some people describe the difference in water temperature between the two springs as "like exploring soup or holding snow."
The temperature difference is so large because the two springs come from different depths underground and have different rock formations. Although they are close to each other on the ground, the difference underground may be tens of thousands of meters.
The therapeutic principle of hot springs is mainly to produce medical effects through the effects of water temperature, hydrostatic pressure, buoyancy and chemical components of water. The spring water from each spring contains various trace elements necessary for the human body. It enters the body through the skin, improves body circulation, promotes body metabolism, adjusts the endocrine and nervous systems, etc., thereby achieving health care and treatment effects.
I read in the historical materials of Aershan some early articles written by several Russian experts and Japanese experts on the investigation of Aershan hot springs. There are a few passages that left a particularly deep impression on me -
"Near Qingjier Spring (No. 23 Spring), there is an "Ebo" made of waste crutches. "The people who came with crutches at first were cured of their illnesses and could move freely after washing in the Lingquan. In order to express their gratitude to the gods, they gathered the used crutches."
"During the inspection, we asked and surveyed dozens of patients about the effects of these mineral springs on the body, and all of them approved of them. Some said they had significant effects; some said they could restore health."
"...a sanatorium patient wrote to me last summer (1923) that I witnessed with my own eyes a Mongolian bone tuberculosis patient and a Tatar heart patient who did not need medical help throughout the winter and appeared to be completely healthy. The person is in good health.”
“The chemical composition of this spring is truly unparalleled by ordinary health resorts. It is not only different from Zabaikal Sanatorium, but also unmatched by other health resorts in Europe.”
"There are many sacred snakes in springs, especially hot springs. They nest in the piles of stones in the bathing pool. Most of them are non-venomous colubrid snakes with patterns."
"It is forbidden to bathe and enter the spring area after sunset. The lama is convinced that after nightfall, these sacred snakes will crawl into the pool from all over the sanatorium to suck the dirt from the patients' baths and purify the spring water. Indeed, you can hear the sound of grass moving and the bathing pool every night The splashing sound inside may be those snakes at work.”
"Spring No. 21 has the special function of diagnosing the location of diseases. In other words, this spring can diagnose diseases."
…
The "swimming snakes" mentioned in the above records are in the Jinjianggou hot springs. These snakes have never bitten people. Some people say that the presence of snakes around hot springs is a natural phenomenon. In order to keep out the cold before hibernating, the temperature around hot springs is relatively high, so snakes live in groups here.
There are so many mysteries in nature that we cannot decipher! I prefer to regard the patient's respect and protection for snakes at that time as an expression of gratitude and awe for all things in nature.
As for the "No. 21 Spring" mentioned in the article, it is now the famous "Wenwen Spring". The magic of the Fountain of Questioning Diseases is that when patients bathe in it, there will be reactions wherever there is illness. The Wenbing Spring is most effective in treating rheumatism, arthritis, gastrointestinal diseases, skin diseases, hair loss, waist and leg pain caused by trauma, etc.
In addition to the "Inquiry Spring", there are other springs for washing the whole body, washing the five senses, washing limbs, washing the skin, and washing wounds... There are head springs, eye springs, ear springs, hand springs, and foot springs. ...and so on.
▲Aershan Hot Spring while bathing.
I was even more fascinated by the well-documented, clinically documented examples of modern recovery. Quote a few examples——
"A female patient in Hohhot suffers from rheumatoid arthritis. She started taking baths last year and insisted on taking baths for forty days every year. Now she has just finished her second year and can walk on her own. When she first came here, she had to rely on a two-person frame. According to her, she has witnessed many cases of patients being carried in on stretchers and then walking out on their own after bathing treatment. In the face of the facts, can we say that the water in Aershan is still magical?”
"The No. 20 spring water in the Aershan Hot Spring has special curative effects on frozen shoulder. In 1992, my wife suffered from frozen shoulder, and she went to Aershan Hot Spring for three courses of treatment, and her disease miraculously recovered. Aershan The water in the mountain hot springs is a bit magical, it really has the effect of curing diseases! ”
“A patient surnamed Shi from the Wuhai Mineral Bureau in Inner Mongolia suffered from psoriasis for three years. He sought medical treatment many times but failed. He went to Aershan Hot Spring for two and a half courses of hydrotherapy and was completely cured and discharged. There has been no recurrence after two years of follow-up. "
"A worker surnamed Zhang from Youyi Garment Factory in Hohhot City suffered from pulseless syndrome and tried various treatments to no avail. He went to Aershan Hot Spring for mineral water therapy for 15 consecutive months and was completely cured and discharged. There has been no recurrence in three years of follow-up."
"A 51-year-old male patient suffered from cerebral thrombosis for 2 years, left hemiplegia, and was unable to take care of himself. He went to Aershan Hot Spring for a total of three and a half courses of hydrotherapy. He completely recovered and returned to work normally."
…
That day, after I got lost, I got into a small truck driven by an Aershan girl and arrived at Wuli Spring. When I got out of the car, she took out a long orange water pipe from the car, connected one end to the spring water, and the other end to the spring water. When you get to the big white bucket, the fresh spring water flows into the big white bucket. A male tourist asked how many kilograms the white bucket could hold, and the girl replied: "50 kilograms." The tourist stepped forward to lift it up, but he stuck out his tongue in embarrassment without lifting it up.
How lucky the people of Aershan are! If I lived here, I would definitely be like this girl. I would buy a small truck and a few large barrels, and collect water from springs every five to five miles away. I could use it to cook rice and tea when I go home... This is what many people dream of. What a magical day!
After a while, I saw the girl filling several large buckets with water and driving back. I didn't even have time to say "thank you" to this generous Arshan girl.
It takes five miles to get to Wuli Spring from the city center, but every drop of water in Wuli Spring starts its natural cycle from a depth of 3,500 meters in the underground rock formations, and it takes at least 50 years to reach Aershan. In other words, if a person waits at Wuli Spring for a drop of spring water that circulates from the rock formations 3,500 meters underground from the day he or she is born, he or she will have to wait until he or she is 50 years old to have gray hair on the temples before he or she can drink that drop!
Wait for fifty years! Wuli Spring brings 13 kinds of rare trace elements and minerals necessary for the human body, including lithium, strontium, selenium, potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, and vanadium, to the people waiting for it by the spring. Its water temperature remains at 2~5℃ all year round (in winter, even if it is as cold as minus 40 degrees, it still flows continuously).It is one of the three rare cold springs at home and abroad. Professor Zhang Bofu, a famous mineral water expert, praised Wuli Spring as "the most unique spring in the world"!
As laymen, we cannot know in academic details what is "strange" and "special" about Wuli Spring, but what is known to everyone is that after testing, the water quality of Wuli Spring contains nutrients found in other mineral waters. In addition to mineral water, it also contains nutrients that other mineral water does not have. After a person drinks it, the nutrients inside are absorbed by the gastric mucosa and enter the bloodstream to play a role.
Do you envy the Arshan people? The water we drink is water, and what others drink is multivitamins!
I once asked a local friend in Aershan if he often went to Wuli Spring to drink water. He replied: "No need! The tap water at home is almost the same as mineral water!"
I was surprised: "How is that possible?"
"Why is it impossible? We boil tap water every day in a kettle, and there is never scale on the bottom of the kettle. You can try boiling yours!"
Seeing whether the kettle is scaled or not is really a folk method for distinguishing spring water from ordinary groundwater!
▲The spring of Wuli Spring is sealed and protected in a building similar to a yurt.
▲The snow falls on Wuli Spring.
"Most of the places where springs are exposed have beautiful scenery, with strange peaks and rocks, lush trees, flowers, green grass, curling clouds, and surrounded by large swamps and wetlands." Wuli Spring fully confirms this poetic statement by a geologist.
The spring of Aershan Wuli Spring is sealed and protected in a building similar to a yurt. The spring water slowly flows out under the surface of the hut and flows to the wetland with small flowers and wild grass. It is free and wild. In summer and autumn, you can see spring water passing through a stretch of green moss like embroidery thread, with the spring flowing through it like a snake, as if the fingers of time are dancing and the silver needle is weaving the skirt of the fairy. The scene is so wonderful. Indescribable; in the sunshine, the bubbles of spring water floating on the pebbles sparkle, like scattered pearls, and like the eyes of the earth - like a baby first born into the world, pure, clear and curious... And in winter, covering the edge of the spring The white snow undulates like rows of piano keys, and the spring water flows gently, like the sound of nature; the wooden plank road in the dusk is a string of poems leading to the past and present, accompanied by the piano-like sound of the spring, like a song or a dream.
▲In 2017, I passed by Wuli Spring and met local people collecting spring water.
I really like the way people bend to receive the spring water, as if they are giving thanks to nature.
▲Drink it all in one gulp. You can only drink this kind of "snow spring" in Wuli Spring, right?
Whenever I go to Wuli Spring and there are local people who happen to be collecting water, I always like to chat with them and listen to their thoughts about Wuli Spring. What I met that day was a middle-aged man who was washing his hair with spring water. He told me that there was an old man in his seventies who went to Wuli Spring every morning to wash his hair no matter winter or summer. His head was covered with black hair and not a single white hair. So he did the same. After a while, I found that black hair began to grow between my already completely white hair. He had a short haircut. I looked over and saw that there was indeed a large part of black hair in the middle, while the rest was completely white.
"Look at the water flowing out now. If you can't drink it or use it, it circulates along the cracks in the rocks, in the world, on the earth, in the cracks of the rocks... One drop of water, one thousand seventeen It will take a hundred years to come back again.”
He squatted by the spring and told me seriously. I asked him where he knew it, and he said it was told by geological experts and could be found online.
When I got back to the hotel, I quickly checked and found out: "It will take at least fifty years to come back again." Only then did I know how every drop of water from Wuli Spring came to Aershan.
What a beautiful cycle and reincarnation in nature!
So, in fifty years, one hundred years, one thousand years, or seventeen hundred years, will there be two strangers by Wuli Spring, who don’t know each other’s last name, where they come from, and what they do? ’s... I just bowed down to guard a river of spring water like the Milky Way, telling its ins and outs, telling its distant legends that are not legends, talking about Aola Changxing and his white horse... The small town is still like a fairy tale, There are still travelers like me who got lost because of its beauty; there are still many young people, like the girl who took me to Wuli Spring, driving a small truck to Wuli Spring to collect water; many people are still full of beauty even in their old age. Fa... At night, the children still fall into sweet dreams with the lullaby-like sound of the spring.
The dusk was getting darker, and the tourists in twos and threes gradually dispersed. I took a full cup of Wuli Spring with the empty water cup I brought with me, and drank it all in one gulp. For a moment, it was like a nectar sent from heaven, the cold fragrance penetrated into the bones, dripping and hearty.
Most of the footage in the video below was shot near Wuli Spring on the same day in autumn. It completely fails to represent the charming charm of Wuliquan and the fairy tale town.
Every time I leave Aershan, I go back to another city more than 200 kilometers away, where I was born and grew up. Every time I go to my brother's house. When I came back from Aershan in the autumn, my brother and I looked through my mother's photo album during her lifetime (my mother had guarded this photo album like a family heirloom and would not show it to us. After her death, it was kept by my brother), and I saw something There is a photo of my father that I have never seen before. My brother said that the background should be Aershan. I took the photo with my mobile phone and sent it to a friend in Aershan. After looking at it, he said: "Yes, it is Aershan. The background of the photo is the Five Internal Organs Spring."
The next day, my friend went to the site and took photos of the Wuzang Spring for me. I have never been to Wuzang Spring, and I was mentally guessing that the background in the photo might be a granary or something.
I compared the two photos and looked at them for a long time, as if I was in a dream, and time seemed to go back.
There are so many incredible and beautiful coincidences in this world. I just came back from Wuli Spring in Aershan and saw a photo of my father like this!
I know - I walked on the path he walked, so we met again and again.
▲Aershan, my friend helped me take a photo of the current Wu Zang Spring.
▲My father, in Aershan.
My father once worked in Aershan. He was familiar with every household, every plant and tree there, and he traveled all over the mountains and rivers there. When he passed away, at the memorial service, one of his old superiors said to us brothers and sisters: "When your father was working at the border, we came down to inspect the work and listen to his reports. He never used manuscripts. So we gave him a nickname, It’s called a ‘living map’.”
Many years passed, and I began to travel along the same journey that my father had walked. As I walked, I suddenly understood why my father had created a living map in his heart step by step in the vast mountains and waters of Aershan.
because of love!
Aershan is a place worthy of deep love.
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