Firmament

Follow the customs of whatever place you want.

- Mongolian proverb

As the saying goes, one side of the water and soil raises the other side.

The small bridges and flowing water in the south of the Yangtze River have given birth to delicate and graceful women, and the desert grasslands outside the plug have cultivated rugged and majestic men. With the vast mountains and barren loess, the Longyuan principle has nurtured generations of people of all nationalities, and shaped their special personalities of simplicity and honesty, kindness to others, perseverance, and courage to struggle.

Once upon a time, the northern kingdom was on the verge of extinction. Ali's descendant, Hasim, led his family from the capital to the west, and traveled thousands of miles to Hezhou, where he adopted an Oriental surname. Since then, they have changed their appearance into the Niu clan, forgetting the glory and wealth of the past, settling down in Hezhou, or engaged in trade, or cultivating crops, and become ordinary people on the Loess Plateau.

At that time, people centered on Hezhou City, and the surrounding places were called Dongxiang, Nanxiang, Xixiang, and Beixiang according to their orientation. Dongxiang includes Suonanba, Daban, Nale Temple, Tangwang, Fuguchi, Kaole and other places. Nanxiang includes Hezheng Station and Prince Temple. Xixiang includes Caohan, Hanjiaji, Shuangcheng, Jinggou. Beixiang refers to the Lama River and Lotus Fort.

Dongxiang is a loess plateau between Tao River, Daxia River and Dahe River, which is high in the middle and low in all sides. It is an extremely poor place that is not suitable for human habitation, with undulating mountains, deep ditches and high slopes, drought and little rain, frequent famines, sparse villages, and inaccessible people.

When the Southern Kingdom was founded, a group of Sarthas took refuge in the mountains of Dongxiang, including Ali's descendants, the Saidi line. Niu Dawood's family lived in a dry ditch and lived a hard life.

In the late period of the Northeast Kingdom, there was an upsurge of rebellion across the country.

The people of Hezhou in Longyuan Province are fierce and upright, and they rise up when they are slightly dissatisfied. They made the government suffer a lot and hurt their brains. The government gritted its teeth and wanted to completely exterminate the mob.

The government mobilized a large number of troops to be stationed in Hezhou to quell the rebellion of the people. In order to escape the war, a large number of Sartars in the city fled in droves to the mountainous areas of Dongxiang, where the natural conditions were very harsh, and lived with the Sartars who had previously settled there. They dug holes in the loess plateau for houses, opened up wasteland at the bottom of the ditch, and lived a safe and closed hard life.

In a rare upheaval, the descendants of Mu and Mai also fled the city of Hezhou, where they had lived for generations. They left Dongguan, crossed the folding bridge over the Daxia River in the southeast corner, climbed the rugged and steep loess hillside, and walked down a narrow ravine to the depths. They walked and walked until they reached the end of the ravine. Seeing that there was really no way out ahead, they stopped their flustered and tired footsteps and settled down in this deep ditch called Jiaozigou.

Jiaozigou is full of undulating loess slopes, and there is almost no place to stand. In order to preserve the slightly flat land at the bottom of the ravine to grow crops, the Niu clan avoided the steep terrain and built their houses on the slopes of the hills with a gentle slope. When they were planting, they had to go down the hill and work hard at the bottom of the ditch.

There is no water source on the hillside, and it is so dry that it is difficult for even a single weed to grow. Domestic water must be collected in the ravine. There is a small but precious spring.

Jiaozigou is vast and sparsely populated, and the economy is depressed. Mu Hemai's descendants were no longer able to trade in the closed Jiaozigou. They washed away the lead bloom, settled down with what they encountered, followed the locals to learn to reclaim wasteland, plant crops, learn to ram earth to build walls, build courtyards and houses, and gradually became farmers in the mountains.

Every morning, they and other men carried wooden buckets to the spring at the bottom of the ditch and scooped the spring water into the bucket with wooden spoons. Picking up barrels filled with spring water, they lined up one by one, singing the smolgar folk songs of Salta, and zigzagged along the winding mountain road to their home perched on the ridge.

Mu Hemai's descendants work at sunrise and rest at sunset, following nature's way of survival. At home, they look down at the thick loess and raise their heads to see the loess walls, and when they walk out of the house, they are greeted by the continuous and endless loess slopes.

Their faces were tanned by the sun, covered with loess dust and fine blood streaks from solar radiation.

They have been settling in Jiaozigou and relying on the sky for food. In a good year, they harvest corn and other grains until the spring of the following year. If there is a disaster year, the harvest of grain is very small, and only the potatoes and wild vegetables can be made up to the next year, and it is expected that the next year will be a bumper harvest year.