China's First Desert Village

China's First Desert Village

China's First Desert Village

The First Desert Village — Yatongtugusi.

Without China’s first desert highway — the Tarim Desert Highway — Yatongtugusi would never have been revealed to the world.

Yatongtugusi is the smallest township-level unit in Minfeng County, with 56 households and 346 people — 46 Uyghur households totaling 336 people, and 10 Han households. The Uyghur villagers, who have lived for generations in the heart of the desert, only learned what dynasty they were living in during the 1980s. It is said that when Islam spread from the Arabian Peninsula eastward into the Western Regions, it encountered resistance here. The villagers who fled deep into the desert to Yatongtugusi, upon seeing for the first time a river rich with water and grass, and forests teeming with wild boars, named the place “Yatongtugusi.” Later, they converted to Islam.

Yatongtugusi, an isolated village in the vast desert, has a history that can’t be easily explained, as there are no written records or historical relics — only sand dunes, populus euphratica trees, thatch, and dust in the sea of sand.

Yatongtugusi is the smallest township-level administrative unit in Minfeng County, with 56 households and 346 residents — 46 Uyghur households (336 people) and 10 Han households. The Uyghur villagers, who have lived for generations in the heart of the desert, only learned what dynasty they were living in during the 1980s. It is said that when Islam spread from the Arabian Peninsula eastward into the Western Regions, it met resistance here. The villagers who fled to the remote Yatongtugusi in the desert, upon seeing for the first time a river abundant with water and grass and forests where wild boars roamed, named the place “Yatongtugusi.” Later, they embraced Islam.

The isolated Yatongtugusi Township in the vast desert has only one crossroad, with a few small restaurants. During the day, after finishing farm work, villagers gather here to chat and drink tea. Because Yatongtugusi used to be 130 kilometers of desert away from Minfeng County, and it took a week to travel by camel, people rarely left their homes, and most had no idea what the outside world was like. This led to a lack of information and a hard life.

The people in the desert rely on the Yatongtugusi River, which is fed by glacial meltwater from the Kunlun Mountains flowing near the village during July and August, for drinking and irrigation. In dry periods, they have to drink settled water from pond reservoirs.

This small oasis in the desert nurtures the warm and kind-hearted people of the barren land. At sunrise and sunset, the crimson sun sets over the small village encircled by the Taklamakan Desert, presenting a classic scene of “a long river with the setting sun round.” Here, you can feel what Thoreau meant by “because I think a man is sincere only when he is in the place where he lives. That ‘distant place’ is indeed this one.”