Autumn Pastoral Song of Mangya: The Most Healing Palette Between Heaven and Earth

📜 A Border Town Where Vastness Meets Poetry
Strolling across the wilderness of Lenghu Town, the gravel beneath my feet crunches softly. Gazing into the distance, the branches of the Qilian Mountains form a frozen wave line, separating the deep blue sky from the golden grasslands. This is Mangya City, the westernmost part of Qinghai, whose name in Mongolian means "forehead," truly resembling the earth’s raised head, proudly facing the wind, sand, and time. A tiny dot on the map almost overlooked, yet now it reveals a wild beauty more breathtaking than any 5A scenic spot.

🐑 A Millennium Pact Between Herders and Nature
The grasslands around Lenghu Town have the texture of an oil painting, with black yaks scattered like ink spots and white sheep like clouds blown by the wind. A local Tibetan grandmother told me that the autumn migration here has lasted for thousands of years—every September, herders drive their livestock from summer alpine pastures to winter grasslands, with the trails they leave behind weaving like the lines on the earth’s palm. The most touching moment is at dusk, when the setting sun stretches the shadows of the sheep long, and the herding dogs leap joyfully, their figures flickering in the dust.

🌄 An Everlasting Open-Air Gallery
The navigation shows an altitude exceeding 3,800 meters, and the thin air makes the sunlight even more transparent. Suddenly, on both sides of the road, a patch of "desert roses" appears—an unusual stone forest formed by wind erosion, with rust-red rock layers burning under the sunset glow. Further ahead lies the developing Oboliang Yardang, a group of wind-sculpted earth mounds resembling the surface of Mars. Locals say that during sandstorms, this place truly becomes a "Mars camp"—no wonder the scouting team for "The Martian" once came here for location scouting.

💧 The Romance of Lenghu, Not Cold at All
This town, once thriving and declining because of oil, has now reentered the world’s view thanks to its astronomical observatory. The town still preserves 1950s Russian-style old factory buildings, with mottled brick walls bearing slogans like "Learn from Daqing’s Industry." The biggest surprise was finding a few stubbornly growing poplar trees by an abandoned basketball court, their golden leaves fallen on rusty oil pipelines, forming the most vivid existential parable. At night, staying in a starry sky hotel converted from shipping containers, the Milky Way seen through the skylight shines brighter than all the neon lights I’ve ever seen in the city.

When the off-road vehicle started again, the grassland in the rearview mirror looked like silk set ablaze by the sunset. Here, I finally understood the Tibetan proverb: "Where the wind horse flag flutters, that is the way home"—the great beauty of heaven and earth never requires a ticket.

Post by NomadNovella | Oct 27, 2025