Li Long told Yang Yongqiang to think it over. It was a major decision, after all, and it was perfectly normal not to be able to decide right away.
Li Long left Yang Yongqiang's house and was pushing his bicycle out to ride away when Yang Yongqiang ran out of the house, caught up with him, and said:
"Brother Long, here's what I'm thinking. Second Uncle and the others are going to Kuytun, right? I'll go along and take a look. If things look good there, I'll stay and work. If I can't get used to it, I'll come back."
Li Long nodded and said with a smile:
"That's a good idea too. Honestly, I don't know exactly what it's like there either. None of us have been there, after all."
Li Long added silently that he meant he had never been there in this life.
Kuytun was far better known now than it would be twenty or thirty years later. In the mid-to-late seventies, the Ili Prefecture government had moved to Kuytun, before later moving back to YN City.
Yet in those few short years, Kuytun had become the center of Northern Xinjiang. Some of Ili Prefecture's Party and government offices operated out of Kuytun, and even the former Northern Xinjiang Military Region had been based in nearby Wusu. It was far better known than Ancient City or Ma County.
Of course, twenty or thirty years later, Kuytun would still be one of Northern Xinjiang's Golden Triangle cities, but Northern Xinjiang as a whole would become famous nationwide for tourism. The first places visitors from elsewhere would hear about were the Nalati grasslands in the Ili River Valley, Kanas Lake, Hemu Tuva Village, Sayram Lake, and the Xiate Ancient Trail. They knew very little about Kuytun. After the Seventh