Inner Mongolian Adventure – Part One

I’ll post part two tomorrow, along with pictures.

With a week off, a few extra kuai (that’s the slang term for Yuan), and a penchant for intrepid traveling, the timing was right for a trip into the untamed wild of the Inner Mongolian and Shanxi provinces north-west of Beijing. This time around, it was to be a guys’ only excursion. Natty, my traveling companion, and I wanted the opportunity to loosen our belts a little, let our guts hang out, get dirty and fill the stereotype of men being men. We planned to “rough it” by camping outside under the stars, the way Mongolian nomads of the past used to do it, and follow a route from the grasslands north of the provincial capital of Hohhot, south to the mountainous northern region of Shanxi, where we planned to camp atop a less-traveled section of the Great Wall. It was to be an adventure to write home about and one to remember.

These types of things, however, don’t always go as planned. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve come to learn to expect the unexpected, or at the very least, have no expectations at all, and when planning a camping trip in China, there is usually going to be something to come along making the trip more interesting and perhaps more challenging. This trip would prove to be no different: rain would cancel our night in the Great Wall’s wilderness, the sheer volume of travelers would cause us to change plans last minute, and the lake of untamed wild in Inner Mongolia would come as a surprise. Expectations aside, the trip was fantastic.

We embarked on the journey Monday afternoon. Our train from Baoding left at 5:23; we had hard-seat class tickets and the train was packed to the gills with travelers and luggage. Having a hard-seat on the train is lucky during this time of year because of the volume of travelers—waiting until the last minute to purchase tickets will surely leave you standing in the aisles for hours and hours. From Baoding, the train traveled two hours to Beijing; from Beijing to Dating: seven hours, and from Dating it took three hours to arrive in Hohhot.

A long trip made longer by the fact that we had to find a sleeping position while sitting, not an easy task for long-legged westerners like us. We sat in a six-person berth separated by a small table protruding from the train wall to our left with less than two feet of space between the edges of the opposite side’s seats. Facing us was a small, typical Chinese family—mom, dad, and young son—on their way to visit relatives in the north. They didn’t speak any English, and trying to engage them in conversation was nearly impossible. I sat in the middle, Natty to my left and a Chinese man in his late 20s who sported a black graffiti-tagged hat sat on my right. He seemed to be accompanied by a young woman and her husband, but I later learned that they did not, in fact, know each other. This led to an interesting observation: Chinese people possess an ability to strike up a friendly conversation that, to a westerner, would make the two seem as if they’ve known each other for years. Quite opposite in the states, where strangers avoid speaking with each other and making eye contact with others at all cost. The observation was later confirmed when the father who sat across from us struck up a conversation with a woman sitting across the aisle with her own young son. I heard only a few words that I recognized, and it seemed to me that they were talking about their children. Besides the obvious connection regarding traveling with similar-aged sleeping sons, I could only see one other commonality between the two: they were both Chinese.

What makes Chinese people so different in this way to Americans?
I believe it can be explained in terms of differing values, Americans value the individual who can succeed—or fail—or his or her own, while Chinese value social and familial connections—a fact that I used in one of my lessons last week. I was teaching the difference between the connotative and denotative meanings of a word, and I used the words “individual” and “independent” as examples. These two words have similar denotative meanings, referring to a single person’s self-reliance. In China, however, the words have very different connotations. An independent person is seen in a positive light, whereas an individual is seen in a negative light. My students understood this concept immediately, a testament to the importance of social and familial connections between people within Chinese society.

On the train, I was seeing this concept firsthand, and since this realization, I have come to notice examples like this more often.

The impossibility of comfortable sleep caused me to wake up every twenty minutes to adjust my position. One side made the other ache, one leg would fall asleep, then the other, and my neck suffered one crink after the other. The back of one seat in the hard-seat class is also the back of another, so that one seat back serves two people facing opposite ways. Good for posture, but reclining is not an option. I’m not usually the type to complain about my arrangements, however bad, so I made the best of an unpromising situation; besides, we were roughing it.

Around the bleary-eyed time of 5:00 am, I looked out the window and caught a glimpse of light on the horizon. It wasn’t the sun, but through the early morning grey, I could tell the day was going to be stunning. Twenty minutes later, the train arrived at the station in Hohhot, and we disembarked, packs on our backs eagerly awaiting the adventure we had come to set out on. I could believe we were in Inner Mongolia.

Walking toward the station from the platform, we noticed a group of non-Asian looking girls a dozen steps ahead of us. Natty and I looked at each other, “I think they’re Russian,” he said, and without another word, we doubled our pace and reached them a few minutes later only to realize they were speaking English, but not just any English, they were speaking American English!

We quickly made friends with the girls, who happened to be on the same train and who also were on their way to spend the National Day Holiday in Inner Mongolia. They all teach in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, a few hours south of Baoding. Also like us, they spent the night tightly packed into the hard-seat class failing to get comfortable, and their tired expressions bore their difficulties.

Now, one would think that at 5:30 in the morning, the train station’s front lot would be completely empty, save for one or two taxis occupying the stand. But it was not so. As so as we exited, a group of men accosted us offering “Grassland Tours at half the price!” and half-priced hotel rooms. It didn’t help that five members of our newly formed group were attractive young American women…I guess that depends on perspective.

The girls booked a hotel in Hohhot, but didn’t know how to find it. Natty and I had no plans and a small map of the city, so we decided to help them. The city itself was deserted, the morning fog had yet to lift and the quiet streets were slowly awakening to the brand-new day. There’s an indescribable peace to city empty of its 2.3 million people during the early morning hours. Deserted streets wet with morning dew reached out in all directions disappearing into grey. Only a handful of cars roamed the city, and we decided to try to find their hotel on foot.

We walked and talked and walked until we came upon an old man performing his morning calisthenics on the sidewalk of one of the main boulevards. He greeted us amiably, his eyes smiled at us and face shined brightly, like the content look of an old Buddhist sage, and I walked over to him seeking help navigating this maze we were in. I said we were looking for Xinchung Xijie, and he seemed to know exactly what I meant. I motioned for us to follow him and we did. While leading this odd group of tired travelers, the man continued to move his arms slowly up and down and in circles, still exercising at a quiet pace. He did not treat us as aliens invading his land, which one might argue we were, but rather he treated us simply as people who were a little lost. Finally he stopped and pointed at a gated entrance to what looked like a large private park, spoke a few words to us in his language and left us to our own devices. A million thanks, Old Man.

Unfortunately, but with not fault on him, he led us in the wrong direction. The gated entrance was, in fact, the Xinchung Hotel, not Xinchung Xijie (Avenue). The girls thought that this might be their hotel, and I really had no idea, but this place was a large compound, complete with bowling ally, rock gardens, an amphitheater, disco and full spa facilities, and I doubted anyone on a teacher’s salary could afford a place like this. I was confirmed when we entered the lobby to ask for directions to the real hotel—this place beautiful, and the grand piano in the lobby told me more about the price than any guide book could.

One of the girls eventually called the real hotel and asked them for directions. We all jumped into two cabs and finally found their hotel, an amusing ordeal for our first few hours in Inner Mongolia.

We arrived at their hotel, said goodbye and walked toward the nearest bus stop. Natty and I had plans to take the long-distance bus north for a few hours into the grasslands and find our way from there. It was nearing 8 a.m. and traffic was filling the streets. Many women riding motorcycles and bicycles wore doctor’s covering their mouths and noses, not a surprising sight normally, but this city seemed a bit cleaner when it came to air pollution. Granted it was still early in the morning and the roads were just barely coming alive, but generally, the city seemed cleaner than most. We didn’t see trash on the streets, the air was breathable, and the sky was clear blue—the day had indeed turned out nice. I decided to think about this a while as we stood waiting for bus number 29 to take us to the main bus station (which is also in the same place as the train station). I came to the conclusion that perhaps it was not meant to protect them from the minor pollution in the air, but rather to protect them from inhaling bits of dust and loess. Loess is microscopic particles of dirt and sand that blows in from the west, an area known as the Loess plateaus. When tons of this stuff blows across the wide-open plains of northern China, it invades cities like Hohhot and piles of it accumulate into a dense tan-colored cloud that hovers and sometimes drops onto the streets and buildings. The women were protecting themselves from a natural pollutant, if that exists.

Tickets north were cheap, 20 kuai each, the bus left at 8:30. We boarded and before we even left the city, our eyes were shut.

I awoke every few minutes as we snaked through the lesser mountains north of the city. With each turn and curve my head would bounce against the glass of the window making it impossible to catch more than a straightaway’s worth of sleep.

Mountains excited me, I haven’t seen any this close since leaving New Hampshire nearly 2 months ago. So I tried to stay awake as I watched them go by. They’re very different here than back home, these mountains have no trees and are covered in dry dirt and loess. They’re beautiful, nonetheless, a sight for eyes.

Just over the hour and a half mark into our ride, the driver pulled over and told three girls sitting next to us that this was their stop. I looked out and saw no bus stop, no city and the mountains had ended, giving way to vast stretches of empty land with spotty grass patches, small hills and the occasional tree. The girls got off, but just before the last one left, she turned and said, “Aren’t you guys coming? The driver said you have to get off too.”

We started laughing.

“Ok, whatever,” Natty said.

“Expect the unexpected,” I mumbled.

Outside, a small van was parked on the opposite side of the road and a man in his 30s waited outside. The scene reminded me of nothing I had ever encountered before, and all I could think to do was squeeze in and go along for the ride. The three girls, Natty and I were accompanied by a young girl and her mother in the van, and before arriving at our final destination, wherever that was to be, the man had to drop off the mother and child. After that, the intrepid travelers were at the whim of fate, and the man driving the van.

We learned that the girls were Hong Kong students studying in northern China taking a trip into Inner Mongolia, and, much like ourselves, were without a plan and had little idea of what exactly they would be doing and where they would be going. Great.

We drove past one small village, two or three yurt camps and finally turned off onto a dirt road leading over a hill. In front of us, spread out like an infinite ocean of browns, greens and blues, was a tract of land that met the sky at the distant line that marked the horizon. On the left, a small yurt camp settled into the grasslands a few thousand feet from the turnoff. We drove for about 5 minutes until we arrived in the camp, apparently our final destination.

Surrounded by fields of dry grass and hard dirt, the yurt camp welcomed weary travelers without much in the way of frills or luxuries. A dozen 4-person yurts lined both sides of the camp surrounding an empty flagpole. Beyond the flagpole a larger yurt, serving as a dining room, was situated near a brick building that housed the kitchen and the living quarters of the camp’s owners. A thin, busy lady emerged from the building and invited us to sit in the yurt dining room to have some lunch and discuss a possible horse ride later in the afternoon. It was nearly 11 a.m. by this point, and hunger was beginning to creep up in our stomachs, so we obliged. The Hong Kong girls, Annie, Angel and Fish, speak a little Mandarin and were able to decipher some of the menu for us. The camp owner suggested that we try a sampling of traditional Mongolian food, and since there were 5 of us, it seemed like a good idea.

An hour and a half went by and our hunger had grown from a small desire to eat to crippling hunger, forcing us to ask if there was another restaurant nearby. But, of course, there wasn’t, we were in the middle of nowhere and left at the mercy of our hosts. When the food finally arrived, nearly two hours after we ordered, what sat in front of us was some of the most unappetizing food I have ever seen. I like to think I’d try anything, and I was hungry enough to eat Styrofoam, so I made the best of a bad situation and dug in. This traditional Mongolian meal was more of a smorgasbord of snacks all deriving from mare’s milk and cow’s milk: fermented chunks of crispy milk, hard slices of sweet milk and milk noodles. They provided a milk-based tea, which tasted more like salty soup than tea, that we were supposed to use to dip the hard milk products into to soften them up and make the edible. But edible it was not, and I found myself eating a bowl of plain white rice instead. It was worse for Natty, he’s lactose-intolerant and facing an entire “meal” made from milk while hungry is a form a torture that should be on the Geneva Convention’s list of illegal forms of torture.

At a table next to us, a group of four travelers sat awaiting their own meal. We said hello and talked about the tour package they had purchased and what it included. According to them, they were to have three meals, Mongolian dancing and wrestling performances, and a night in a yurt included. When their first meal arrived, the grass was certainly greener on their side. Vegetables, meat, noodles, it was a veritable feast, and seeing how down we were about our meal, they invited us to join them at their table to share their meal. What a gesture that was! We quickly made friends with them and learned that two of the females were French, one Chinese and the one male in their group also was Chinese. This makeshift group, representing the U.S., Asia and Europe, would become a merry band of travelers roaming the Inner Mongolia countryside, making memories and having a blast, and it started after lunch.

Horseback riding cost a few more kuai than expected, but it was something I didn’t want to miss, besides, there was nothing else to do out here. We opted for a five-hour ride, somewhat of a mistake considering none of us had ridden a horse in years, and some of us had never ridden a horse in our lives.

From the yurt camp we set out towards the horizon, a pack of happy tourists on horseback lead by two Mongolian guides, also on horseback. The horses we rented were not the type of horses you see in old Westerns or the type Mounties in Canada ride. These horses were a lot smaller, less majestic, and certainly a lot worse for wear. I could tell that they’re overworked and underpaid—poor horses. I felt bad riding them, and I didn’t want them to run very much; a nice easy pace was all we needed to appreciate the beautiful landscape that surrounded us. Every once in a while the guide who followed the group would whip the butts of the trailing horses, yell “chia! chia!” and get everyone moving fast for a while, and this tempted me to try it myself, but without a whip my horse didn’t go anywhere. I’m glad he had a mind of his own, but was upset by the fact that the guide had no interest in what the horse wanted to needed, he wanted us to move along so he could call it a day. And so it went, the horses walked until the guide whipped, then the mass would cantered for a few minutes and then slow down. We, as riders, were doing nothing in the way of steering or controlling where and how our horses went, we were being herded along a well-traveled path, one which the horses obviously knew very well, and thus our butts and legs were very sore and we had nothing but a boring five-hour horse-ride to show for it. I enjoyed the scenery and the connection with nature through the large, handsome beast I rode, but it felt cheap and unauthentic.

That night, we ate dinner with the group and were lucky enough not to have to pay for it, which we felt was justified considering how much we spent for our lackluster lunch. At dinner, we talked about the anticipated performances and party, the group who was promised this, as part of their package was eager to see it. Unfortunately, the activities never happened, which forced us to trek across the pitch-dark grasslands to another yurt camp nearby beckoning us with loud music and voices that, because were just across a large empty plain, seemed to come from somewhere beyond (and the did, they came from beyond the yurt camp).

This party was nearing its end when we arrived, but we caught the last dance routine, which consisted of a pair of traditionally dressed locals dancing to a Mongolian song being blasted through a guitar amplifier connected to a Discman. It was entertaining to see, but we couldn’t see more. We stuck around anyway, as most of the audience consisted of foreigners from all over the world. We met people from Italy, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica and Japan, among others, and we all promised to keep in touch and visit them in Beijing soon. The highlight of the night was drinking baiju, spitting on the hot coals in the fire pit and watching the alcohol burn up in a brilliant flame. I finally found an excuse to taste baiju without having to drink it.

Although Natty and I had set up our tent for the evening, we crashed in one of the yurts with the ladies from France. Without the sun, the temperature dropped nearly 20 degrees F, and body heat was the only resource available with which to stay warm. Don’t worry, though, nothing happened.