Holiday in Mongolia

Exams are over, and apart from the comprehensive one ("comprehensive" is the name of one of our subjects) I did alright. One of my friends from Harbin, Peter, also came to Beijing on Thursday, so I met with him that night. Now, with exams over, I can finish off my week with the trip to Inner Mongolia I signed up for when I first got here. I'll be gone until Monday evening - there is a long weekend for International Labour Day (May Day).

Inner Mongolia is called that because it is a province (actually an autonomous region) of China. The terms "inner" and "outer" Mongolia are from Chinese, and refer to the regions from a Chinese perspective - the area inside China is inner, and the country Mongolia is outer. It makes up a lot of the northern border of China, stretching from Heilongjiang in the northeast to Xinjiang in the northwest, in a stretched U shape. As I mentioned before, it is an autonomous region, which seems to be a designation for a province which has an ethnic minority associated with it (Mongolians here, Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Tibetans in Tibet, and Zhuang in Guangxi). Presumably each has special rules because of this.


Renewable energy in Hebei province.

We (80-odd students) set off at about 1:30 this afternoon from our campus in buses. On the way I met a pair of Italians, and a Finn who approached me and asked if I was Scandanavian - not something I've been asked before. We drove past/through the Great Wall on the way, through Juyongguan. Our first stop was a service station near a city in Hebei called Zhangjiakou. We then drove on and reached a hotel restaurant in Inner Mongolia for dinner a bit after 6, for a typical huge Chinese banquet. This wasn't our final stop though, we drove on to the capital Hohhot (or Huhehaote in Chinese) reaching our hotel at about 8:30. We are sharing twin rooms - I'm with a Korean gentleman who speaks very little English, but fortunately is at the same level as me in Chinese. He didn't want to do much though, so I left him in the room and tried to find some of the people I knew, but I ended up with a big group mostly from England.


Our hotel appears to belong to a Bond villain.

The hotel is not near anything interesting. We ended up getting a carton of beer, and taking it back to the room. One person decided to be adventurous and bought a leather bottle with a picture of Ghenghis Khan on it. This turned out to be wine distilled from milk. We all had a bit - it's not as bad as milk wine sounds, but I won't have it again. It's very strong, even stronger than Maotai. I made a few friends but decided to turn in relatively early.



Tomorrow it's a proper breakfast, then we go out to the grasslands. I'm not really sure what will happen but I'm having fun so far. This trip wasn't cheap, but I'm enjoying the food and the quality accommodation so I don't mind too much.