ChinaSnap! Fall in Holhot, Inner Mongolia

This is a picture of... signs of fall in Northern China.

At the time I took this ChinaSnap! I was... exploring a temple in Holhot, Inner Mongolia.  I came upon this courtyard, with vegetables growing above it. A friend from the Tsinghua LLM Program traveling with me took this picture.  

I remember that... we had just visited the plains and then trekked around the Gobi, so we were exhausted and overstimulated. Holhot seemed at first ordinary and dull, but on closer look its ordinariness became charming. I snuck down alleys and saw the street stalls, the local produce, and lamb street food merchants. And this courtyard, simple yet charming.  

This qualifies as a ChinaSnap! because... while China's historical sights and natural features are breathtaking, I find the aspects of daily life throughout China are what I appreciate most. A cheap bowl of delicious noodles, a brightly colored door, an outdoor mahjong game. Pumpkins and squash growing from a trellis near an ancient temple. Small things, but beautiful nonetheless.  

Submit a ChinaSnap! of your own to Chinaful by emailing chinafulblog@gmail.com and we'll post it with your answers to the bolded sentence-starters. Anything from your favorite Chinese food dish to you in the Forbidden City, we want to see what's Chinaful to you. 

Adventures in the Inner Mongolia Grasslands

Inner Mongolia - few outside China even know it's part of the PRC.  In the grasslands it's the real Wild West, where daily transportation is by horseback and plateaus continue for miles.  

I was a little skeptical at first how a group of almost 15 friends would fair on the grasslands and desert of Inner Mongolia.  My skepticism was heightened when we arrived at the yurts met by horse riding natives welcoming us with baijiu and a somewhat complex ritual that involved a few shots of the Chinese white wine.  It appeared these Mongolians had already had a few themselves, perhaps because of the inner conflict they felt about selling out some of the most precious aspects of their culture. 

{Baijiu in Inner Mongolia}

For instance, each of us were given a “hada,” a white silk scarf that signifies an award for a great deed.  A friend who skinned the sheep we ate for dinner possibly deserved such an honor; I, who only paid around $100 for the entire weekend experience, did not.  Yet, while talking with the horse handlers, one of them noticed the hada and congratulated me on such a high honor.  I offered it to him and he refused, clearly feeling undeserving of the honor that he actually assigned to the scarf.  

{Working for our dinner}

Our group then took a very nice ride through the grasslands on horseback.  The fields were genuinely beautiful with the rolling plains and mountains in the backdrop.  The situation was made increasingly romantic as one of the Mongolian horseriders then decided to start a conversation with me in Mandarin that ended with a marriage proposal and the request that I move to Inner Mongolia.  He sweetened the deal by offering to give me his horse, a generous offer particularly given the fact that the horse is just about all he owns.  (Note: I declined.) 

{Mongolian Ex-Fiancee}

We then watched a staged “marriage” between two of our friends that was intended to represent our Mongolian cultural experience and involved the guy holding a slice of the lamb in his teeth while the girl bit the other side to take it from him.  Some people do a similar act in the US, but it’s usually with cake.  Somehow a greasy piece of lamb doesn’t photograph as well as fondant, but it was one of the funniest things I have witnessed complete with Mongolian singing as accompaniment.

Wrestling and horse-racing followed.  Three friends wrestled a Mongolian who obviously was experienced as he beat all three fairly easily.  I saw later hanging out with the horse-hands that wrestling is an actual part of daily life in Mongolian culture, ostensibly as a way for men to show their strength and show off for ladies. 

{Mongolian Wrestling}

More lamb and drinking for dinner, and then it was time for a party in the yurt.  A yurt is the form of home for Mongolians – essentially, it’s a very large and more substantive tent.  We fit 8 in ours and all huddled together for body warmth because it was freezing even in October. 

But a walk outside revealed the most beautiful sky I have ever seen.  It’s so strange not to realize how many stars you miss out on when you live in big cities, it’s almost like they don’t exist but in reality the evening sky is always filled with stars.  We even saw a shooting star that made me wonder if they aren’t more frequent than I realized, and instead I usually just fail to see them.

ChinaSnap!: My first camel kiss + Gobi Desert

It’s the day after Valentine’s, but the love doesn’t stop here at Chinaful.  Here’s a ChinaSnap! to bring a little smile to your Wednesday.   

Chinaful - ChinaSnap! Gobi Desert, Inner Mongolia

This is... documentation of my first camel kiss and my first trip to the Gobi Desert.    

At the time I took this ChinaSnap! I was... in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia and feeling caught in a dream. I was wearing "sand boots", those red socks sewn as a way to keep the sand out of your shoes.  I was hot, but it was a dry heat so it wasn't miserable like you might expect a desert to be.  

I remember... my camel being pretty cranky and not all that comfortable to ride, but a total blast. We also tried "sand skiing", sliding in our boots down the dunes. The sand dunes cut against the bright blue sky and even though I grew up on the Florida beaches, I had never seen that amount of sand in my life. In Chinese, the Gobi Desert is 瀚海 (Hanhai), which means "endless sea." That's exactly right - the sand appears like waves that never cease. The Gobi Desert is a sight you really have to see to believe.  (A guide to Inner Mongolia, including the Gobi Desert, is coming soon to Chinaful.)

This qualifies as a ChinaSnap! because... obviously, it’s hump day! (I'm usually not punny, but that one was too good to resist.) 

Submit a ChinaSnap! of your own to Chinaful by emailing chinafulblog@gmail.com and we'll post it with your answers to the bolded sentence-starters.  Anything from your favorite Chinese food dish to you in the Forbidden City, we want to see what's Chinaful to you.