Surrounded by the pitch dark, barren grasslands, I plodded along the only paved road in the area; my lifeline to find my way back. Passing truck headlights along with my iphone flashlight provided the only light I had. An impulsive, late afternoon trek into the nearby hills of the grasslands by myself had put me into the worst possible traveling scenario: lost at night in the middle of nowhere with no way to contact my travel companions.
“Stay calm, as long as you are on this road you won’t die.”
Following this road for 30-40 minutes on foot I finally came upon some people on the side of the road across from what looked like a closed down hotel/ Mongol yurt resort. It was a group of men who looked like they were doing some work with a truck.
“Finally, people that can help me get back to where I was staying.”
Then it struck me: I didn’t even really know where I was staying. It was a Mongol yurt and tiny bunk dormitory surrounded by sheep and horses somewhere in the grasslands. How could I ask for directions? I tried at first to tell them I was lost and I was staying in the grassland. One of them, a middle aged man responded curtly: “it’s far away, keep going that way.”
“Damn it! How am I going to get back?”
I accepted his vague directions and kept on going for a bit. But ahead was only uncertain darkness. Then I thought maybe they could help drive me back to my place. I had gotten a pretty frosty response from these men on the side of the road but if I offered to pay them, maybe they would be willing to drive me back. Walking back towards the men on the side of the road I noticed a light on in the nearby hotel and went to see if there was a person there who could help me. I knocked on the door and an older man opened it. I told him my situation and the vague location where I was staying. He then promptly took me across the road to ask those same men.
“My camera! I can show them the photo I took of the area was staying in to find my way back. Maybe that will work?”
I tried to show them the photo but they still didn’t seem to know.
And then suddenly a van came and pulled over the side of the road. It was the driver we had hired to take us around Inner Mongolia and one of my travel companions, Lucas. They had been out looking for me. I was saved!
This was the most memorable/ harrowing/ potentially tragic episode of a week-long trip in Inner Mongolia (a province in China adjacent to the one where Harbin is located in, not the country of Mongolia). I won’t go into the blow by blow of the trip but rather point out some interesting tidbits from my time there which took place during our week-long fall break 10/17-10/24. I traveled with two other classmates, Beatrix and Caroline, and our RA, Lucas.
Overall, our trip began in a small city called Hailaer, which we flew into from Harbin, and from there hired a driver, Dawei, to take us in a van to various places between there and Manzhouli right on the Russian border. At the end of the week, we flew back to Harbin from Manzhouli. Throughout the week we moved around so much (almost every night of the trip we stayed in a new place) that it’s hard to recall all the places we went to and their names. We also managed to fit in a lot of different activities including a wedding (the former classmate of our driver in Hailaier), horseback riding, and staying in a Mongolian yurt. In between sites we visited, we had long rides in a van on bumpy roads.
Below are some of the things that really stuck out to me during our time in Inner Mongolia:
Natural beauty of the grasslands and the tourist trail
Between Hailaer and Manzhouli, we visited various natural sites and high points around the grasslands. The brownish grasslands lacked luster as winter had begun but the abundance of barren open space, rolling hills, and rivers gave the area an alluring peaceful feel to it. These sites would most definitely have been better in the summer (as local people constantly reminded us) but being the only travelers at the various natural sites and parks was a treat in its own right. I really enjoyed the calm solitude we encountered throughout the grasslands.
It also helped that, though quite cold and windy at times, we had mostly bright blue skies throughout the trip. Soon enough I will be missing that kind of blue sky as the harsh, pollution laden winter progresses in Harbin.
Our van tour also seemed to follow a well tread tourist trail that in the summer would be swarming with people. Because we had come at the beginning of the offseason, in the towns, parks and sites we visited, we passed an array of shuttered tourist shops, restaurants, and hotels. Common tourist activities like staying in a tradition Mongolian yurt and horseback riding (both of which we wanted to do) were not readily at the time available either. To find the Mongolian yurt that we eventually stayed in (where my incident took place), our driver scoured the grassland to find it. Also, we luckily stumbled upon a horseback riding site still open on the side of the road. As cheesy as it may sound, horseback riding was actually quite fun. Under a bright, blue sky, we rode at a gentle gallop for an hour in tow of two guides in an unencumbered vast open space.
Ethnic Russian minority group in China and Russians visiting China
The part of Inner Mongolia we were in was quite close to Russia. We visited a town, Shiwei, and stayed in a city, Manzhouli, located on the border. We even stayed in an ethnic Russian village called Enhe for two nights. There we met individuals of mixed Han and Russian ancestry as well as those who had two Russian parents. Some of the people we met in this village still had family in Russia and spoke Russian but other ethnic Russians we met spoke little to no Russian and didn’t participate in any local Russian cultural activities. In school they learned English and Mandarin but not Russian. Apparently the Russian ethnic group is one of China’s smallest minority groups and first came there in the 18th century. It seemed like many of those that we had met had been “sinicized” though retained some parts of their Russian heritage. They also seem to heavily depend on tourism for income (lodging travelers and providingmeals) especially to get by in the long winter off-season.
The village Enhe itself was not very special or “authentic”. It clearly had been recently modified and developed to suit tourism as the area was littered with newish looking souvenir shops, restaurants and hotels. This gave the area a feel of what one of my travel companions said of “being on a movie set.” But on the second night there, we ended up drinking at a restaurant with a large group of local Russians and their friends/family from out of town. They drank a bunch of rice wine and sang Russian songs and even made us sing an English song (we ad-libbed “Lean on Me”). One guy (who looked like he was of mixed Russian and Han ancestry) called himself “Putin”, referred to us as “Obama” and our driver as “Xi Jinping” (one of the only Han people there). “Putin” also sang the most songs and had a nice sounding voice. It was a great night filled with laughter, discussions about local Russians in China, and lots of Ganbei-ing (“cheers” in Chinese). It was a great opportunity to engage local people in a casual atmosphere.
Manzhouli was more of a city that catered to Russians visiting for business and shopping. In the downtown area where we stayed, many of the shops’ signs had Russian written on them, some blared out advertisements in Russian and when we went into some of the stores, some locals would even try to speak to us in Russian. There was also a local night club across from our hotel in Manzhouli that we visited and the people there were almost all Russian. The night club MC was Russian and they played almost only Russian music. It was quite surreal. We also met an ethnically Mongolian Chinese guy who lived in the city who had lived in Russia for over ten years, spoke fluent Russian and did translation work in the city. He told us that the recent economic troubles in Russia had really hurt the number of Russians that came to Manzhouli.
So all in all I got an unexpected taste of Russian culture and language throughout my time in Inner Mongolia.