Huhhot, the perils of modern life in a desert city

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A warm welcome to Hohhot.

My first blog of many to come from Hohhot, the capital of the province of Inner Mongolia in China.
Hohhot is located northwest of Beijing, 10 hours by overnight train, and has a population of more than 2 million people, of which 20% mongol and 80% Han Chinese.
My expectations of the city were very different from the real thing, it's a very nice city to spend a year in, almost like a chinese version of Las Vegas. The buildings are really nicely lit up, lots of neon lights and parks and the lot.
Ofcourse it is winter now (-10 at night) so it will look a bit different, but absolutely not what I thought it would look like.
On the train here , coming from Qinhuangdao on the eastcoast, I saw the landscape surrounding the city; Very much desert-like, lots of mountains as well, but in general the landscape looked dry and dead.
Great scenery to gaze at though from your train window, if it wasn't for the mongolian guy in the berth next to me......
He snored all night!!! And loud, inhaling AND breathing out!! Sorry, you can tell me a lot, but I cannot sleep like that, even WITH my mp3 player on. In the morning, coming back into the compartment from having spend most of the night sitting in the corridor, the guy gets out a bag and starts eating 5 (!) giant crabs. After offering me one as well (''Oh no thank you I couldn't, no REALLY I couldn't''😉 he takes out a 50 ml bottle of some cheap mongolian whisky to wash away the crab!!!
In the meantime I had been reading a bit and started to get sleepy, so put my head back on the pillow, and guess what, right at the moment I feel this lovely drowsy nap coming up, the guy starts again! (AAAARRGGH)
How loud can a man snor??? Anyway, I have learned my lesson; Next time I'm on a Chinese train, I'M GETTING PISSED!!!

My school took me out to a traditional Mongolian restaurant here in Hohhot the other day, which was really good fun.
Within the restaurant they had made replicas of gers, the tents that the Mongols live in, for each group of guests to have their meal in.
Beside it they had reserved a massive space for an imitation of the famous grasslands here in Inner Mongolia, including fake grass, and stuffed animals. It really was quite impressive.
Even more so when two beautifully dressed up girls accompanied by a matouqin playe came in our ger to play music for us and sing.
I got a song peformed right in front of me that was meant to welcome me, really beautiful.
The matouqin is a traditional instrument from Mongolia with 2 horse hair strings, with a horses' head on top.
Great to listen to, need to find myself a cd quickly, and you can buy matouqin's here in Hohhot yourself.......

This is my first time in China, so don't know too much yet, what I have noticed though is the massive divide between rich and poor.
Yesterday I had this 6 year old boy hanging on my leg, begging for money. It took me 3 tries to entangle his hands and get him off me.
It made me feel sad, especially because this city is so filled with rich people. You can see middle aged women driving their SUV's alongside women of the same age sweeping the road with a broom.
In general everyboy seems quite happy though, including the donkeys coming from outside the city, with their owners selling sweet potatos, fruits and nuts from the back of a cart.
Food is really good around here like the Mongolian barbeque, the hotpot restaurants and many other variaties available.

Traffick is crazy here though, some taxi drivers try manouvres that would get them a smack on the back of their head anywhere else in the world I reckon. Turnarounds are halfway down a road, and they'll just push their way in.
On my day off, when exploring Hohhot, I saw an empty bus standing on a crossing, with a sleeping busdriver.!!!
Whenever the lights turned green, cars with loud horns would pass it, but the driver did not wake up!
I honestly thought he was dead! I waited for about 10 minutes, ready to walk up to him and wake him up, when some guys did it for me.
He looked shocked for about a second and then just drove off. Unbelievable!

Well, that's all for now, hope to head into the mountains just outside the city on my coming days off, and I will be going to Hong Kong in two weeks time, which I'm very much looking forward to!
zaijian!

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Photos

mongolian girls
beautifully dressed up with great voices

mongolian restaurant
Imitation of the mongolian grasslands in the restaurant, with the private gers reflected in the mirrors.

Traditional hot pot.
A big pot with 2 boiling broths, one spicy, one not so in the middle of the table, in which you cook your own food,eg: mutton, tofu, mushrooms.

Chinese lessons
Can you make any sense out of this?

Comments

[JASPER STAAL]

hey man!
looks pretty interesting,great atmosphere,must feel strange,and yet warm at the same time..I hope you enjoy(ed) your stay.. pretty sad to hear the broken balance between poor and rich,but hey,its more common in the world than our litlle dutch brains can imagine..if oyu think utside the box,its kinda logical..we are just some lucky bastards,(financialy that is).. its just bad you cant help those people,one boy who begs doesnt stand for a solution.. my brother also told me about little boys on bali,who basically get pimped,they beg,and later on,giver their money to their ' boss' ...makes you sad doesn't it? do you still have contact with ariana and anton? hope thes guys are done on terschelling... well,Take Care,greetz from grunn,jasper (be sure to check out jelguris.waarbenjij.nu for some great bali stories from my bro,you'll probably love it) Greets!