To Inner Mongolia, by train and bus, for week-end break

Press, 20 August 1986, Page 19

To Inner Mongolia, by train and bus, for week-end break

From KEN COATES, who has spent a weekend in Inner Mongolia as a break from his journalism teaching duties in Peking.

Would spending a night with Kurt in a yurt in Inner Mongolia make a Kiwi feel at home? It sounds unlikely. Yet a week-end in the vast grasslands, empty except for scattered sheep and cattle farmers, is a tonic after the over-peopled, polluted, and perspiring mid-summer Peking. A yurt is a circular tent with a sturdy frame of wooden rods and wicker work, traditionally covered with animal hide. Wandering Mongolian herdsmen in search of summer pastures pack them on to waggons. The canvas and felt-covered yurt, in which we stayed with Kurt and his wife Paddy, a young American couple, was a tourist model. It had a brick and concrete floor, raised platform for sleeping, down quilts and rugs, and a 40-watt bulb hanging from the yurt hole.

It made a snug hideaway, high on the expanse of grasslands, 87km north-west of Hohot and over the Daqing Mountains. The wind blew cool and fresh from the north and the Gobi Desert. Riding on the overnight train (soft sleeper, four to a berth) from Peking has an element of adventure, for the romantic. We rumbled along for 12 hours, first skirting the Great Wall to the west, then travelling north from Datong and west again to Hohot, the Mongolian capital, spelled variously as Huhoaot, Huhehaote, and Huhehot.

It was quite an experience getting out at a hill station to watch the great panting, redwheeled steam locomotive taking on more water — and the driver busy with a huge oil can. BUt it was quite another experience grappling with the swaying crouch needed to use the 100 on a Chinese train.

After a night punctuated by lurching stops, we arrived in Hohot, population one million and boasting a racecourse and polo field. The province recently played a French team, we were told.

In the pouring rain we drove by bus into the mountains and up a winding but sealed road soon shrouded in thick fog. There was just enough room to inch between a crumpled mini-bus and an overturned Army truck. The dazed and injured occupants stood in the rain, reminding us

that the eroded hills become treacherous in bad weather.

A two-hour trip brought us to a plateau and the village of Xi La Mulun, with an ancient well in the main street, low brick houses, a few shops, a post office, and a yurt ground for tourists. Each had an ante-room of galvanised iron with mod.

cons added. But it was locked, "because of water shortage” we were told.

The rain was clearing and we made do by washing in cold water in a white enamel basin, though the public toilets were unspeakably primitive. A woman wearing Mongolian costume brought us a thermos of hot water for tea.

Exploring the village, we noted no-one else was wearing this garb, though a robe was worn by a monk in charge of a Lamaist temple. The leathery lama said he had several grandchildren and genially explained paintings of heaven and hell at the entrance.

To explore the grasslands, the bus simply swung off a gravel road on to wheel tracks that disappeared over the rim of the prairie. The Texan who requested the trip in Peking, whooped and clicked off dozens of exposures of the vast emptiness.

We were in the land of the Mongols, hardy sheep-herders and horse breeders. As a race they have known greatness. Eight hundred years ago they were united by Genghis. Khan, who went on to conquer China, and most of the then known world, on horseback.

The Mongols galloped into China by penetrating the Great Wall through a deep gorge leading to the northern plains. They established their capital in Peking, and Kublai Khan became the first emperor of the

Yuan dynasty. The conquest of China proved the undoing of the Mongols. They excluded Chinese from official positions and relegated them to second-class citizens. Chinese rebels drove the intruders from Peking, and Zhu Yuanzhang founded the Ming dynasty. Russia’s eastward expansion included the northern part of Mongolia; the rest was dominated by China. For a time Mongolia was an independent State, but the Russians were behind the creation of the Mongolian People’s Republic, or Outer Mongolia, which has remained firmly under the Soviet thumb.

Inner Mongolia, styled an autonomous region, stretches across half of northern China, and is inhabited by about 19 million people. An estimated two million are Mongols, a minority in their own land. The rest, are mainly Han Chinese. Today’s descendants of the mighty Khan zoom over the endless plains on Japanese motor-bikes. Homesteads, Mon-

golian-style, are sturdy brick houses with windows away from the cruel north winds. Low stone walls and lean-tos provide shelter for stock. We saw electric fences powered by wind chargers enclosing a grazing herd of cattle. We speculated on what New Zealand tehcnology could do for the pitifully thin cover of grass. An "obo,” or pile of stonese with marker poles, on the highest knoll for miles around serves a double purpose. It is a direction finder for herdsmen in the snow and an ancient spot for sacrifice to the gods for lush pastures and an increase in animal progeny. A guide from Hohot, whose English was skeletal, said that boys and girls came to the spot for religious rites — but we could only guess at what took place.

A gaggle of Hong Kong youngsters who drew up in a mini-bus seemed to have the feel of the place: they threw coins on to the stones for good luck.

The sky to the north turned dark and threatening. By the time the bus had stopped at a farmhouse, the wind was howling across the plains. Herdsmen with long sticks drove a flock of longwoolled, horned sheep to shelter

before the storm. The fanner on whom we had dropped in put horse and cart under cover and disengaged the whirling wind-charger. Inside, we were invited to take off our shoes and sit on the heated, raised platform that was the family bed. Bowls of tea with milk already added were poured from big aluminium kettles. Millet and sugar could be stirred in. The windows ihisted over as the driving rain came and the temperature dropped. The world had already come to this once-lonely farmhouse — on the wall was a glossy tourist poster depicting the delights of the French Riveria. China’s new economic policies means that members of the family, can work at other jobs, says the weather-beaten farmer, exempted as a minority race from the one-child policy. They own 300 sheep now instead of only 30. • His no less work-worn wife, still erect and possessing a quiet dignity, seems to hold the purse strings. Previously they made only 1000 yuan yearly ($500) but now make three times as much. That evening, back in the village, we sat down to a big platter of tender, roast lamb, with herbs and no fat. We were all equipped with short, daggerlike knives with which to slice off succulent slices. It rated as the best meal in China, elaborate' banquets included.

The Mongolians are friendly and outgoing. The master of ceremonies was a strong young man dressed in a green robe. He could out-wrestle anyone in the village, had a fine singing voice, rode the small Mongolian horses as though bom in the saddle, and drank our health in a colourless fire-water with verve and enthusiasm. Singing and dancing was staged by the locals in a yurtshaped hall, and visitors were invited to contribute. After a fullthroated fortissimo at contralto pitch from an American blonde of indeterminate age who sang “God Bless America,” no further requests were made. Next morning, the young men raced their ponies in a brief dash across the grasslands for the amusement of visitors, and a Japanese film crew. Tourists were offered rides on a couple of mangy double-humped camels, led around a circuit. Step-ladders were provided for mounting. The Texan borrowed the green robe of the host and posed on a patient pony. A couple of quick wrestling bouts and the show was over. ’ On the return trip to Hohot, one insistent American shutterbug stopped the bus and rushed out over the fields to a startled farmer trudging behind a singlefurrow plough drawn by a horse. We wondered about the peasant’s thoughts as he stared at the foreigner. The acrid smell of coal smoke

from a thousand stoves hit our. nostrils as we returned to the Mongolian capital with few footpaths and thronged with donkey carts, farm tractors, pony carts, and bikes. The Chinese, keen to show how they tolerate religion these days, took us to Dazhao Temple. An amiable Buddhist priest shook his head when asked how many believers there were in the city. But he did say that a living Buddha who worked as a doctor came to the temple sometimes. T On the outer wall of the temple were swastika symbols, representing truth and eternity, and used in Eastern religionslong before their adoption by the Nazis. • I watched the Buddhist priest slip out a side door, robe discarded once he had talked with the foreigners. 7 Next door, practically hidden, was another temple, paint peeling, shuttered, and in sad disrepair. It was not difficult to imagine the fate of this and thousands of ancient shrines damaged in the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Inner Mongolia is not the place it once was, and we met no wandering herdsmen. But for a week-end that is different in China it is hard to beat 7 The train arrived back at Peking Station at exactly the time it was due — 6.21 on Monday morning, in good time for breakfast and getting to work.

Wind-powered fences