Happy National Day
Oct. 1, National Day in the People’s Republic of China, is a day of celebration signifying the beginning of Communist governance nearly 60 years ago.
For the past seven years, the day has also marked the start of a weeklong vacation for many Chinese citizens. They use the time off to visit far-away family members, take trips to the beach or countryside and pursue touristy endeavors, much like Americans do during Christmas vacation or summer break.
In China, this week is designated as one of three times during the year in which Chinese citizens do not have to work. Typically, they have no choice in the matter — take a vacation now, or you will lose it, thus forcing a mass exodus of the cities by trains, cars, buses and airplanes to various destinations within and outside the mainland.
As a person living and employed in China, I also was given the opportunity to take some time off, and, together with my coworker Natty, join the throngs of vacationers getting away from it all.
Being the intrepid travelers we are, we decided that we were not going to simply take a vacation to relax and refuel. We wanted an adventure, we wanted to see the country and we wanted to be stereotypical men, camping out under the stars, eating meat off the bone, growing beards and “roughing it.”
To us, there was no better place to act like nomadic barbarians than Inner Mongolia, a notorious province in the north, home to infinite tracts of grassland, horses and the biggest sky in China.
I imagined a hiking trip in Montana, with nobody around for miles. The tourism industry in China, however, had a different idea in mind.
Our trip took us north, through Beijing, into Inner Mongolia to the capital city, Hohhot. It was a 12-hour overnight train, and because we waited so long, we were forced to take hard-seat class tickets. When we got on the train, we realized that we were lucky to get tickets at all. It was packed to the gills with giddy travelers and heaps of luggage crowding the aisles. Those who waited until the last minute were forced to stand for the entirety.
It was a long trip made longer by the fact that we had to find a sleeping position while sitting in a small, upright seat — not an easy task for long-legged westerners like us. We sat in a six-person berth separated by a small table protruding from the train wall to our left with less than two feet of space between the edges of the opposite side’s seats. The impossibility of comfortable sleep caused me to wake up every 20 minutes to adjust my position.
The train ride was followed by a two-hour bus ride into the grasslands north of Hohhot. As field after field passed my window, I grew more excited for what was ahead, until the driver stopped the bus and told us to get off. Apparently, this was our stop — a spot on a road to nowhere in the middle of nowhere.
Our immediate reaction?
We laughed.
“OK,” said Natty, “Whatever!”
“Expect the unexpected,” I mumbled.
Around us, in nearly every direction, there was not a building in sight. I could never have imagined a China like this.
A man in his 30s emerged from a small van parked nearby, approached us and told us to get in; he said he would take us the rest of the way to our final destination.
The van grumbled to life and the driver threw it into gear. We rode for a few miles and pulled off onto a hard-packed dirt road. A few minutes of bumpy terrain led us to the entrance of a small yurt camp. The round tent-like structures, which used to be the canvas homes of nomadic Mongolian tribes, were now used to house tourists, giving them an “authentic” Mongolian experience. It seemed a bit kitsch to me, and it certainly was not my idea of roughing it.
Natty and I brought a tent along and pitched it outside the camp, intending to save a few Yuan and make our own authentic experience.
We were not the only foreigners seeking a different experience on the grasslands. We met a number of others during our horseback riding adventure — which consisted of being herded by guides while riding the sorriest bunch of horses I’d ever seen — as well as during the Mongolian dance party, a well-rehearsed but disappointing display of locals dressed in traditional clothing performing traditional dances.
All these activities made me think of the tourist experience back home, in a place like Hancock Shaker Village, where the authentic experience is no longer available because the village’s primary use is as a tourist attraction. This has happened in Inner Mongolia.
The people of this region no longer roam the grasslands as herders; their primary source of income is tourism. Even though this new economy provides for them, there is little regulation, which allows con artists to take advantage of unsuspecting travelers — like some of our friends who were scammed out of a few hundred Yuan. It also does nothing to protect the natural beauty of the grasslands. There was trash strew nearly everywhere, and just north of the area we stayed in, a large coal power-plant ruined the view, not to mention air quality.
The grasslands of Inner Mongolia are amazing. The sky stretches from one horizon to the other, like a sea of blue and white, there is an overwhelming peaceful silence like you’ve never heard, and the miles of hard dirt, crackling grass and stones that have been there for eons beckon, like a voice from childhood, to roam its seemingly undisturbed prairie.
But beneath this veneer of untamed wild beauty lies the truth about such a romantic vision: It’s a sad, disappearing reality. Like many natural treasures across the globe, it will one day be gone, and I am glad I saw it before it’s too late.
Happy National Day, PRC!
Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate who is spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He will be writing regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.