Dongbei - Hailar (lamb spine, cow knee) and Xiqi

The next morning we got on the train early for Hailar. That's the biggest city in the northern section of Inner Mongolia, so that's where the trains all end up. My eventual goal was Manzhouli, which I'd read about in a travel book as an alternative to the big city destinations. The ride was 12 hours, and you couldn't pre-order sleeper tickets, they had to be upgraded from hard seats once on the train. Lao Gao worked some magic to get one of the guys working at the station to let us onto the platform early, and we coasted into the sleepers ahead of the mad rush on the ticket booth that came minutes later.

I didn't see much of Hailar. We stepped off the train and got a hotel that was right next to the station. We went for a real hotel hoping for showers, and dished out some big money, about $10 each. Seems cheap, but it was 18 times more expensive than the previous night's lodging. The room was luxurious compared to the cheap place, but the showers were a bust with only about couple minutes of hot water. We'd met a couple on the train, a 28-year-old guy who dressed like a pimp (totally normal by standards here) and his wife, a uniquely beautiful woman because of a Russian a few generations back in her family tree. The pimp offered to treat us to dinner, so that night I got to try a couple of new dishes almost as exciting as dog - knee of cow and spinal cord of lamb. I thought the taste of both was unremarkable, but that didn't make them boring.

Cow knee was served in bite sized chunks. It was slippery and gelatinous, deforming under pressure before allowing the teeth to slide through. It was comparable to extremely thick jello, unattainably thick using conventional methods - you have to go straight for the knees to get that stuff. The lamb spine had a little meat clinging to it that required vigorous, up close lip and teeth work to remove, but the real treat was the noodle-like gray matter exposed when the spine was gripped with both hands and snapped in two. Nothing brings out the inner animal like firmly gripping a spinal cord, breaking it like a piece of kindling, and slurping out the marrow.

The next morning Lao Gao and I parted ways when I hopped the 7am train to Manzhouli. The train ride was supposedly three and a half hours, but it was noon before I arrived. Manzhouli was very disappointing, not fitting it's advertised small town billing. I got off the train and walked through once, noting the huge shopping district with tons of Russians who had crossed over. Manzhouli is one of two cities in China which has a railroad connection with Russia. Since Harbin is a big city, Harbin has Russians, and I'll be in Harbin all year, it didn't take long to figure out I wasn't staying long in Manzhouli. When I found the bus station there was a bus to Xin Baer Youqi, or just Xiqi (west flag, pronounced "sheechee"), leaving in 15 minutes. I took it. That's the great thing about traveling alone - total flexibility to change plans and act on impulse.

I knew I'd made the right choice as I watched the hectic city scene melt into the wide open grasslands which are the trademark of Inner Mongolia. We'd only been going for 15 minutes whan a guy staggered to the front of the bus and spoke with the driver. The bus stopped, allowing the guy to stumble outside and urinate about 5 feet from the door. As he made his way back down the aisle, the driver laughed and said loudly, "Next time don't drink so much beer!" Everyone was chuckling as we continued on towards Xiqi.

As I got of the bus I was greeted by a guy advertising a room for the night. That's always my first task when I arrive somewhere new so I went with him. He said 30 kuai, I said 25, and that's what we ended up agreeing to for the night, a little over $3. We also chatted and he seemed nice enough. He was a member of the Mongolian minority group, spoke Mongolian with his wife and Chinese with me. The room was a part of the guy's house, or maybe the guy lived in one of the rooms of his business. I don't really know what to call that kind of situation, but it's common around here. It's definitely not a hotel or motel, maybe closer to a hostel, but that's not it either. Here it's called a ludian, so I'll just use that.

I told him I was interested in going out into the grasslands and checking out the scenery and points of interest, also going to one of the "yurts", a tent-like structure that's been the traditional home of roaming Mongolians since before the time of Ghengis Khan. Today, there are two kinds of yurts: little groupings of them, surrounded by flags, that are for tourists to go see, maybe ride a horse, have a meal, and stay the night; and then the solitary ones you can see out on the horizon as you cruise by on the bus, barely visible, isolated, and the actual homes of Mongolian sheepherders year-round. After a quick discussion about basketball (the Chinese national team was getting creamed, but Yao Ming cool as ever), his son (ultimate dream: America, Harvard University), and my being his first American, my landlord told me about a museum of Mongolian history nearby and also said he could connect me with someone to take me out in the grasslands the next day and help me find what I was looking for. I thanked him and headed for the museum.

Since my Chinese reading comprehension is still basically at the level of "I suck", I asked the guys working in the empty museum if they could give me a quick overview. I was startled when they were reluctant, preferring to slouch and smoke around the doorway. I had this image of people working in museums being passionate intellectuals, eager for the chance to explain their expertise to anyone showing interest, but that was not the case here. One guy grudgingly agreed, muttering "it's ok, it's my job" when I told him I didn't mean to bother him. My tour guide was neither passionate nor knowledgeable, having to carefully examine the signs himself before he could tell me what we were looking at. I saw some cool traditional clothing and tools, learned that this area has camels (cool!), and then when the guide left got out my dictionary and tried to make my way through a story on one of the plaques. It turned out to be about how Ghenghis Khan's 11th-generation-back grandmother rode a horse well, had 5 sons who ended up starting Ghengis Khan's clan, and had Xiqi blood in their veins. I was a little disappointed by the lack of hard facts and historical significance my half hour of dictionary work had yielded.

The first building I passed outside the museum was a gradeschool with a bunch of kids outside playing. I heard them all whispering as I walked by, then one little girl ran up behind me and said in unusually clear English "Hi, what's your name?". I get "Hello" from tons of people, but kids aren't usually so bold, and this one actually made it all the way to "what's your name". I was impressed, so I turned around and said "My name's Andy. What's yours?" She squealed and stammered, so I switched to Chinese and got her English name, Linda. I was her first real life American, and she ran off only to return with a notebook and asked me to write in it. I'd just finished writing my English name, Chinese name, and "American", when all the other kids who'd been standing by so silently were also waving notebooks in my face and yelling excitedly. Feeling like Michael Jordan trying to get into the locker room after his last game, I set my bag down on the sidewalk, took a seat next to it, and started writing the same thing over and over again for about 30 kids. I had Linda snap a picture of the mob. Everyone wanted to be the one to use the camera, but I gave her preference since she'd been the first to speak up.

After the mob died away, Linda and a few others lingered and walked with me. Linda was begging me to come meet her family and eat dinner with them, but I was pretty uneasy about being invited to dinner by a 10 year old. Wouldn't her family think it was awfully strange to have their daughter come home with some white guy? Don't they teach their kids here not to talk to strangers? However, her house ended up being on the way back, her dad outside tinkering with the car, so I stopped and talked. I was soon invited inside for dinner as promised.

This was my first time inside a "normal" Chinese dwelling. The exterior was brick with red adobe style tile roofing. The road outside was dirt, and dirty. Inside, the walls were spiderwebbed with cracks, the floor plan odd, and the space small. This was especially true when I found that there were 4-6 adults and 2-3 kids living there (I'm still a little unclear about who was visiting and who lived there). However, it was clean and the couches were comfortable. I ate scrambled eggs with tomatoes and stir-fried potato strips, simple and tasty. We chatted, and it turned out that Linda's dad was a taxi driver who could take me out to do my activities the next day. They were also part of the Mongolian minority, and he assured me he could take me to a "real" yurt, not one of the fake ones set up for travelers.

Returning to the ludian, I informed the owner that I didn't need his connection after all since I'd made arrangements of my own for the next day. The same guy who'd been so friendly and chatty earlier seemed sullen and put off by this news. He was also slurring a little bit but I couldn't tell if he'd been drinking or it was just Mongolian-accented Chinese. I decided to ignore it and hurried out to an internet cafe. I was gone for several hours, and when I got back my friend had definitely been drinking more. He followed me into my room, sat down with me, and proceeded to "explain" a few things to me. One, in Mongolian culture, all you have is your word, and I'd broken mine (we'd had no agreement, he just offered to connect me with his friend); two, he'd given me the room for 25 kuai because he'd liked me, in spite of the fact that the room next door was going for 50 kuai (then he should have held out for more, right?); and three, he studied some form of kung fu. I didn't recognize the vocabulary on this one, but he was able to get the point across by punching the air several times, with enough emotion behind the punches to make me nervous. I decided that this was not the time to argue technicalities on our "agreement", so I told him I was sorry and stopped talking. For the next 20 minutes or so, he poured his heart out to me. I didn't always understand what he was saying, but also didn't want to antagonize him so I got by with grunts and understanding looks. His tone went from tense and agressive (arm waving, looking around), to explanatory and earnest (scooted closer, rested his hand on my shoulder, eyes locked), to apologetic and pathetic (scooted until our knees were touching, holding my hand). After I was pretty sure he wasn't going to break my face, it was actually interesting to hear this outpouring of his true emotions. Even if the logic wasn't clicking, I was fairly certain these feelings were genuine. I definitely learned a few things. When earlier he'd talked about his son's dream to go to Harvard and how difficult it would be to attain, I had symathized with him and said I hoped it would happen. Now I know he was resentful of me for being American and having opportunities available which for his son were essentially pipe dreams. He was also resentful of me for bargaining for the room when he felt like I had unlimited money from our bountiful America.

When he finally left, I was shaken up. I should have packed my stuff and left right then, but I was just happy he was gone so I stayed the night. The next morning he was apologetic and even tried inviting me to dinner. I got out of there pretty quick, but his apology confirmed that he'd been speaking from the heart the night before. Instead of saying, wow, I really screwed up last night, I don't know what I was thinking, he said "I'm twice your age, I should know better than to get mad at you when your just a kid. You don't understand things yet." Condescension is annoying no matter where you are or who it's from.