Broadening the horizons

On an autumn day in 1967, Li Dafang, a native of Beijing, got out of a transport vehicle in the heartland of Inner Mongolia. The temperature was minus 40 degrees Celsius. He was an intellectual banished there during the Cultural Revolution, and had to adapt to a new lifestyle which meant living in a yurt and tending horses. But Li became so enamoured with the ways of the Mongols that he tries to return to those endless plains each year, and last month, after we were introduced through a mutual acquaintance, he invited me to go along with him. It would be an experience far removed from the package tours with their obligatory wrestling bouts and horse-racing. At midnight about 20 of us met in Beijing along with two Chrysler Jeeps and one mianbao che (a 'bread loaf van', so named because it looks like a loaf on wheels). Our driver, Lao Zhou, drove for 13 hours, through Badaling, the most famous section of the Great Wall, and on the next day, to Xilin Hot, the second largest town in Inner Mongolia. At lunch, we were given our first taste of something called Grasslands White Wine (Cao Yuan Bai Jiu.) This is some kind of mixture of raw alcohol and ammonia, I think, with a little leftover uranium thrown in for taste. It is, thankfully, served in thimble-sized glasses. It begins by peeling off two layers of skin from your tongue, then it melts your teeth, burns out your tonsils and sets fire to your throat. Someone immediately refills the glass. The next morning we woke up to rain and cautiously took to the road. We had about five hours more to go to get to Dong Wumu Qi (East Ujimqin Banner). An hour out of Xinlin Hot and the rain stopped; so did the tarmac. Our ride in the Jeep was fairly bumpy, but the mianbao che looked as if it would fall over at any moment. The dirt and gravel road we travelled on took us deeper and deeper into the grasslands. We saw only a handful of colours: green, blue and white: the grass, the sky and the clouds. Occasionally, we saw a few specks of brown or white, cattle, horses and sheep. For hour after hour, kilometre after kilometre, there was nothing but green. There were no fences and often there would be a herd with no shepherd in sight. Lao Zhou said it did not matter, the animals would not go anywhere and their owners always knew where to find them. We drove on until there was no road at all. But we had good navigators. We passed Uliastai mountain and went on until near sunset. Our eventual destination was a house, a ger (yurt) and a post to which was tied a single horse, all surrounded by grassland. I stepped out of the jeep and met the family of Mr Chaogetu. He was quite friendly and dressed in an ornate gown that I was later told was the Mongolian equivalent of a suit and tie. He knew, of course, that he was to have about 10 visitors, so he had prepared. It was what he wore for special occasions. No tourist had ever been there before. I stood on a grass rise and looked out at the horizon. I turned slowly and saw for the first time a 360-degree horizon. No obstruction of any kind blocked the view. It was breathtakingly beautiful, a little disturbing and completely unforgettable. The sun, it seemed, took much longer to set; there was nothing behind which it could disappear. Later, I went out again when it was finally dark. Or at least, I thought it was dark. The moon was at three-quarters and so bright that I had no difficulty in seeing as far as I could when it was daylight. It must have been a combination of the clean air and the open grasslands. Within 15 seconds I saw three shooting stars. I could not remember when I had last seen a shooting star. The purity of the colours and the air made it seem as if I had been transported into a crystal ball. The Mongols enjoy a good time with a guest and they ply you with food - mutton of course - tea, and the liquid nightmare. They also sing, and some sing quite well. The songs are eerily haunting. We, too, had to answer with song, so one of our lot, Han Zhong, stood up and gave a rendition from the Cultural Revolution about the great helmsman, Mao Zedong . A woman then sang the Russian song, Moscow Nights, in Chinese. And on it went, a concert in a yurt. We were able to appreciate the singing of the Mongols, despite the fact that we did not understand a word, so I rather doubt that it mattered to them that we sang in Chinese and Italian. Everyone seemed to be having a great time. At midnight nobody was ready to retire, so I had to fake exhaustion in order to escape the tobacco fumes and the drink. Once again I was treated like an honoured guest and put up in the house, not the ger. The next morning was my chance to take in the grassland alone. This was to some extent forced because, there being no toilets and no trees, it is necessary to walk off on your own. We now embarked on what was thought to be an exciting trip for me; a ride to the border between Mongolia and China. I did not want to say that I really had no interest, so I went along without making a fuss. The drive was, again, spectacular and we stopped to pick up wild flowers in the grassland. They are called ganzhimei and it is said that they will last for a year or two, because they are dry. At the border we had lunch with the PLA. At first I was told to say I came from Xinjiang but in the end there was no problem. The commander was quite happy to have us and I was asked to do a little calligraphy in the guest book. We headed back to East Ujimqin Banner to get cleaned up only to discover that the hotel had neither water nor electricity. This was an omen that hinted at worse to come and indeed it did. The hotel was a relic from the 'old days', before Deng Xiaoping began his reforms. Indeed, most of Inner Mongolia is run on a pre-Deng model. Nobody was particularly nasty or unpleasant, it was simply that there was no incentive to do things properly for a guest. We were not allowed to have keys to our rooms. Instead, we had to shout for someone to come up and lock the door when we left and unlock them when we returned. They did issue us with candles, though. The next day we went on a picnic to Uliastai mountain. Lao Zhou brought out an assortment of instruments, including a saxophone, and there was much musical merriment. It eventually attracted a herd of cattle. Back at the hotel, we had a big dinner party at which every major political and military official in the area seemed to take part. Once again, there was lots of song and drink, but this time there were also a number of speeches. The speeches seemed quite genuine and talked about the 'second home' Li Dafang and his Chinese friends had come to love in the grasslands. The head of the PLA sang something from Beijing Opera and was surprisingly good. He asked me about the PLA in Hong Kong. I said nobody had seen them, and that seemed to please him. The next day we headed back to Xinlin Hot and another hotel, this time with electricity but cold water. For a brief moment I had stood at the end of the world and that image will not easily be forgotten. Nor will that of Chinese and Mongols singing to each other in obvious friendship. The Chinese had been sent to the countryside for punishment, and had discovered a second home.