Inner Mongolia is a peculiar place...a mix of old and new and yesterday we had an interesting mix of both. In the morning, my sister-in-law, Shu Mei (a local tour guide) took us out to see life in the countryside. In the summer, the countryside is known as the Grasslands...the stuff you see in the movies. It's just a huge expanse of grass and rolling hills. However in the winter it's a harsh, frozen land. The locals here survive off of the summer tourism season and their self sustained farms. The land was once ruled by nomads who lived in circular domed tents called "Meng Gu Bao." There probably are still nomads in the far reaches of the Grasslands, but we didn't see any yesterday. We did visit with a local family who had a farm and four Meng Gu Baos. Interesting points:

There was a cell phone signal
The local family had sattelite TV. Nice.
They had 2 real Meng Gu Baos that were collapsable and transportable
They had 2 "fake" Meng Gu Baos made from concrete and were really just round buildings.

After hanging out in the family's living room having tea, we went over the one of their large concrete Meng Gu Baos. There was a coal burning stove in between two tables on a raised platform flanked by stacks of quilts (invariably people must use this place to sleep) and a drawing of Genghis Khan. We climbed on to the platform and sat down in front of the table. Our host brought in all manner of food...mostly made from lamb as they had a 300 or so of them. For all you organic food fans out there, it doesn't get more organic than this. We had boiled leg of lamb and barbequed leg of lamb from a sheep that was alive the same morning. We had a salad made from wild weed and onions. We had all sorts of tasty (and not so tasty) items. And of course we had 88 proof alcohol to wash everything down. I think they drink it to stay warm and to kill whatever microorganism that may have hitched a ride down the old esophagus.

After lunch, we spent a couple hours in front of the coal stove staying warm and chatting. On the way home we stopped at "Ao Bao," a large Meng Gu Bao made from rocks. Ao Bao serves a few functions. First it is a direction marker. The locals here use numerous Meng Gu Bao shaped rock structures to demarcate direction. Ao Bao is the largest and has 2 large red slabs of concrete that denote which direction is south. These are used in case clouds of obscure the standard measure of direction: the sun. Ao Bao is also semi-religious. We took some rocks, asked Ao Bao to grant us wishes...one for each rock in our hands. Then we walked around Ao Bao 3 times (keep in mind it is probably about 10 degrees farenheit with a brisk 10-15mph wind blowing...can you say windchill?) and threw our rocks on top of Ao Bao. Afterwards we hustled back to the van and headed home.

When we got home, we headed for Pizza Hut and had a nice upscale meal. Yes you heard right. Pizza Hut is one of the most expensive restaurants in Hohhot. I paid for the meal (about $30 for 6 people) and it wasn't so bad, but every thought "holy cow that was expensive." I found it interesting. Interesting points of Pizza Hut:

They have a Pizza Hut gold card that gets you 15% off subsequent visits.
They salad bar is one time only and costs over 3 bucks. We saw a few young ladies doing some impressive structural salad engineering. They would take cucumber slices and line the edge of the bowl to make a larger outer surface so they can stack the salad higher.
After the meal, we were given a chance to win part of our meal free. For every pizza we ordered, we were given a roll of 4 dice to see what we'd get free. Odds of winning a free meal: 1296 to 1. We won 3 free drinks on our next visit.

Time for breakfast...more to come later
Notes for myself: McDonalds (Scarf, the Dog, Yogurt) after Pizza Hut