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...continued
4/20/01
5:25 a.m., Urad Hoqui
Travelers’ Hotel
The morning
light is rising across the steppe
and the air is thin around this
strange collection of buildings
we are staying in. Painted earth
red with a decorated cement stone
courtyard, the hotel has one building
for foreigners and one building
for Chinese. Despite our remote
location there are at least 15
staff, neatly dressed in short,
tailored red wool jackets and
pressed black slacks.
Cooking
in China is a 2000 year old art
form. Even one of the expedition
drivers pitches in when the team
stops
for lunch in the tiny town of
Tukemu.
Although we
haven’t seen orchards, farms,
or even cattle herds for miles,
last night a feast appeared on
par with any of the restaurants
we’ve been in to date: eggplant
melting in a hot and sweet sauce;
thin slices of lamb with green
onions and cumin; tofu with peppers
in a lemony spice sauce; roasted
donkey; vinegared, julienned vegetables
and a fish soup containing an
entire fish.
We joked that
this was a special ‘three-eye
fish.’ In the last day we passed
seven nuclear power plants. Unlike
in the United States, where plants
are set out of the public eye,
here nuclear plants are nestled
in the communities – young boys
fish in ponds shadowed by the
cooling towers, old men push bicycles
past the towers on their way to
market.
To reach Urad
Hoqui we traveled a 4-lane super
highway from Hohhot to Baotou,
then followed the two-lane “old
road” – our four sports utility
vehicles (two Izuzus and two Jeep
Cherokees) weaving in and out
of lanes to pass slow trucks hauling
coal, or mopeds towing carts overstuffed
with hay. Cars here seem to give
the right of way to passing vehicles.
This seems the only explanation
possible for the otherwise enormous
number of accidents that would
take place.
Kids
in Baotou are thrilled when Mike
asks them to pose for a photo.
These kids are on their way home
for lunch and most are wearing
their red and white school uniforms.
As we left
industrial Baotou, every town
resembles the previous one situated
high on the hills at the foot
of the mountains. There seems
to be an almost uniform standard
of living. All the towns have
electricity; ice cream is sold
from refrigerated carts; fresh
vegetables are on display straight
from boxes. All the children have
school uniforms and clothing their
size, shoes on their feet and
seem to be well fed. None of the
other countries we’ve worked in
have had this kind of profile.
If anything, the absence of handicapped
people, people with physical disabilities
or mental difficulties, homeless
people, beggars, polio victims
is remarkable and curious.
People seemed
stunned to see us, white people.
In Baotou we gathered a crowd
of giggling children; in Lingho
we gathered a crowd of grown men
- workers with shovels slung over
their coal-dusted shoulders and
goods slung across their backs
in sacks. When Paul, Dave and
Mike bought ice cream, they generated
even more intense interest.
Professor
Zhao (right) and a colleague fully
enjoying yet another 15-course
meal as the team makes its way
from Hohhot to the base camp.
We left Lingho
in late afternoon and entered
the mountains. Fiercely rugged,
peaks sharp and fresh, the rock
was faulted beyond belief, and
the granite and other metamorphosed
rock gnarled every which way.
The road was a thin path through
rocky walls and so, when we suddenly
passed out of the range and onto
the steppe, the effect was spectacular.
Before us
was a landscape completely devoid
of trees. Windswept, rolling hills,
bare but for small patches of
yellowed, year old grass. Empty
for miles.
Now we are
just a day away from camp. We
heard (via cell phone) that the
truck that went on ahead had a
flat tire and has been delayed.
Although we are eager to get to
camp, the Chinese team wants to
have everything ready for us when
we arrive. And so, another leisurely
morning, with a breakfast of an
overwhelming number of dishes,
faces us in a few short hours.
By tonight
we will have reached base camp:
Sohungtu.
Gabrielle
Lyon
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