“Nothing says “Guess this is my home” like purging a zone of infestations.” – Old Sean
Base Building
Getting set up in a new country is tricky. Mainly for expense reasons. Lots of expense reasons.
I’ve found myself a nifty little apartment nearby my workplace with a lovely view from the 18th floor towards another building. If you knocked eight stories off that adjacent tower, I’d have an unblemished balcony view of beautiful sunsets, hazy mountains and broad swath of Hohhot’s neon nightlife.
Instead of, you know, concrete and unintentional voyeurism.
But all that’s fine, because I finally, finally after a year and a half of moving around, have somewhere to hang my hat.
I can buy food without having to carry it with me, and I have water that keeps running. All the time. I can cook without borrowing a stove or squatting outside and my internet exists. Granted, it’s Chinese Internet, which is a nightmare of using VPN’s and waiting around for slower loading screens, but still.
All of this came at a hefty price, however. While my rent is very cheap, around 300 US Dollars, Hohhot, like many provinces along the edge of China, requires a total of six months’ rent, plus security deposit and agency fee, up front.
This tactic, I’m told, is designed to prevent Chinese citizens from moving around too frequently, hindering nomadic and pastoral lifestyles, solidifying the renter’s market and super-structuring Chinese cities as economic powerhouses.
So I essentially gutted my first paycheck on a studio apartment with a concrete view and heated flooring in the summer.
Nesting
When I moved in, my new home was utterly filthy.
I spent my first entire week neglecting work and power washing every surface I could find. Mold was fried, walls were scrubbed down, the refrigerator was hosed, the floors were sanitized until my bare feet prickled and I used my favorite blend of super-poison to handle my roach infestation.
The formula to handle a widespread roach infestation is one-third flour, one-third sugar and one-third Borax. It causes roaches’ stomachs to explode without rendering the Borax chemical inert, so when other roaches consume the corpse, their innards rupture as well. The formula creates a two or three floor dead zone in the building and just needs to be sprinkled in dark, hard-to-reach places once every 3 months. Fortunately, it doesn’t harm humans at all, especially in these trace amounts.
Pleasant, no?
Now my apartment sparkles and I am back to poor.
However, the smell of sanitizer started to get to me, so I turned on two fans, opened the windows and balcony door, put on a backpack and continued exploring my new little city.
Exploring Hohhot
First I worked my way up to Genghis Khan Square and Genghis Khan Park, unable to really tell the difference at first glance on the map. They’re technically in walking distance of one another, so missing the mark isn’t too bad.
Genghis Khan Park is a very beautiful basin of manicured trees and trails. Elderly people of China do their usual morning dance classes and walk around their toddlers too young for school. Fake canyons and artful stones made from brushed concreate and hidden rebar dot the park.
Foreigners are rare in this part of the world, so I’m often asked to stop for pictures when I’m walking alone. I wasn’t feeling terribly social that day, so I kept my sunglasses on and beard-face grim to avoid having to stop for too many photos.
Further along, Genghis Khan Square is actually much cooler. Aside from the main attraction, a pillar with the conqueror himself astride his steed astride a monolith, there are curved horns dramatically marking the way. There are also unique statues of Chinese-Mongolian artworks poised on the edges of the trail, including great, beautifully wrought wagon-wheels tall as two men.
Unfortunately, the park is under construction currently, making navigation difficult and the majority of the sites available only to those willing to flout safety regulations.
Heading further into the city, I finally discovered the famous Horse Racetrack of Hohhot. This megastructure has a miniature Mongolian village for tourists camped outside with blue-and-white domed yurts.
The race track itself is an impressive dusty loop, with a gargantuan pasture in the center, dotted with horses grazing during their off days.
I was pretty tired of meandering for that day, so I wandered on home. Temporarily.
Work Wandering
Anyway, the next couple of days allowed me to wander a bit further.
My school is partnered with a series of day-cares, so I wandered in to assist at those for 30 minute intervals. My company wasn’t… spectacular at giving directions, so I ended up late each time despite getting to the general locations about 30 minutes early.
I don’t have enough funds to splurge on a taxi, so I generally ended up walking for a couple of hours each day.
But that’s alright, because when my free time rolled around again, I went to the Five Pagoda Temple located in the Western portion of Hohhot.
This temple is fairly typical of Chinese preserved architecture. The free entry was welcome, as were the familiar round doors, rough red walls and numerous Asian artworks. However, the actual Five Pagoda Temple exists all the way at the back, an impressive masterwork with hundreds of miniature meditating Buddha’s etched into the side.
Afterwards, I began wandering to the West, towards Hohhot’s Islamic district. The Oldest Mosque (Ancient Mosque) in the area is tucked away down a street filled with Arabian-styled foods and absolutely stunning Arabic and Chinese glyphs.
Modern art, feeling vaguely middle-eastern is places around the district and a large pet and animal market lounges noisily on the other side of the river. Dogs, birds, chickens, ducks, turtles, cats, more birds, crabs and fish clutter small cages, wiggling around whenever people draw near.
Back to Beijing
That concludes my first stint in Hohhot China. Now, I’m required to fly back to Beijing, where I’ll be visiting the worker’s consulate for another work-visa.
Thought I was just in Beijing a couple of weeks ago, I’m looking forward to swinging back through. Late summer and early autumn is always the absolute best time to visit Beijing.
So, Beijing once more.
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written August 16th 2019
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Ten years ago, I abandoned my military surplus store backpack for a Farpoint 40 Osprey Travel Pack. I’ve never replaced my bag since. The backpack has been with me around the world, through my departing Beijing and onwards through trips across Europe and South America. I have nothing but praise for Osprey Products.
