Fourth and Fifth weeks: End of first semester & Social Study Week

I would like to start by apologizing for taking so long to post, but this week has been pretty difficult (as I'll explain on my next post). Well, these were my fourth and fifth weeks (July 7 - July 20) :

End of the first Semester:
On Friday, July 12 we had our midterm exam, which marked the end of our first four weeks at HBA. In general, I feel very satisfied with the quality of the program. I remember that when I was in HBA last year, a lot of fourth year students would complain that the fourth year program was disorganized and that they were a bit frustrated. However, I feel that up to now, the fourth year curriculum is very good, and our teachers are very hard working. I have no major complaints about the way they teach or organize the course.
Although I think the program is very well organized, most of us students are already pretty tired of all the work we've had to do so far. All we want to do is rest and recover from these past four weeks. The fourth year workload is perhaps the most intense at HBA, at times more intense than fifth year. Everyday we have lots of assignments which take up all of our time. We hardly have time to rest, except on weekends when we go out to see other places. However, I'm still enjoying the experience and I'm glad I came back.

Social Study Week:

(McDonald's in Huhhot with Mongolian and Chinese Script)

As I wrote on my previous posts, my Social Study project was in Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolia is really a fascinating place unlike anything I had seen in China before. The blend of Mongolian culture with Han Chinese culture was very interesting. I'll try to summarize my experiences in chronological order.

The Grasslands-

We spent the first few days travelling through the Mongolian grasslands. Life for us in the grasslands was a bit difficult, since we had nowhere to take a shower, and the bathrooms were not in very good condition. However, it was still a very fun experience. We slept in traditional Mongolian tents, like the one below:

In the grasslands we had a chance to interview some herdsmen of both Mongolian and Han Chinese origin. What I found interesting about conversing with them is that the preferred their lifestyle to moving to the big cities like Huhhot (the capital of Inner Mongolia). Although their life is pretty difficult (they have to wake up around 5 am to start working on the fields), their environment is much more relaxed without the pressures of city life.

(Us interviewing the herdsman)

In another part of the grasslands, we also had a chance to ride horses. This was the first real time that I rode a horse. It looks like riding horses is not that difficult, but after that day I think I won't ride a horse ever again. Riding a horse, especially when the horses like to run a lot like the ones we rode, makes you very tired. It's like a workout. When we got of the horses every part of our bodies were in pain. But it was still a very good experience.

Erdos (鄂尔多斯）:

After the grasslands, we went to a city called Erdos. Everyone was excited of finally getting to this city, since after three days in the grasslands we finally were able to take a shower! We had various different activities in this city. For example, we visited a cashmere factory in which they explained the whole process of making clothes and how their factory worked.

At the factory we were able to interview various workers and ask them about their daily lives in the city. With only a few exceptions, most of the workers seemed to be Han Chinese.

Also in Erdos we were able to see the Tomb of Genghis Khan. The tomb is really very beautiful, but they did not permit any photography inside the tomb, so I can only provide photos from the outside. The most interesting part of the Tomb of Genghis Khan is that his body is actually not there! Apparently no one knows where his body is. It might not even be in Inner Mongolia. However, there are still guards watching over the tomb, and it has become a very famous tourist spot.

Perhaps the best activity we had while our time at Erdos was going to the desert. The desert we went to is also a big tourist spot, called Xiangshawan Desert. There you can ride camels, to sand slide, parachute, etc. It was very fun, although it was really hot! Here are some pictures:

Huhhot （呼和浩特）-
I think Huhhot is probably my favorite part of the whole trip. Huhhot is really a beautiful city, especially at night. In Huhhot we were able to visit various places. We first went to a milk factory called Mengniu, where they showed us all of the facilities and how the produced their dairy products. A lot of our teachers said that the cows at Mengniu have a better life than us, since they're constantly being taken care of and have nothing to worry about, unlike us HBA students.

We also had a chance to visit a Tibetan style temple in the center of Huhhot. Although similar to other temples, I found this temple to be very beautiful. I don't really have a good knowledge of Buddhism, so visiting this temple was very interesting and rewarding.

Well, I leave you with more pictures of Huhhot, which was the last destination of our trip. I really enjoyed going to Inner Mongolia. It was something different than what I was accustomed to in Beijing, which made every part of the trip exciting. I really recommend anyone to go and visit!