Daniel Dumbrill
Haven't had as much time to post as I hoped during this 13,000 km road trip through China, probably should've anticipated that. A lot of you have been asking about the breakdowns and how we're handling things, so I'll brush over some of our stops and give you a more high level view of our journey. After the Yuanshangdu Ruins Scenic Area we headed north about 220 km to Xilinhot for the night. That's where the front cabin AC compressor gave out. With the heat building, it got uncomfortable fast. We waited until we reached Erenhot (another 360km west), right on the Mongolian border, to see if we could get it fixed properly. Nobody had the part in stock. The official replacement was going to run us around 1500 RMB (~$220) plus a couple days of waiting. Instead I jumped on Pinduoduo and ordered one for 650 RMB (~$96). I had it shipped to what I thought would be our next major stop, Turpan in Xinjiang. In hindsight I should've sent it to Hami, which we were hitting earlier and which is a bigger hub. Back east in Chongqing or any decent-sized city you're used to stuff arriving in 1-3 days. Out here in the far west it’s more like 5-6 days, even with China’s logistics. While we waited we bought a big household fan and used it to push the rear cabin AC air forward into the front. It helped, but it was still pretty rough. Traveling through Inner Mongolia I kept noticing the same thing I’ve seen with other ethnic groups across China, each has its own distinct energy and style that’s hard to describe but immediately noticeable. It’s one of those things that makes the country’s cultural diversity feel much deeper than most outsiders expect. The food was one of the highlights for me, I enjoyed it more than the rest of my family though. Some really solid dishes made with internal organs, and a blood sausage that tasted strikingly close to the yak blood sausage a Tibetan friend often sends me. In Erenhot we checked out the giant Buddha hand sculpture in the desert, wandered the night markets, and ended up talking with locals who were curious where we were from. The people in both Xilinhot and Erenhot were incredibly friendly.
Daniel Dumbrill
Onward from the Great Wall, we continued north for 350km and stopped overnight near the Shangdu ruins, camping out in traditional Mongolian yurts on the vast grasslands. This area preserves the remains of Kublai Khan’s legendary summer capital of the Yuan Dynasty, known in the West as Xanadu. Designed in 1256 by his Chinese advisor Liu Bingzhong, it first served as Kublai’s capital from 1263 to 1273. After he moved the main capital to Dadu (modern Beijing, then Khanbaliq) in 1271 with the founding of the Yuan Dynasty, Shangdu became the summer capital where the court would retreat during the warmer months. Though we didn’t enter the Yuanshangdu Ruins Scenic Area itself, sleeping in yurts on the grasslands right beside Shangdu was quite a profound experience. It's impossible not to feel a connection to this important chapter of Chinese history while wandering around these grasslands.
