Day 4 trip to China: Xilin Gol


                   As we got off the train, we discovered that Xilin Gol was 10 degrees colder than the other places we visited. We went to a moderate hotel and quickly set out to eat something. We went to a nice looking restaurant called Xiangmange Restaurant. We asked the chef for a traditional meal, and he named the following dishes: Roast Lamb, Finger Mutton, Shaomai. We chose the Roast Lamb. It was a traditional meal and he only prepared it when a dinner party was held. He gave it to us because we were, well, clueless tourists. He said it was it was golden red and tastes quite good. Since we were coming here once, the chef allowed us to watch him cook. He said he tenderized it for a day or two and finely and thinly sliced it up. We enjoyed this meal very much and walked back to our hotel.

Roast Lamb

When we got back to the hotel, we went to are room and turned on our little TV.  I pressed the button to see what shows are on and there was this interesting show on the Xilingol Grasslands. After watching the for ten minutes or so, I told Kyle we have to go there. We ran out of the room and hitched a taxi ride to the Xilingol Grasslands. When we got there, there was an astonishing sight of the open field of, well, grass. We saw cows and oxen grazing on the enormous field. There was clear blue streams running cutting through the plains. We met an elderly man sitting by the fence. Kyle and I asked the man with the odd and long go chi if there was anything interesting about the plains. He said in a monotonous Chinese accent, " Shuí wo? I mean, who me? Sorry, nobody talked to me very long time. So about grasslands, it was the first grassland biosphere preserve in 1987 to protect the ecosystem." said the man. And he said no more... We explored some more and checked out the oxen and cows. Apparently a lot of them are wild! After that we called the same taxi who drove us here and went to the hotel.

Xilingol Grasslands

Once we got back we just tried to get a good night sleep... But after about like, a minute, a randome guy had to come to our room to advertise water bottles. All we did was get out of our bed and kick him out! He ran to another room but the he came back and to us to go to Harbin, Heilongjiang. We said NO, then kicked him out again and shut the door close. Once we closed the door, I said, "I think we should go to that place the man said we should go to." After a while of an awkward silence, Kyle said, "You know what, maybe we should go there. As a matter of fact lets go there right now!" We ran down the stairs and checked out of our room and got ourselves a train ride to Harbin.