The “People's Hospital of Inner Mongolia”--the tier-one hospital for the whole region--was what we visited the first morning we got there. We met with the head of the hospital/party secretary, the region's health department chief, the hospital administrators, etc., followed by a tour of their 17-story hospital building that includes a "hall of fame & glorious history" exhibition room, and concluded with a grand lunch at a grand (simulated) Mongolian tent at a local restaurant extension.
Pictures by the day:
At night, we were entertained by hospitality of another kind, from some business associates of Jason's uncle's, a festive feast tinged with Mongolian folk dancing and singing and a full roast lamb (烤全羊) in another grand simulation Mongolian tent restaurant in the city. We were just now getting a taste of the generosity and hot affection from people of this cool land under blue sky (the name "Hohhot" actually means "Blue/Green City" in Mongolian, and the city is not hot at all).
We took a short tourist break the next morning, driving two hours out of the city to a tourist camp for horseback riding, then headed back and went west 5 hours straight, through the wild Mongolian prairie, to get to our next stop in Inner Mongolia: Ordos (鄂尔多斯).
Here we were at Jason's home turf. He was born and raised in a remote part of Ordos before he went east for school and settled in Beijing. He hadn't been back here for years, so he had arranged a reunion dinner at a restaurant near where we stayed to meet a dozen of his elementary school classmates and we were invited to join them after checking in.
It was the most fun-filled party dinner we had attended so far in the trip. All told, we had over 10 people stood up and sang during the dinner, including, to everyone's surprise, Jason singing a Taiwanese pop song "愛拼才會贏" he learned somewhere somehow. That was such a great performance I had to stand up and congratulate him with a toast "on behalf of all Taiwanese people," I said, to a roar of laughters. I then told them I recently saw a popular Chinese movie online "人在囧途," and besides being greatly entertained by its fun-filled plot, I was most moved by one line in the movie: "人間有真情" ("There is true affection in the world"). To Christians, love is the ultimate true affection in the world, therefore we would like to sing the song "The true meaning of love" ("愛的真諦," from 1 Corinthians 13) to express our gratitude and admiration of the outflow of love and affection we saw today. So we (Julia, me and my wife) stood up and sang, holding the lyrics right in front of us on an iPhone screen that Jason just searched and downloaded from the Net for us.
We took a road trip the next day to Jason's real home town, the little village at the northern edge of this super city called Ordos (its territory actually covers two cities and 7 "banners" (旗, large counties), for the size of almost two and a half times Taiwan). Here we first saw an old clinic that we could hardly see any patients in, then were taken to a nearby brand new community that they said the government are moving villagers into and shown a brand new hospital building that they said is in the process of being occupied too, as soon as they can get the beds and chairs and other necessities ready.
We drove back to the county seat in the afternoon and had dinner with Jason's uncle and auntie, who both work for the county government, one for the tax department, the other for the police department. "This is surely your town," we joked with Jason, "With powers-that-be like these, who else need you fear :)"
Back in metropolitan Ordos the next morning and after exchanging ideas on how we may like to help here healthcare wise (Jason is planning on sponsoring in-hospital social workers/counselors, Joyce thinking on creating mobile medical units for remote villagers, etc.), we received yet another great treat of Jasontown hospitality, a fine dining (even though it's lunch time) at a fine restaurant owned by Jason's brother.
Jason's brother actually lives in Shanghai, but started the restaurant here less than a year ago, seeing the great business opportunity occurring. The fact about Ordos is that it is the hub of a booming economy in west-central Inner Mongolia that started 10 years ago when its easy-to-reach coal mines began to be developed to meet the nation's insatiable need of cheap energy, creating oodles of money to oodles of people here. This explains the Vegas-like night light and flashy buildings and luxury foreign imports we saw in the city, and the always-full situation at this high end restaurant of Jason's brother's that charges average $100 per person, he said.
After the lunch, Jason's brother took us to a local mart for some fine cashmere clothing shopping, and then we managed to stop by the (nominal) tomb of the man who put Mongolia on the map (or rather, the man who put the world on his map), the Khan of all Khans, Genghis Khan, on our way to the airport.
Perhaps the Khan did not want us to leave too soon, or was jealous of our air horse that he didn't get to have in his times, we got stranded at the airport, again. This time the cause of delay was some "military air maneuvering" somewhere on the sky. We made good use of the extra time, though, by spending one last devotional together with Jason and Ruth, before they boarded their flight back to Beijing, and eventually our own flight taking off for Xi'an (西安) after midnight.
Pictures by the day:
Day 8 (July 18):
Day 9 (July 19):
Day 10 (July 20):
Day 11 (July 21):
This trip journal is dragging on too long, I think. So, I am putting the last segment--for the trip to Xi'an and Tianshui, along with its pictures--on my Facebook page for those of you who are still interested:
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