I’m unaccustomed to being woken up by music blaring above me, and Karen Carpenter’s “every sha la la la la”
slowly brought me to my senses after a nice long slumber on my middle bunk.
I opened up my eyes and was surprised to look at the window and see the sun rising over the barren and beautiful snow-covered grasslands of inner Mongolia.
This was the 18
th hours of the 26 hr. train straight north to the city of
Hailar, a northern Chinese city on a cold little corner of the world bordering
China,
Russia an
Mongolia.
I really like the train. It’s nice to spend hours and hours looking out over a changing landscape, Chinese villages and small cities making way for fields and farms and mountains. By the time we reached the northern perma frost, 
I felt as if I was driving through the countryside of Northern New York or Wisconsin- there were trees, hills,
forests and few people. And a chance for me to slow down and actually begin to think for a few hours before Derek and I reached our destination of what this year has held so far.
We were headed to a camp up in Inner Mongolia. Shamenau East was built about 3 years ago by a man here seeking to find ways to bring communities together in a meaningful way. So he built a lodge and a bunch of Mongolian gers (yurts) on a gorgeous piece of land that sits on a hillside overlooking a river valley and mountain range up on the Mongolian grasslands. So far, the camp has run English programs for kids in China; Han Chinese and Mongolian and Russian minorities. The English gets the kids there, but that’s not the only thing to do. There’s rafting, horseback riding, hiking, and various other regular camp activites. I think it’s begging to have a wilderness programs started as well.
Our visit was great... a crazy kind of great. I think Derek's description is probably more interesting, as it always is fun to look at these kind of experiences from a fresh perspective. Though I don't know how life in this country could ever be boring!!
Here's an "excerpt" from an email Derek sent.
"
We stood a top a mountain. A foothill, a small mountain, but it sent our eyes seeing for miles. To the west the sun was already setting even though it was midafternoon, but it was winter and things get dark early this far in the northern hemisphere in the winter. On a clear day we might be able to see 15 miles north into Russia. If it wasn't for the snowy rolling foothills to the West we could probably see the country of Mongalia from this side of the Chinese border that was called inner Mongolia. In the summer, the mountains, now white before, were the rolling grasslands that were Genghis Khan's gateway to conquering this whole side of the planet. Genghis, who many might consider a tyrant of his time, a barbarian, is a national hero of the Mongols. They once ruled this whole side of the planet. Where Genghis went he took his family with him and placed them in selective places to live and watch over the area. Where we are now Khan's sister lived, where he put her after conquering the area. I think the best thing I heard about Genghis Khan was that he burned the villages he came upon to create more grassland for Mongol horses to eat and breed. The horses were the base of his armed forces and took him all the way to Vietnam and Thailand, even on ship across small seas to parts of Japan and Indonesia. I'm recalling the map I saw of his rapid expansion. Mongolia in the center of the world and the conquered territories highlighted around it with arrows for various campaigns and mongol expansion. I wonder if we should not be more like the Mongols of that time, more like Khan, more barbarian, burning civilization so that we are not tied down and can always move on and advance. It worked for that kingdom, why can't it work for ours, or is the kingdom of God old beautiful empty dead European cathedrals now tourist attractions or is the kingdom of God the suburban mall megachurch helping people stay civilized, never advancing. 
In order to get to the top of the mountain from which I stood, looking down into the river valley where the camp sits, overlooking the other, eastern side with its snow covered mountains, we had to drive across the two lane highway that ran by the camp to the little town of 3000, to a pathway that is no more than dirt road in the summer and in the snowy cold is just a faint outline of a snow path without the surrounding dead lightbrown grass that sticks through the rest of the snow. The plan for the top of this mountain is for us to take the one tire inner tube that we have just inflated and ride it from the top to the bottom, experimenting with the possibility of the winter tubing activity area for the few groups that will come through this winter. Thankfully the camp director, John, has a four wheel drive truck (with a label: GREAT WALL on the side) which is to take us speeding and spinning our wheels up the side of this mountain. Also thankfully, John has recruited all the Chinese workers he has hired to take a break from building the storage facility and to ride in the back of the pick up with shovels to groom our way and enough weight in the back to allow the tires to dig in. John drives, I sit in front, Katie and a Chinese man are in the back part of the cab, while the others hold on for dear life in the flatbed. We get to the two lane highway to begin our approach of the mountain and it is steeply banked on each side. This is necessary so that cows cannot easily wander up into oncoming traffic. 
Basically we are getting a running start to hurl ourselves over this highway. John waits for a huge truck to pass before we make our attempt. The truck is coming down hill, basically skidding as the road has not been cleared of snow once this whole season. There is no snow plow, only poor workers hired by the government to clear miles of street with 2 ft by 1 ft ply wood scrapers (w/4ft handles), 4in by 6in metal shovels (w/4ft handles), and brooms made of tied together dried wooden arms of bushes and brush. This is how everything gets cleared here. Katie said that's how the "interstate" between Beijing and Tianjin gets cleared – bring out busloads of people, dressed in orange reflective gear. That's how the whole 300,000 person town of Harbin was getting cleared when we got off our 26 hour train ride there on Friday afternoon. So up in the boonies, by the camp between Harbin where John and his wife Mary have a home and 175 km down the way where the camp is in Heishantou, there is nothing but road with 1cm-1in of snow firmly affixed to it. That is how we bounced (literally) all they way there and back.
I was getting dribbled like a basketball between the seat and the ceiling of the car. So the roads are the worst in terms of snow removal in maybe the entire world… so the huge truck skids by us, down hill and we floor it in four wheel drive and leap over the highway after the truck passes and we stop and a gate to the snow covered dirt "road" up the mountain.
One of our Chinese friends hops out and opens the gate we drive in, wait for him to hop back on and then start flooring it up the mountain. We are swaying back and forth, heading west along the northside of the hill and we begin to turn south to approach the hill from the gently slopping west side. We are turning and trying to turn, skidding and bouncing, with slight adjustments now to the left, now back to the right, but John is in his element and is in total control… Katie is not so sure and exclaims from the back seat in her knowing sweet smile and says, "you know what john, you're kinda crazy, that's good, but you're really kinda a little crazy." John with his wisened grin, calmly driving says in his matter of fact voice that has made him very successful in business and ministry, "Yeah, well, I guess you do have to be a little crazy to do this."
We make the final turn, back east now, up the mountain's west side and reach the flattened, rocky top where there is small woodpile and fire ring, and "parking spot" We take out the black inner tube with the red webbing that has been affixed to it with knots and Gorilla glue in order to engineer a seat and multiple handles. Realistically, while drifting more in other places, in the place we are trying to tube there is only about four inches of good snow, covering the rough dead grassland that pokes through the surface. Between our metal shovel and ply wood scraper and a number of unsuccessful runs we finally plow a path for the tube to the base. By the time we get in a few good runs, slow however due to the grass, we are too cold to persist at it any longer and jump back into the truck and this time ride the dirt road with new snowy ruts, downhill.
We enter the yurt (a preferred housing form in this area and a fun one for campers) and it is heated with running water, and with a shower/bathroom yurt next door. Perfect for -20 celsius!! Katie to John: you should build a sauna, and a hot tub! We'll come visit over winter holiday and I'll bring my dad, he owns a hardware store and would love to do something like that. John, a seasoned computer programmer and techy, has all the ecoutrements of a state of the art office wired into his cabin. Katie and John watch the Mongol movie "The weeping camel" as I dose off for a nap. I wake up with bacterial stomach flu and loose everything in my digestive tract out of both ends in a matter of six hours and I fear I am becoming dangerously dehydrated. John gives me the antibiotic Cipro which is desigened for just such and occasion and I go back to the main lodge (which is amazing, the lodge, not that I made it….) to sleep out the rest of the night.
John and Katie took a nature walk the next morning with John's GPS and Katie's internal, wilderness leader hardened sense of direction, walking the paths of the river that flows by the camp. I wake up, a bit recovered, take another Cipro (1 every 12 hours for 3 days, I just finished this morning) and pack to go back to John and Mary's house in Harbin, 175 km back down the snow packed road where we are to fly to Beijing for the evening, have peaceful ride back from Tianjin from there, and sleep in the apartment that I've become used to and is the most "home" I have here. But this adventure is not over. 
We get to the airport in Harbin (tiny, tiny, modern-industrious-warehouse like airport, the city itself seems more northern Russian/modern European than middle China where we are flying back to) in time for our 8:10pm flight, two hours to Beijing (26 hours by train, but 4 hours by plane to Beijing plus the 2 hour car ride "home"). It was a ten minute cab ride up a snowy hill from John's apt to the airport. The cabbie says to john that people couldn't make it up this hill in cars just the other day. Then it takes us 5 minutes to check in for the flight and 5 minutes to walk through security. It's 7:50 and boarding was to start ten minutes ago but 10 minutes later the plane finally pulls up and lets off it's load of incoming passengers. So 8pm, so course we're not going to leave in ten minutes… an hour passes… the Chinese business people who are on this flight (which is everyone but me, Katie, John, and this old Melbourne Aussie businessman who doesn't speak a lick of Chinese and looks like a fat British cop, complete with black moustache, but he keeps saying "no problems, mate" except he is the farthest cry from a young blonde surfer aussie man that you might imagine) get disgruntled and pester the airline people and we find out "it's too cold" whatever that means… it's not even freezing in Beijing where we are to land that night AND it is 100 degrees colder up in the air than it is on the cold runway in Harbin… so… who knows. 2 hours later (at this point I am cruising through my 800 page Leo Tolstoy novel, Anna Karenina and have not eaten or held anything down for two days) we find out that the flight will leave at 11am the next day and allegedly the crew went home for the night to a hotel at 9pm, 2 hours earlier – I guess the Chinese airline just didn't feel like working anymore, "who cares, we'll fly them there tomorrow, what are you going to do, fire me…" so we get bused, back down this icy hill that people could not make it up the other day to a hotel in town where the airline is putting us up for the night.
I have two options: one: room with a Chinese business man (good be really good or really bad), two: drop 8 u.s.d. and reserve my own room – 16 dollars later Katie and I each have our own room. Mine smells like second hand smoke and the rough, dirty feeling of the sheets in the bed make it feel like I am literally sleeping wrapped up inside of a suffocating cigarette butt. Katie says good night to me and walks down the hall to her room. Two minutes later she comes back and says, "oh yeah. In these situations the airline sometimes sends prostitutes to the foreigners or business men in order to mend the situation" "so don't open the door" I respond. "Right, well, you're getting the whole China experience!" notes Katie, lightly. At this moment I practice the one Chinese phrase that I have down (and I will badly misspell it phonetically here), "shih shih, boo yao." Which means "thanks" (spelled: Xie Xie), "I don't want any." I also used that phrase when offered Chinese airplane food for lunch when we finally left Harbin the next day – I still did not want to eat and I was getting taste aversion to everything that smelled and looked like foreign food. All I could do was point at the Sprite (now I know it is something like "shway bee") when the drink cart rolled by. So we made it back to Beijing and then finally Tianjin and I felt much better. Last night when we returned I was able to finish Anna Karenina, meaning I had read 400 pages that weekend, the same amount it had taken me two months to finish up to that point. Riding a Chinese train is another story – it's no Eurail, but I will save that for another time." 
The Great wall spans some thousands of miles along the north part of this country, built on the foundations of bones of the millions of builders though the
hundreds of years of its existence. Legend has it that that once you step foot upon the great wall, you become a great man. I don’t know how that applies to women, for I wonder if once you’ve slept on the great wall you become a great woman… 
