Feuilletons

Hohhot is the provincial capital of Inner Mongolia, a region in northern China about a 12-hour train ride from Beijing. The town lies on the Mongolian steppes, but you couldn’t tell if you lived in it. Lush grassland had been replaced by grey two-story buildings, with small shops on the ground floors, or a car repair service, with a smattering of gastro-places. A thoroughfare with warehouses everywhere, trucks rumbling past, raising levels of dust ironic for a steppe-town, and construction sounds mingling with voices around stalls where cassettes of Chinese pop music were laid out, with a smattering of Michael Jackson albums for good measure. A travel agency which organized stays on the steppes - for those inclined to try sleeping in a yurt and drinking yak milk - had sent me to Hohhot. More precisely, to an hour away, by a road with potholes large enough to play hopscotch with your car, until you reached the vast grasslands with a small clearing where a central tent stood. We were to sleep in yurts peeking out from the grasses like giant white mushrooms. Locals welcomed us with yak milk, smiling at our faces’ reaction to our stomachs’ reaction. On the steppes, there are no pretenses. The eyes show everything. And the eyes of the boy who led my horse that morning held that wonder at the splendour of each dawn when he’d lead another tourist to watch the sunrise on the steppes. The dawn had barely begun to lower her veil when we set out for a ridge a short distance away, from where one could get the best view. Only our nods and smiles talked. I made a flower wreath, entwined in my hair. It felt naïve - I could tell he thought it was funny - but it fit the impending moment of communion with nature. At the ridge we waited. And then the sun peeked, shyly as if to see if anyone is watching, and then, slowly rising, saw the steppes unfurl their colours like a ladies’ fan. Colours emerged in waves – gentle, shy lilac drowning itself into light blue, chased away by melted copper, turning burning red. In the eternity of minutes, every colour marched past as if summoned, and each flower had been presented at the sun’s court. A tapestry unfolding as far as you could see, and by the time the sun fully emerged, the steppes were alive with bird calls and sounds of small animals. The boy turned to look at me as if to say, you see now whence comes the wonder in my eyes. It is ever so on the steppes. The eyes show everything.