Travel

Cities Edit

Other destinations Edit

• Zalantun National Park
• Dalai Lake or Lake Hulin (Dalai nuur ) - One of the five largest freshwater lakes in China, covering approximately 2,339 km². A popular summer tourist area.

Understand Edit

Inner Mongolia is a large region stretched across the northern edge of China. It has a relatively low population density the majority of which are Han Chinese. About 17% of the population is ethnic Mongolian. The region is officially an Autonomous Region for the Mongolian people within China. The east of Inner Mongolia consists of wide grass meadow lands, forests and mountains. The west of the region is made up of scorching hot dry deserts. Traditional Mongolian nomadic lifestyle can still be seen in the region and yurts (mongolian tents) are not an uncommon site in the wide spaces between the cities. Despite the fact that ethnic Mongols form a minority in the region, the number of ethnic Mongols holding Chinese citizenship is almost twice the population of the independent country of Mongolia.

The main religion in the area practiced by the Mongol minority is Lamaist Buddhism, similar to that found in Tibet and the Republic of Mongolia. Lama temples are common throughout the region.

Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) (酒泉卫星发射中心) is in Inner Mongolia and is the site of most of China's rocket launches. It is in a remote area and not open to the public. (The city of Jiuquan lies over 100km away in the neighboring province of Gansu .)

Some of the spellings and translations of names and things are inconsistent in Inner Mongolia when using the Roman script. This is perhaps due to place names for instances being translated directly from Mongolian and other ethnic languages, alternating with the use of pinyin Chinese - which doesn't quite capture the sounds of Mongolic languages.

Talk Edit

Mongolian is co-official with Mandarin in the area. There are different dialects of both spoken throughout the region. The north east of the province speak with a Dongbei accent that is very similar to standard Mandarin Chinese. Central areas speak the Jin dialect of Chinese. The two dialects are mutually unintelligible. The official dialect of Mongolian is Chahar and is distinct form the dialect use in Outer Mongolia. The Mongolian language and population is primarily located in the northern and border regions of the province with the neighboring Republic of Mongolia to the north. Nevertheless, most ethnic Mongols are bilingual in Mongolian and Mandarin, so unless you approach the elderly, Mandarin speakers should not have any problems communicating.

Writing on signs, menus and other documents are usually bilingual in Mongolian and Chinese. The Mongolian script here follows the traditional style (vertical), in contrast with the Republic of Mongolia which adopted the Cyrillic script due to previous Russian/Soviet influences.

Air Edit

There are nine public airports in Inner Mongolia. Most only receive domestic flights so requiring foreign visitors to transfer at one of the major cities of China before reaching Inner Mongolia. There are international flights form Hohhot to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia run by MIAT Mongolian Airlines.