Inner Mongolia (Under Construction)

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9/6扎龙

went to zha long to watch the dan ding he. The place was swarming with dragonflies and they were really fat and ugly- looking. The air was also filled with a lot of cotton like stuff that came from the trees growing there. Never got to see so many cotton-like thing floating in the air. Weird.

The guide told us how the cranes mate. It seems that cranes practiced the one spouse policy and when they mature, they will mate with a crane with they have not seen before. This means that the cranes which are rear together will never fall for each other when they grow up. To overcome this problem, the rearers at the natural reserve will try to pair a crane which grow up in the park with a wild crane. There's also a show which feature the cranes flying across the sky at 10.30 am. After watching the show, we continue with our journey to hai la er海拉尔

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10/6

from hai la er, we went to a part of the grassland that was more commercialized. When we reached there, the Mongolians had a ceremony to welcome us. We had to form a circle with our thumb and index finger, dipped our fingers into the wine and sprinkled the water upwards towards the sky, dip our fingers into the wine again, sprinkled the water downwards and lastly pour the water away or use a finger to rub it in our forehead. It seems that this practice came about when an enemy tried to poison Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan had a ring that could detect poison on his fourth finger. By dipping the fingers into the wine and sprinkling it upwards, some of the wine could flow down the fourth finger to the ring and if the wine is poisonous, the ring will turn black. By sprinkling the wine downwards, he could check if the wine is poisonous and if it is, he could just pour it away.

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Afterwards we walked around the area and I finally got to ride on a horse. to the famous river called莫日格勒河. This river is famous because it is very winding. (to be continued)