My Day in the Grassland of Inner Mongolia

Vadim Parin
Leon Goldstein High School

Inner Mongolian Yurts

... things I did [that day] in Inner Mongolia was horseback riding through the grassland, participating in a Mongolian wrestling competition, and utmost importantly the conversations I had with the people in the area. ....I though the wrestlers would just be very mean and cold hearted to me because I was a foreigner and therefore try their best to topple me over and humiliate me as much as possible. What actually happened was very interesting and heartwarming. I felt that the wrestlers had more fun actually meeting me than wrestling me. In other words, it didn't matter to them that they might let me win once or twice and maybe even show good sportsmanship. What mattered to them was that my whole group and I are entertained, inspired, and awed by our trip to Inner Mongolia.
As the day was closing to an end a bonfire was lit in the middle of our small village. There

were a lot of people around it. I had a lot of different and peculiar conversations with a lot of people. They were interested in the purpose of my trip to China. Some were asking me where I was from. Some were interested in teaching me some of the local customs and phrases. Others wanted me to practice some sort of fighting moves with them. All in all, the conversations with the people around that fire made realize just how different and at the same time similar all the cultures in the world are.
That night, I slept in a traditional Mongolia Yurt. ...
The trip to China will probably make me think twice before I label someone as Chinese. I always knew that China was very different in many ways. It didn't hit me until I started to travel through it. ... China is more than a country. I think it is more of a tapestry that was sewed by many people over thousands of years.

Rayon wrestling Inner Mongolians

Dallas wrestling Inner Mongolian woman