China Doesn't Want You To Know About This Place

if you look at a map you'll notice that there are two mongolia x' now if you hear the word mongolia the imagery that is conjured up might be stark plateaus and steppes vast deserts yurts horses falcons nomads and emptiness this is mongolia 18th biggest country in the world population only 3 million but there's another mongolia and it looks a little different inner mongolia is a province of china population 25 million however 80% of the people living here are actually han chinese despite that there are still 4 million ethnic Mongolians living here which makes their population in China even higher than their own native sovereign country now that the factoids are out of the way let me let you in on a little secret China doesn't really want you to know about this place and for a good reason if you're like me and you grew up in the 80s and 90s you've probably heard the phrase free Tibet Tibet is one of those Chinese provinces that even people with a minimal interest in China know about here you have this massive swath of land in western China with 90 percent of the population who are not in fact Chinese that speak a different language eat different foods have different religious beliefs and vocally do not want to be a part of China China deals with this want for independence with the utmost military brutality and everyone knows it Free Tibet is something that everyone knows about everyone knows China is mortal enemy the Dalai Lama fast forward to today and the hot-button province to talk about is Shenyang another far western province of China with about 45% ethnic Weger majority these people don't look Chinese they also don't speak Chinese there are predominantly Muslim and faith there are Turkic people and the majority also doesn't want to be a part of China but their own nation called East Turkestan China's cracking down by throwing millions of them into reeducation camps banning their religion texts traditions and cultural identity China needs this territory for oil and its actions in the region are finally being talked about in news and other media however Inner Mongolia is a province that no one really talks about maybe it's because Mongolians living there enjoy being part of China maybe it's the fact that the Han majority controls any and all information coming out of it maybe it's a powder keg ready to explode with separatist movements that China does its best to keep under wraps from foreign journalists so as not to end up with another Tibet or Shin Jang yeah it's that one I moved to Inner Mongolia in 2011 to the steelmaking city of bout oh it was a stark change from the lush green democracy of Taiwan that I lived in the previous year when my plane landed I was picked up in an old Volkswagen Santana and driven through the coal smoke filled night across icy roads through a vast expanse of squat ugly buildings only to be dropped off at my building literally made partially of styrofoam my apartment was covered in coal soot and sparse to say the least but this would be my home for the next two years now there's a ton of stories I could tell from my time in Inner Mongolia like the time they decided to cut half of my building off and there are birds living in my house and the snow storm blew in as I laid in a sleeping bag but anyway I digress I taught at a university which was mostly full of female students pursuing a degree in education journalism ironically in similar fields however my students were quite a bit more cheery and happy-go-lucky than my students down south in fact on my first day of classes one male student that I had was smoking a cigarette at the window in the back of the classroom and literally cracked open a beer during my lecture this is a bit of insight on how things worked in this frigid dry industrial city my students were mostly Han Chinese which makes up about 90% of China's population so the majority but I noticed that a handful of Mongolian students than I had mostly kept to themselves throughout my friendships and journeys I made throughout the province over two years I noticed that life in Inner Mongolia was very different from the rest of China even the Han people the Chinese majority were more starkly adventurous and outspoken more confident left to drink and they were much harder and brave than most of the people I had met in the rest of China water was in short supply and most people only took a shower once or twice a week some people didn't even have showers in their houses so yeah the Han Chinese people in Inner Mongolia were different but I still hadn't made friends with any Mongolians I hardly saw them I knew that they were there but why were they never part of the groups of people that I hung out with the first evidence that I had there might be some bad blood between the Mongolians and Han Chinese was when a huge brawl broke out and I witnessed my local friend Jason trying to break it up turns out someone Williams walked over to a table of Han Chinese and said that they hated China and that Inner Mongolia was rightfully theirs etc etc this happened many many many times Mongolian students had stabbed on students with swords riots broke out at restaurants at nights police were constantly called yet when I asked everyone why there was so much animosity no one would give me a clear answer I knew I wouldn't find out the answer in this Han majority city so I spent the following years traversing the province in search of that Mongolian identity in China I spent thousands of miles on motorcycle 4x4 on-road off-road alone with friends just getting lost and talking to people Inner Mongolia outside of the Chinese cities was very different this was the Mongolia you think of rolling grasslands arid desert sand dunes and vast stretches of nothingness nomads herding sheep and goats these places are where the Mongols are the people that I spoke to often couldn't communicate in Chinese but when I did find people that could they never hesitated to tell me that they were not nice it was of the utmost importance that I knew that they spoke passionately about how their land was taken away from them and the army would frequently raid their settlements in yurts with accusation of separatism the PLA the People's Liberation Army of China has basically been given free rein to police the vast lawless lands with little to no discretion there were areas that would dip in and out of the country of Mongolia the border is quite loose with many people communicating with each other on both sides both trying to start uprisings and small border towns villages we met people driven to tears when talking about how their life was destroyed and how there are now relegated to certain areas not allowed to travel or lead their normal nomadic way of life turns out the collectivist nature of Chinese society doesn't mesh very well with the individualist nomadic lifestyle the Mongolians we saw firsthand on our last trip to Inner Mongolia when we were filming conquering northern China our documentary how prevalent the military police state is nowadays the pla army patrols areas with high mongolian populations and has special detective units as well as SWAT teams stationed across the provinces for the explicit purpose of suppressing any uprisings of Mongolians against the CCP Mongolian language schools were very popular amongst the locals and they're now being converted to Mandarin Chinese only and the rapid development in infrastructure and tourism is splintering the last remnants of Mongolian culture within China's borders we were searched interrogated harassed and basically driven out of the province just based on the assumption that we were gonna stumble across and maybe film something that the government didn't want us to see let me tell you having ten plus SWAT team members with the automatic weapons show up in your hotel room and grilling you about every piece of knowledge of where you've been the past nine years where you've worked where you shop who your kids in why far and even more information that shows you the paranoia that surrounds the area currently thankfully my contact and the inner Mongolian government had told us that a Mongolian uprising especially in the town that we were visiting they were pretty common and the government buildings were often set on fire and a statement of indepen it's the tight control is a reason you don't hear anything about this we learned that the local Mongolians on the step in the grasslands they lose a lot of money to bribes every year to patrolling soldiers and the government's doing their best to cut the populace off from family and mongolian media right across the border I mean Mongolia the sovereign nation across the border is by no means a democratic paradise but there's a lot more camaraderie for their own kind than love for the Han Chinese telling them how they can live well never forget this Mongolian boy who taught us how to roast a goat the traditional way from the inside out and we were filming for the documentary and what he said to us in tears he told us in Chinese you guys get to enjoy this place you show up you enjoy the beauty you get on your bikes and you ride away to go home I'm stuck here I'm trapped that's how we Mongolians feel here now after being harassed by the army and SWAT team he knew that we were headed for some serious trouble down the road so he actually mapped us a route off road to avoid any potential problems later on I'm forever indebted to him but his tearful speech at that dinner table just sticks with me today it's not only limited to the Mongolian minority though there's tons of ethnic minorities living within the confines of Inner Mongolia province in China we met some reindeer folk who were previously allowed to defend their herds with small guns but now the reindeers numbers are dwindling due to bear attacks because I can't shoot the Bears anymore and consumption of the reindeer parts for Chinese medicine it's interesting to see how China tries to integrate the ethnic minorities with the promises of wealth development and a Chinese identity this is marginally worked with some of the minorities in the south like the miao people and the Dajjal people that this may partly be due to the fact that there are society based people groups there are languages and cultures at this point have been diluted to the point where there's no chance of an uprising but with nomadic types like the Mongolians their culture simply has nothing in common with the Chinese majority Inner Mongolia remains to be my favourite Province in China it's vast it's beautiful its diverse you really feel like you can escape but unfortunately just like any area under the two in control of the Communist Party of China it will probably end up like every other industrialized province in the country and if China has any say you won't ever know what they did behind the scenes to make it that way although the future of inner mongolia is cultural identity might be undetermined we can say it doesn't detract from the fact that I've had so many amazing experiences there and I feel like one of the best time capsules ever made in the province of Inner Mongolia was when we were shooting conquering northern China if you guys have not seen it yet there's an entire about one hour long episode dedicated to this beautiful place and the people that we met and I highly recommend you guys check it out so go over to vimeo.com slash on-demand slash conquering northern China and use the discount code Lao winning please go check it out if you haven't already I think it's some of the best work we've ever done

Channel: laowhy86

Views: 1,339,854

Keywords: mongolia, inner mongolia, china, prc, people's republic of china, ccp, chinese government, pla, laowhy86, serpentza, advchina, moving to china, living in china as a foreigner, adv china, winston sterzel, expats in china, communist party of china, mongolians, outer mongolia, xinjiang, hong kong, xinjiang uyghur, uyghur, move to china, current events, expat in china, communist party, hong kong protest, c-milk, cmilk, chinese ethnic minortities, northern china, conquering northern china

Id: Fuk0KuUPBsc

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 13 2019