Monzhouli Post One

On Saturday I had the opportunity to travel to a border city with a friend of mine. Jane willingly accompanied me as an excellent translator and companion. She was an amazing tour guide, charting a course for us to the border gate, Russian doll square, Dalia lake, and downtown shopping district. We had so much fun in one day, and I took so many pictures (403 to be exact) that I'll have to break up my experiences into a few posts.

We chose to take the train to Monzhouli, which was a three hour trip at an annoyingly slow pace. If I could run, I'd have been able to keep up with the train. I was originally going to tour Monzhouli with a British teacher from the local college. We decided not to go together, but James was going to go the same weekend with a language exchange partner of his. Although I thought we might bump into each other somewhere in the city, I was delightfully surprised when James and Ice chose the same train car as we did.

So, for three hours we shared conversation, and created card games. I say created because, once the Chinese girls we were with admitted to knowing no Chinese card games to teach us, we decided to teach them one. That is until both James and I realized we didn't really know all the rules to a game, but just the general concept of certain games. James also insisted any game must have strategy and a large amount of lying involved. After failing in our attempts at B.S. and Poker, James created a not so intriguing game involving trail mix components as money, which lasted long enough for us to arrive in Monzhouli.

From the train station Jane and I continued on our own, immediately attempting to hire a cab for the day. We were blessed to be able to share a taxi with two Mongolian college students also from Hailaer. This not only reduced our costs by half, but also gave Jane more chances to speak Chinese, and these girls a chance to visit more places than they originally thought they could afford.

The four of us together headed to the border gate, which wasn't all that exciting to be honest. There was a big gate on the Chinese side and another on the Russian side.



Two guards were posted but they'd smile if you talked to them, unlike the British guards in London. Jane enjoyed taking pictures with the soldiers though!





There were also some statues and monuments nearby but nothing was labeled in English and Jane assured me they were of no consequence. We were able to walk up into the Chinese gate and look out, but if the fence had not been separating the two countries, I would not have known the difference.



Monzhouli consists not only of the border gate, thank goodness, so my next experience was a bit more exciting!