Heading North to the Grasslands—Ulanqab—3 (Back to Beijing and the Grind)

Our trip was pretty much drawing to a close. Even though the journey had been quite tiring, I’d really enjoyed myself. Little did we know that a small episode was waiting for us that day, one that would even give the whole trip another little peak of excitement.

        After a night’s rest, we drove first thing in the morning to a shaomai place we’d picked out in advance (finally, FINALLY, some authentic shaomai, hahaha). The owner first brought us a pot of brick tea, supposedly to cut through the grease. It was very dark and reminded me a little of green mandarin pu’er tea. Then came our beef shaomai, lamb shaomai, pan-fried shaomai, and lamb offal. It was all pretty good—the shaomai were glistening with oil and smelled delicious, and the brick tea really helped cut through the richness. Just then, a guy came over beside us holding a salt container and started sprinkling salt into his teapot. As visitors from out of town, we were pretty puzzled, hahaha. Why put salt in tea, and so much of it, too? At first he’d only put some salt in his cup and swirled it around. Maybe it didn’t quite taste right, because he then added salt to the teapot, swirled it again, and took a little sip. Judging by his expression, he’d got it right this time.

        Later, we learned that drinking lots of tea speeds up the loss of potassium and sodium from the body, and that if you don’t replenish them promptly, you can get dizzy, have heart palpitations, and so on. Apparently, people here in Inner Mongolia like to gulp their tea down in big quantities, which is where the practice of adding salt to the teapot comes from. Learned something new on this trip—not bad!

        Of course, how could I leave out photos of the food?

        With plenty of tea and food in our bellies, we drove to Hohhot to return the car. Maybe it was because we’d got up too early and had just eaten, but we were all getting drowsy. Our driver, “Xiaoming,” was still ridiculously alert, of course.

        

        An hour and a half later, we arrived at the car return location. After we finished the paperwork, the guy taking the car back offered to drive us to the station, and we gladly took him up on it. Once we got into his car, I immediately felt something wasn’t quite right. The way he took off was a little terrifying—it felt like he’d floored the accelerator the moment we started moving. Two intersections later, he showed no sign of slowing down, and the two people in the back seat were swaying left and right like pendulums. I pulled out my phone to record a clip of this high-speed drive through city streets. About five seconds into filming, the driver swerved sharply right to beat a light that was about to turn red while also avoiding a taxi turning left ahead of us. But there happened to be a pedestrian on the right, so he yanked the car sharply left again. My head hit the window on the left, then immediately slammed into the seat on the right. Thank goodness, thank goodness, there was no accident. Otherwise… I don’t even dare think about it…

        At last, we made it safely to the station. That little experience gave us something to talk about all the way back to Beijing, and we also hoped that guy would take it a bit easier behind the wheel in future. Less than three hours later, we arrived in Beijing, which meant the trip was pretty much over.

        And just like that, our lovely three-day Dragon Boat Festival break came to an end. Next up: getting ready for six days back at the grind.

        But by the time this post goes live, those six days of work will be over too, and I’ll get to happily enjoy the weekend again!

Here are the first two installments of the grasslands trip.：

Heading North to the Grasslands—Ulanqab—2 (The Wild Grasslands)

Heading North to the Grasslands—Ulanqab—1 (A Little Dragon Boat Festival Break)

If you’re interested, you can dig through the archives for my Chengdu travelogue.：

A Trip After Starting My Working Life—Chengdu Travelogue—1

Feel free to follow the “Just a Little Developer” WeChat official account:

Tap “Wow” before you go!