A Journey In Inner-Mongolia

“What you have begun, you must finish, and what you’re looking for, find it!”, with these words and his best wishes my lama friend bade me farewell in Peking (Beijing) in March 1948, when I started on a trip to Inner Mongolia with my French colleague, a sinologist like me. As a young Dutch diplomat (China was my first post) I had the good fortune of heading for half a year the Embassy office in the former northern capital. My district covered the whole North of China, including Inner Mongolia, and so, though we had no national interests there whatever (who had?), I told myself that I was only fulfilling an official duty by visiting that territory…

But sitting on the Baotou-bound train I asked myself what I was looking for on this trip, what my purpose was. Did I have any purpose apart from the journey itself? Perhaps nothing more, I thought, nor less, than to lose myself in the vast, timeless and soundless space of the green grasslands, and to learn something about those nomads who were forever trekking through the steppe with their flocks, their horses and camels. My companion, Georges Perruche, was a tall, quiet, intelligent Frenchman with a great sense of humour and an endless reservoir of risky jokes, which in any case saved me from ‘losing myself’ altogether I the vast, etc. space. Like me, Georges had long been interested in the Mongols and read a lot about them.

Read entire story…