Tuesday, July 11 First day in Hohhot

[soid]

 (written a week later)

Woke up at 7:40am, without alarm, in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, on the 20th floor.

Sometimes, it is hard to pinpoint and describe even roughly what is off – just indescribable melancholy. 

Outside on the ground, there was a line of benches and cobblestoned walks between them, four fountains, and each fountain having two marble geese on one of its sides, and two granite vessels with plans on the other side; a stream of water flowing from the geese's beaks into the fountain pool. A cleanly trimmed line of bushes separate the fountain from the benches. Across this small park – a gate, the entrance to the housing complex. Outside of the gate there is a large statue of three horses in gold; cars are moving around this statue, picking up passengers from the entrance gate. A line of columns separate the driving side from the sidewalk, pained in gold as well. Behind the gate is the park and a series of 25-30-35 stories houses of the complex. The roofs of the buildings are decorated in Parisian-like shingles or slates. The cars are not allowed inside the complex, and, besides the small park with the marble geese, there is a series of walks where kids bike, elders walk, and adults hurry. The housing complex is called European park; the baroque is from Europe indeed. 

"Province" is the word in my mind, but provinces are so different – it hardly describes anything. I usually despise such places, – trying so hard to separate from dirt poor of past generations, they show off the middle class wealth, but comprising little human experience subsense under the Parisian-style roofs. They say: "I worked myself up. I followed the order; I woke up on time; I did what my boss asked me to do. I got money; I got a house; I got a kid. I'm a respectful person. I have a nice life." I get bored with that message and that is why I prefer New York City, which says: "I tried this, and I tried that, and I failed both but I keep striving. Don't ask me about this dirt that you see, because it is not dirt, but complex and highly developed form of order." 

Outside of the housing complex we found a bike sharing spot. There were two companies – yellow, blue and green bikes, just left in the dedicated spots without any locks in the same place; there were scooters in the same place, but we have not try them. The prices is, of course, ridiculously cheap – 4 yuan / 50 US cents for 40 minutes of biking. The bike trail was going along a river, with many willow trees and freshly trimmed in straight line bushes. The temperature was much more comfortable than in Beijing, but the sun was intense. The park was empty. We tried to park, but the app was saying we have to park in a dedicated spot, or pay 8 yuan, so, why not, we tried to find a bike parking spot; that was located across a 8 or 12 lanes road divided by a fence preventing pedestrians crossing it. The bike parking was in the middle of two zebras spaced in quite some distance; so, by the time we crossed the road and parked the bikes, we didn't want to walk around the road to go back to the park. 

The entire city seemed to be structured that way: wide car roads, each direction divided by a fence to prevent illegal crossing, a separate lane for bikes and scooters divided by an alley of trees, then a wide sidewalk, a parking lot, and high rises with businesses on the ground floor and apartments above; a fence separating the yard area for the building residents. This seems to be the model of modern Chinese urban development; I've seen a mock-up of this in the National Museum in Beijing – it also showed the system of underground pipes and cables. All it looks quite American to me, despite the occasional European baroque, it is a suburban cul-de-sac built above the ground. My belief these days that building comfortable cities requires a degree of civil political activation – you cannot build a nice city for passive users, but here I'm just an observer trying to make sense of what I see or, perhaps, being ignorant, reflecting myself in what is being reflective.