Hulunbuir

The grasslands between the Argun and the Greater Khingan have been herding country for as long as there are records of them, and the region is often described as a cradle of the steppe peoples: the Xianbei, the Shiwei from whom the Mongols emerged, and later the Khitans all pastured here. Genghis Khan's early campaigns were fought across these rivers, and the Barga Mongols, the Daur, the Ewenki and the Oroqen have all held parts of the region for centuries, some as herders and others as forest hunters.

Modern Hailar dates from 1734, when the Qing built a walled garrison to hold the northern frontier and to oversee the banner troops of the Barga. It grew into a trading post on the tea and fur routes to Siberia. The Chinese Eastern Railway, built by Russia across Manchuria at the end of the 19th century, ran through the town and tied it to Harbin and to the border at Manzhouli, bringing Russian merchants, railway workers and architecture with it.

The 20th century was turbulent. The area changed hands between Chinese, Russian and Mongol authorities after 1911, and the Japanese occupied it in the 1930s, and the Kwantung Army completed a huge underground fortress on the edge of Hailar in 1937 using forced Chinese labour; some of the heaviest fighting of the Soviet campaign of August 1945 took place around the town, and the tunnels are now part of a war memorial park and museum. Under the People's Republic, Hulunbuir was administered variously from Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia before settling within the autonomous region, and the banner system of local government survives in its names. Coal, forestry and, since the 2000s, tourism have reshaped an economy once based entirely on livestock.

This is the most Mongol-feeling corner of Inner Mongolia, and also the most mixed. Barga Mongols herd the western pastures, the Daur farm and fish along the rivers, and the Ewenki and Oroqen of the forests kept hunting and, in one small group, reindeer-herding traditions into living memory. Russian-descended families in the border villages gave the region a line of wooden houses, kvass and dark bread, and the Han majority arrived mostly with the railway and the state farms.

Summer is the season of the naadam, held at banner and camp level as well as in the larger regional gatherings: wrestling in heavy embroidered jackets, long-distance horse racing ridden by children, archery, and singing that goes on long after the events finish. The morin khuur, the two-stringed horse-head fiddle, and the drawn-out Mongolian long song belong to the grassland here as much as anywhere. Oboo cairns stand on the rises, with ceremonies in early summer.

Hospitality is taken seriously in a place where the nearest neighbour may be far off. Milk tea appears before any conversation, refusing food outright is awkward, and spirits are offered with a song and a flick of the fingers towards sky and earth. Livestock is the measure of a family's standing, and the calendar still turns on lambing, shearing, hay-cutting and the move between winter shelter and summer pasture.

Something over two million people live in the prefecture-level city, whose 264,000 square kilometres make it larger than most Chinese provinces, and about 365,000 of them in Hailar itself. Most residents are Han Chinese; Mongols are the largest minority, with Daur, Ewenki, Oroqen and Russian communities in the banners and forest districts. Outside Hailar, settlement is a scatter of banner towns, mining and forestry centres and herding camps.

The economy rests on livestock, coal, forestry and tourism. Hulunbuir lamb and dairy are sold across China as premium products; open-cast coal mines and power stations operate in the south; and logging in the Greater Khingan has been cut back sharply since a national ban on commercial felling in natural forests, pushing former forestry towns towards tourism and berry and mushroom gathering. Wind farms have spread along the ridges.

Life follows the extremes of the climate. Heating runs for seven months, houses have double doors and deep windows, and cars are fitted for deep cold. The summer weeks are crowded with visitors, weddings and festivals; by November the grassland is brown and empty and the towns turn inward. Young people leave for Hailar, Hohhot or the cities of the north-east, and the shrinking of herding households, grassland degradation and the search for work after the end of logging are the region's constant concerns.

Meat and milk dominate, and the local lamb is the best-known product of the region. Shouba rou, boiled mutton cut off the bone with a knife and eaten with salt and garlic, is the everyday dish; whole roast lamb is brought out for guests; and skewers dusted with cumin and chilli are grilled on every street in summer. Winter brings the copper-pot hotpot of thin mutton slices, cabbage and vermicelli.

The white foods are the other half of the table. Milk tea, suutei tsai, is salty and often thickened with fried millet and butter; milk skin, milk tofu, dried curds and clotted cream are eaten at breakfast or carried as travelling food; and airag, lightly fermented mare's milk, is a summer drink of the camps rather than the town.

Two other influences show up in Hailar. Northeastern Chinese cooking brings stewed pork with vermicelli, dumplings and pickled cabbage, and Russian contact along the border has left dark bread, sausage, pickles and kvass, with restaurants in the border towns serving a Chinese version of Russian food. From the forests come blueberries, lingonberries, pine nuts, wild mushrooms and berry wines and juices, sold in the markets in late summer and given as gifts across China.