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Places in China: Inner Mongolia Province

China's most northern coast is the location of Inner Mongolia. There are forty-nine ethnic groups represented in this large province of 1.2 million square kilometres. These forty-nine groups make up the rather small population of over twenty-three and a half million.

Inner Mongolia was the homeland of Genghis Khan who led his troops south into China and onward to Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Just to the north of this province is Outer Mongolia, not a part of China. Russia also borders on this province.

Being so far north, the weather of Inner Mongolia consists of brief warm summers and quite cold winters. The land is fertile, but the weather does not allow for much agricultural activity. A lot of wild grasslands in the province provide food for the herds of nomadic Mongolians. Although the vast prairies do not provide a lot of vegetation, there is enough for the herds which keep moving from location to location.

Visitors sometimes visit the Mongolian herdsmen and even travel with them on horseback for a while where they are very welcome. These people sleep in their temporary circular tents called yurts. Although the majority of the province is Han Chinese, the Mongolian culture is clearly visible throughout the province. Anyone wanting to visit the province and possibly travel with the herdsmen for a while should choose to come between June and September of the year.

Inner Mongolia is sparsely populated and stretches from the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang in the west to Heilongjiang in the northeast. The Yellow River makes a loop through the province near Baotou, the largest city in the province. Several deserts occupy parts of Inner Mongolia including one of the largest in the world, the Gobi Desert. Other deserts which are at least partially within the province are Mu Us Desert, the Badain Jaran Desert and the Tengger Desert. A few mountains in the province include the Da Hinggan Mountains, the Daqing Mountains, the Lang Mountains, the Yabrai Mountains, the Helan Mountains and a small part of the Qilian Mountains. The capital city of Inner Mongolia is Hohhot although it is not the largest city in the province.

Inner Mongolia's history is a back-and-forth story between historical Manchuria, China and various nomadic groups from the north. The Ming Dynasty of 1368 to 1644 pushed Mongol groups back and built much of the Great Wall which is on the border of Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolia was the first minority autonomous region in the country, founded in 1947.

The industries which have done best in Inner Mongolia have been coal, forestry and energy production. Since water is less plentiful in the province, solar and wind energy have been the focus of energy production to a great extent. Some animal farming has been income sources for local people, especially goats and sheep. Some wheat farming has succeeded as well.

Seventy-nine percent of the local population are Han with Mongols coming in second at seventeen percent. In the eastern portion of the province, Manchu, Hui and Daur are more plentiful than Korean, Oroqen and Ewenki people.

This seemingly almost useless land in China has begun opening up to tourism and find a goodly amount of interest among travellers who want to know more about this area of the world.