Visa Running from Inner to "Outer" Mongolia
Remembering the Good Old Days of Running Around China With Small Children
I penned this post in preparation for my China Compass “Inner Mongolia” podcast.
Inner Mongolia is a province of China, but its great width means that parts of it belong to both Northeast China and Northwest China. It borders eight other provinces (Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Ningxia, and Gansu), as well as Mongolia proper, which the Chinese sometimes call "Outer Mongolia". It also shares a small border with Russia's (Siberia). Inner Mongolia is a little smaller than Alaska, about twice the size of Texas, and three times larger than California.
The winters in Inner Mongolia are very long, cold, dry, and windy, though snowfall is so light that Inner Mongolia has no modern glaciers even on the highest peaks. Spring is short, mild and arid, with large, dangerous sandstorms, while summers are very warm to hot. Autumn is brief and cool and breezy.
My own experiences in Inner Mongolia are relatively brief, but date back to my first year in China (2003). My first brief visit almost turned out to be much longer than I desired, as I was threatened with quarantine in a hotel I visited during the SARS Pandemic. (Here is one of my very first podcasts telling more about that experience.)
Hard Seat on a Long Train
Later that summer I took an overnight sleeper bus ride north from Beijing (about 400 miles) over the mountains (and the Great Wall) to the city of Xilinhot. I was there to do some basic research, and I don’t remember much else other than that it was dramatically different from the urban jungle of Beijing 10-12 hrs back to the south.
I also visited Chifeng and Tongliao in eastern Inner Mongolia later in 2003, but don’t remember much. My best (and worst) memories from Inner Mongolia are in connection to long train trips through the expansive region. Way back in 2005, my wife and I got stuck taking an overnight train from our home in Gansu to Beijing, and there were no more bunks available. So we sat on “hard seats” for 28 hours or so. Miserable. People squished in like sardines. We eventually “upgraded” to the meal car for an extra fee, where we at least had a little more space (and snacks).
Visa Running
Then, in 2012, I made a number of trips through Inner Mongolia to the border of OUTER Mongolia, the country of Mongolia. The visas we had at the time required us to leave the country every 60, 90, or 120 days (the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC unfortunately gave us unmatching dates). So I was stuck shuttling myself and my kids back and forth to the nearest land border (Erlian, Inner Mongolia) every month or two in late 2012.
Those trips are a mixed bag of memories. Chinese trains can be cozy and a nice place to catch up on sleep, but they can also be smoky, drafty, and uncomfortable, especially if you aren’t feeling well. That’s what happened on one of those trips, with my son (the oldest) and my youngest daughter (he was 6 and she was barely 4). We were driving part of the way to visit friends in a neighboring province, to take the train from there, when I ran out of gas in our little Chinese hatchback. I told this story in a previous podcast about Ningxia, so I won’t rehash it all here. But long story short, after failing to push the car to an exit (my son steering, and daughter sleeping), we hitched a ride in a Chinese truck to the nearest service station. We filled up a container with gas and then hitched another ride back.
The (2012) Chinese Flu
On one of those rides, a helpful truck driver must’ve given me the flu, because a day or two later (while on the train to the border) I started to feel awful (fever, chills, etc). And it happened to be colder than usual on the train that day. My youngest blessed me by cuddling up for a nap with my cold, socked feet, helping to keep them warm.
We finally made it to the Chinese border city of Erlian, where we crashed at a hotel near the train station and I tried to recover my strength a bit before attempting the border crossing the next day. (By the way, this was not an obscure train track that leads to nowhere, but the main crossing for the Siberian Express which, last I checked, was still running from Beijing to Moscow.)
Crossing the border the following day was another adventure in itself, but one that I had already done exactly one month before with my older daughter (scroll down for my short trip report), so I knew what to expect. Here’s what it looked like…
We took a taxi to a certain street in town where so-called jeeps (most do NOT look road worthy) line up to take people to Mongolia. Then we packed into the jeeps like sardines, a dozen or so people (and their things) in what would normally seat 7 or 8. I remember having my forearms and head leaning into the dashboard and front window, with my son in my arms somehow sandwiched into my lap.
Blessedly, it's not a long ride to the border that takes you OUT of China. Everyone attempts to extract themselves from the jeep, finds their things (did I mention there was also lots of luggage inside and out… the Mongolians especially carrying cheap Chinese goods back home?) and then staggering towards passport control. After getting the Chinese Exit Stamp and clearing Customs, we headed out the back door to meet our jeep on the other side for the ride across No Man’s Land to the Mongolian Border. The scene repeated itself here, however, we did NOT enter the jeep again once in Mongolia, but ducked around the fence, and headed right back through the border towards China the way we had come.
This was both necessary and tricky. Necessary, because the Mongolia side of the border was a wasteland and we did not want to spend the night there (besides, we still had our hotel room back in Erlian). Tricky, because we had to figure out who was going to take us back across No Man’s Land to the Chinese Border. It was either bribe a Mongolian Jeep Driver to squeeze us in, or wait (potentially for awhile) for an official Chinese tour bus to come. I think I ended up doing both on different trips.
I tell you what, though, never did China seem so nice! Wide, paved Chinese streets, a small, cozy (heated) Chinese hotel, and yummy (cheap) Chinese food tasted amazing after the hours spent crossing into and out of Mongolia in the middle of the cold, early winter Gobi Desert.
We would usually spend another night and then get a train the next day to begin the day and a half journey back home to Gansu Province. Oh, man, I miss it those trips. Ok, maybe not all of the details. But I would trade all of that discomfort to be able to traverse China freely once again!
After writing that last paragraph, I did a little looking and found some old trip reports of three different visits to this border town in 2012-2013. I have posted them (slightly edited) below. Also, the pics in this post are NOT mine. I haven’t been able to locate any yet that I may have taken.
Bonus: Three Original Trip Reports
October 12, 2012:
I think Ariel and I broke the record for quickest border-crossing (and back!) today. Just before 4pm we crammed ourselves with 3 other Mongolians into an already packed Mongolian Jeep which took us through China immigration and customs (Exit), then back into the same jeep for the short ride over to the Mongolian Immigration (Entry) building. We made it through fairly quick, walked out the other side, then did a u-turn back to the other side of the Mongolian Immigration (Exit). After getting exit stamps (this time w/o even filling out a form) we said hi to a cute Mongolian family (about the only thing we "did" in Mongolia, other than lamenting to the only immigration lady who spoke Chinese that we didn't have more time to see their beautiful country!) and boarded the first bus we found that was making the return trip back across "no-man's land" to the Chinese border and the city beyond. We had a scare when the big Chinese bus was first not allowed to enter the immigration area. After some yelling and cursing by the driver and getting out to talk to someone important, we were let through, literally the last vehicle that they let through today (by now it was about 5pm) due to a computer problem! The line in the Chinese Immigration building (Entry) was non-existent (there were hundreds of cars/jeeps sitting in "no-man's land" that weren't being let through!) and we quickly made it through and jumped back on our Chinese bus for the last few miles to the Erlian City bus station.
All of that happened in just over an hour late this afternoon!
Interesting note: The landscape of this region is like eastern Montana or parts of Wyoming and it is COLD and windy already! Its also known for having lots of dinosaur fossils and there were literally hundreds of life-size dinosaur statues scattered throughout the grasslands near the highway coming into town!
December 18, 2012:
On November 9, Gabriel and Abby [and I made] the trek up to the China-Mongolian border to renew their visas. Its an exhausting 1,000+ mile trip by car and train even when you are healthy, but on the first full day of the journey, I came down with the flu. The rest of the trip was miserable (its a couple of days each way to the border, with multiple nights spent sleeping on tiny, hard train bunks), but there was no turning back since the kids current visas would expire if they did not leave and re-enter by November 12th!
So on we plodded (more like slipped and slided on the ice and snow) through train stations and immigration lines and more train stations. God was merciful and the kids were great- Abby was my human foot-warmer as she would "bear hug" my feet during her nap time while I laid there with fever trying to rest. Praise God, we survived!
July 9, 2013:
We returned home about a week ago from a 10 day trip to Beijing (to renew 3 of our passports) then to the China-Mongolia border (to extend 3 of our Chinese visas), which all went smoothly. But it wasn't an easy trip. We spent a total of about 45 hours on 4 different trains, including a 12.5 hour stint on the Beijing-Moscow Express! (the 500 miles we were aboard comes out to only 1/10 of its total trajectory!)
We spent a day or two in the hot, dusty border town with another American friend, Edward Stagl, who has been in and out of China, Sri Lanka, and India for much of the last year sharing the Gospel and encouraging local believers. Before we arrived, he prayed that the Lord would lead us to believers in this little city. No sooner had we checked into the hotel across the street from the train station, did we discover that the owner's wife and friend were Christians! The next day, Ed met another young Jehovah's Witness lady and a Bible-toting taxi driver who wouldn't let us pay the fare!
We spent almost all of the next day on another 10 hour train ride, where I ran into a Buddhist train worker who I first met on that same train more than 8 months ago. He went out of his way to thank me for the little scripture booklet I gave him last October. This time he got a Gospel of John!