Baotou: Travelogue (a Disappointment)

choi

Elizabeth Chang, In Baotou, China, Moments of Grace Amid the Cacophony and Crowds. Washington Post, Jan 20, 2014.
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle ... 63e9c9a7_story.html

Note:
(a) Outside Baotou there is "the mausoleum for Genghis Khan that didn’t contain his remains. If one insisted on visiting the mausoleum, it [a guidebook: 2009 Lonely Planet] said, the city of Dongsheng was a better option for an overnight than 'hideous Baotou.' The only site it had kind words for was a Tibetan monastery. * * * we arrived late at night in Baotou to a small crowd outside the airport, wearing bright yellow shirts and waving placards in English and Chinese. 'Welcome board [迎賓牌 in Taiwan],' read one. * * * The walk to Baotou Number 1 Middle/High School 包头市第一中学 in the morning was, literally, an assault on our senses. We were in the old part of the city, called Donghe 东河区"
(i) Baotou is a city in Inner Mongolia, whose capital is Hohhot 呼和浩特. Baotou's Mongolian name means "place with deer." Wikipedia
(ii) Genghis Khan
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan
("Years before his death, Genghis Khan asked to be buried without markings, according to the customs of his tribe. After he died, his body was returned to Mongolia and presumably to his birthplace in Khentii Aimag [in present-day Mongolia the nation] * * * The Genghis Khan Mausoleum [成吉思汗陵; at Ejen Khoruu Banner, Ordos Prefecture-Level City 鄂尔多斯市 伊金霍洛旗], constructed many years after his death, is his memorial, but not his burial site")
(iii) Dongsheng District  鄂尔多斯市 东胜区
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongsheng_District
(iv) hideous (adj; ultimately from Old French hisde, hide "terror")
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hideous

(b) “one mass outing: to Xiang Sha Wan, the Resonant Sand Gorge, which is a kind of desert theme park * * * The only interesting site we passed [on our way to the theme park] was the famed Yellow River, as muddy as its name would indicate.
(i) 响沙湾
www.xiangsw.com/English/yxxsw_001.php

“响沙湾在包头南，通过雄伟壮观的黄河大桥，进入库布齐沙漠(响沙湾为其一角).”
(ii) dune buggy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_buggy

(c) “As the girls played volleyball on a beach court, before repairing to the pools, I climbed to the summit of a dune”

repair (vi; ultimately from Late Latin repatriare to go home again, from Latin re- + patria native country — more at expatriate):
“to betake oneself :  go <repaired to the judge's chambers>”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repair
(d) I was determined not to leave the area without having seen an iconic Mongolian steppe. * * * to Saihan Tala Ecological Park 赛汗塔拉风情园 in the Qingshan District 包头市 青山区 [There] We rode the whole way around, passing deer in a pen; a couple of Mongolian stone mounds called aobao (make a wish and walk around clockwise three times, we were advised by the sole English speaker we came across)"

A Chinese song 敖包相会 Aobao Xianghui (Let's Meet at the Aobao; never heard of the title in Taiwan)

(e) "Though Lonely Planet had called a trip to the [Genghis Khan] mausoleum 'a long way to see very little,' we weren’t going to look a gift bus in the mouth * * * [on the way we stopped by at] the 'ghost city' of Ordos, where a skyline made up of partially constructed gap-windowed high-rises bears unsettling testimony to how quickly a building boom can turn to bust in China. We stopped for lunch at a small strip of shops and restaurants, where Erica ordered us traditional Mongolian food, including milk tea (too salty), fresh yogurt (amazing), dried beef (very good), a few vegetable dishes, and of course, mutton. The last was served with a plastic glove and a huge carving knife. The mausoleum, which the Chinese government erected in the 1950s to curry favor with the Mongolian minority, is built on a grand scale. * * we moseyed into the back room" of the mausoleum.
(i) It is  awordplay on the idiom "look at a gift horse in the mouth."
(ii) There is no such word "gap-windowed."

I can imagine it is modeled after "gap-toothed."
(iii) mosey (vi; origin unknown):
"to move in a leisurely or aimless manner :  SAUNTER <moseyed around the general store — Eric Sevareid>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mosey

(f) "The site I really wanted to see was the Tibetan monastery in the nearby foothills, about 45 miles away * * * So on the way to the monastery, we paused at the ruins of what is perhaps the oldest section of the Great Wall: a rammed-earth divide built during the Warring States period by King Zhao Wuling [赵武灵王 (died 295 BC; reign 325-299 BC)]. There was a huge statue of Zhao on a rearing horse, but the wall itself, constructed in 300 BC, was harder to find, and the signs weren’t explicit. We settled for looking at all the mounds of earth nearby, figuring that one of them had to be the right one.”
(g) We would "ride to another Baotou district 包头市 昆都仑区, Kundulun, full of sleek, modern, finished high-rises, because Erica wanted to show us her family’s new apartment."