On July 13 if anyone saw a group of Taiwanese housewives arriving in the mainland, their children in tow, few would correctly guess their destination. Before they actually got there, these Taiwanese guests, accustomed to luxury, couldn't believe it themselves. The place they were heading was in mainland China's far north: the steppes along the border of Inner and Outer Mongolia. Setting out from Peking, everyone was to travel 3000 kilometers, and much of that was the so-called "natural road of the grasslands." This kind of locomotion was also called "making a road where no road is found."

The scenery in the steppes is like a painting; the sturdy Mongolian horse isa Mongolian's best friend.

The one who organized this trip was an ethnic music scholar from Taiwan, Lin Ku-fang. He had been to Inner Mongolia three times already. He had often mentioned this to his friends in a Kaohsiung study group when they were in class, boasting of the scenery of the steppes. He described the prairies as magical: the grasshoppers flew over the grass, they did not hop. An expanse of unbounded grassland connected as one with the sky, and stars, mysteriously sprinkled like sesame seeds, rolled along the earth. With that kind of description, who would not crave for such a mysterious and quiet place? Under the "coercion" of the study group members in Kaohsiung, Professor Lin gave in and promised to take everyone for a trip on the steppes.

The plans were set, but Professor Lin, having gained the experience of several visits to mainland China, was in the habit of repeating the pet saying, "If you don't have a mishap in the mainland, you haven't even been there." So, everyone was put on the alert, preparing first aid kits, water bottles, instant noodles, and so forth, not leaving anything out, just to be safe.

With big cases and little bags, big folks and little kids traveled in a group of twenty. Others also joined along: mainland Professor Li Wen-chen, Professor Li's daughter Tsao Hai-chou, Hai-chou's good friend Wang Chun, Mongolian musician Buhe Chaolu and Buhe's child Doe Doe. Including the personnel of the Inner Mongolian Cultural Travel Service there to guide the flock into the grasslands--Chiao Yu-kuang, Hsu Yung-li, and the ethnic Korean driver Li Cheng-chun--there were thirty heads all told. Folks of Han Chinese, Mongolian, Moslem (Doe Doe's mother), and Korean blood all mixed together.

A Mongolian yurt is warm in the winter, cool in the summer, just as Mongolians are cool on the outside and warm at heart.

This group was quite special. For one thing, its designated title was "the Cultural Visitation Group," a frightening appellation. Furthermore, it was the first group of Taiwanese to run off such a long way. Owing to this, the travel service felt quite a burden, so the service's general manager Chiao Yu-kuang was obliged to come along in person. As it so happens, General Manager Chiao had guided a Taiwanese tour group before. All the gentlemen in that group had busied themselves with gambling from the moment they climbed in the bus. General Manager Chiao thought about Taiwanese tourists again, and felt a big headache coming on. Maybe he was just nervous, but Chiao's countenance seemed extremely stern, so the Taiwanese group members were nervous as well. Some people wondered if he wasn't really there to supervise everyone.

The atmosphere that was a little icy began to thaw as the bus ventured beyond the Great Wall and the scenery of wild fields became increasingly luscious. Buhe Chaolu, whom everyone called the Mongolian Prince, relaxed his mood and began to sing a string of Mongolian songs, one after the other. "Faraway Grasslands" later on became the theme song of the group. The contrast between Lin Ku-fang's humor and Professor Li's seriousness unexpectedly produced a comic effect on everyone. Professor Lin said that professor Li had experienced immersion in the Cultural Revolution, and she was a cultural specimen rarely seen in modern times.

The children were originally quite lively. The big kid Wang Chun, around 20 years old, and Haichou started playing with each other early on. Big Brother Wang told popular mainland jokes. The child from Taiwan didn't have any of those to respond with, so he went all out telling dirty jokes, which completely stunned the older boy from the mainland.

Here and there in the steppes can be seen a flock of sheep eating grass. After the grass has grown long in autumn,the cattle and sheep appear poetic grazing among its windswept blades.

As the prairies opened up before them, the adults also let down their guard. On the second day of their journey, they arrived in Xilin Hot, the capital of Xilin Gol League. ("League" is a term specific to Inner Mongolia referring to an administrative district roughly equivalent to a prefecture.) The group members rested in the White Horse Hotel, at which that very night the famed "Mongolian Song God" Ha Chabu more than seventy years old this year, especially brought his pupils to eat dinner with everyone, and he sang for all to hear. That night the electricity was accidentally cut, and the staff handily brought candles for lights. Under the flicker of candlelight, the horse head lute sounded even more resonant, as the Mongolian folk songs touched the whole audience. As all the mothers from Taiwan grew lighthearted, they stopped worrying about their image. They said all the dishes were tasty and then suddenly ordered enough more food to fill a wholes table. They spared no effort in competing with the Mongolian singers, letting forth "Drip Drip Drop," "High Mountain Green," "Waiting for the Spring Breeze" and other Taiwanese folk songs they could barely sing, pulling them out as evidence of the treasures from home. Although the sound was not much to speak of, it was moving. Chen Shu-hui emphasized, "We're usually quite serious." Professor Lin happily added, "These middle-aged wives have opened their hearts." Even General Manager Chiao, who had been so severe on the bus, wore a smile. At last he believed that this group of Taiwanese tourists would not worry about not having water to bathe with, about not eating well, about not sleeping fitly.... It was not simply a polite remark that they made; they really came to experience the life here. The Taiwanese guests were deeply moved by the apologies of the Cultural Travel Service, which was all in a panic about serving them well. Their experience was surprisingly different from the stereotypical impressions they had heard in the past of the low quality of travel in the mainland.

The grassland can be muddy after a rain, and with one careless slip a vehicle can get bogged down.

The climax of the journey occurred on July 17. It was the day that everyone was to go visit a traditional nomadic family in Dong Ujimqin, located just 60 kilometers from the distant border of Outer Mongolia. When everyone thought of being able to stay in a Mongolian yurt, of roasting a whole lamb to feast on, they were simply elated. From the moment they all got up, people were thinking, "In the starlit grasslands, we ought to have some stars fall down to accompany our dinner!"

Actually, the journey that day was not too smooth. During those several days it had rained a good bit, and the road was wet. At the first slight error, the bus became bogged down in the mud and could not move. However, this little episode did not dampen anyone's spirits. The adults took off their socks, rolled up their sleeves, and helped push the bus. The children cheered at the side. Someone had heard that a while ago a group of Japanese had bogged down in the grasses and had spent two days getting out of the mess. Once this sentence slipped out, people got truly excited, imagining that maybe they would all have the chance to struggle for survival in the wilderness. It was such a pity that they were only busy an hour at most before the bus was freed. It seemed that this disappointed some folks. General Manager Chiao was greatly relieved that no catastrophe had happened, but no one paid special attention to him.

The night of festivities in the Mongolian yurt was hard to forget. To honor his guests from faraway lands, the old dad took the first slice of their feast, a whole sheep.

At last they came to the nomadic family's home. It was already 6:30, and dusk had arrived. They were inordinately late, and their Mongolian friends had waited four or five hours to receive them. The expressions on the Mongolians' faces held not the smallest trace of impatience; they waited more than ten kilometers from their house, dressed up in cavalry formation to greet them. The bus and the horses met each other, and their new Mongolian friends celebrated Mongolian style, circling the bus on horseback three times. They also gave each guest a gift (a silk scarf), sang them drinking songs and offered them horse milk liquor. Gleaming gold sunlight sprinkled on the green grass, flashed on the young Mongolian's rosy cheeks and against their bright clothes. It was simply like a delicate scene from an oil painting, so beautiful it was unreal.

The formation of horses guided the bus back to their home. On the road, bus and horse competed for speed. The young Mongolian lads flew along, unrestrained on their steeds, swift as the wind, their bold and heroic postures moving everyone to forget themselves and applaud. It seemed that those fleet horses were the embodiment of the unleashing of everyone's soul.

The heavens, though, held a bit of mischief. As soon as they arrived at the Mongolians' yurt, rain quickly began to fall, thunder grumbled, lightning flashed. Everyone's heart was a little heavy. The late night bonfire that had been prepared could not be carried through. They still longed for the stars of the grasslands to show up; previous expectations were being washed away. This spate of rain continued until midnight, then it stopped. Although everyone continued the celebration inside the yurt, singing songs, drinking alcohol, eating meat and being generally happy, it was hard to avoid feeling a little regret at the rain. Buhe, especially, rebuked himself. He felt that he had brought everyone to the steppes, but his friends had not been able to fully enjoy themselves. He really found no way to forgive himself, and he constantly thought of this. Although almost everyone had already gone off to sleep, he still lingered after the rain in the gloom of the prairie.

The horse head lute is the traditional musical instrument of the Mongolians. Its vibrations are deep and resonant, telling fully the ballad of loneliness in the grasslands.

In the midst of his remorse, he heard a voice rising in song from inside a tent, and at the same time he bumped into Ni Chen, who also could not sleep. The two of them followed the voice and entered the tent. As it turned out a large number of their Mongolian friends had felt bad that their plans for an all night festival had been dashed. Because of this, the members of a Mongolian dancing troupe from Ulanmu, the old dad that headed the nomadic family, Yu Hsueh-min, manager of the travel agency in Dong Ujimqin, and a few Taiwanese tourists who didn't care for sleep were all gathered by candlelight, taking grassland white liquor, drinking it straight, and singing. Buhe and Ni Chen both joined in, making everyone more jolly. No matter if they were Han Chinese or Mongolian, that night they all became children of the steppes.

The grassland bacchanalian made everyone happy at heart. Ni Chen, who operates an art gallery in Kaohsiung, had been ridiculed as a child for being coarse voiced, but that night she let loose the worries that had troubled her heart for ten years and breathily sang "Sky Blue," "You Love and I Love," and other tunes. Buhe too smoothed his troubled brow, singing one Mongolian love song after another. The friends from the performance troupe, besides singing traditional Mongolian ballads, also especially sang the popular Taiwanese song "Sometime in Winter." They hoped that that night's children of the steppes could meet again next winter in the grasslands. What was also quite touching was that the old dad, whose face rarely held an expression because of the experiences of life, also with emotion let forth a song. Although that song had no words, it was an unwavering outpouring of the feeling of the steppe.

That night of drinking and singing went on until the light of dawn, and no one had gotten drunk. White liquor, with an alcohol content of 60 or 70 percent, will not intoxicate a person. When good friends meet for the first time, how could even a thousand glasses of fine wine suffice?

Daylight came in full force. The steppe again displayed her vastness; humans standing in the midst of the grasslands are so insignificant and humble. If one walks away from another person for five minutes, that person shrinks to the size of a bean, becoming one with the grasses like the cattle, the horses and sheep. And what of you and me? The grasslands also arouse the imagination. When one stands among the grass, looking in all four directions at once, the great earth appears to be a green, round plate without boundaries, a plate pacific and changeless. Occasionally, a lonely, slow song wafts by, and in that voice can be heard the longing for the colorful world beyond the horizon.

However difficult it was to bear, the foreign arrivals had to depart the grasslands once again. This haphazardly landed group of Taiwan guests had to leave. The usually placid old dad got quite emotional. He grabbed a hold of the youngest boy in the group, Wang Chin-hung, who was still in grade school, and gave him a big hug, deciding to make him his godson. To make a ceremony of it, the old man gave the boy a red envelope, and some folks saw the glistening of tears in the old man's eyes.

Before they left, all the "children of the steppes" sang together the song "Faraway Grasslands." Mongolians sang in Mongolian, and the Han Chinese sang with Chinese words. Out there on the prairie, the resonance of Mongolian and Chinese was remarkably sweet; a song in two tongues, "Faraway Grasslands" blended into a lovely chorus of angel's voices.

Then it was time for them to leave. Sitting in the bus, everyone was a little quiet, afraid that if they opened their mouths, they would get teary eyed. Their hands, stretched out the bus's window, were clasped tight by their Mongolian friends. Then the moment came when they could do nothing but let go, everyone pledging in their hearts to meet together again.

Leaving behind the Mongol yurts, everyone expected that they had neared the end of the journey and that the high point was over. Little did they suspect they would encounter another peak moment when they reached Sonid Right Banner. ("Banner" is a term specific to Inner Mongolia referring to an administrative district roughly equivalent to a county.)

That afternoon everyone exhaustedly arrived at the destination where they planned to stay the night, the government hotel of Sonid Right Banner. Having just traversed 300 jolting, draining kilometers, everyone collapsed in paralysis on the sofas as soon as they entered the lobby. But unexpectedly, in came two maids to give all the guests refreshments. As soon as they came in, the fatigue felt by all evaporated. It was really hard to believe that in such a far corner there would appear girls as beautiful as these. Especially beautiful was Miss Fu, whose grace made the guests feel inferior as soon as they laid eyes on her. The men blushed and jumped when they saw her. The women exclaimed that God was not fair. Those two girls were miserable in the end, because everyone begged them to pose for photos, which the guests would show off when they returned home. They were probably thinking to themselves, "These Taiwanese tourists have never seen the light of day before."

Because they had seen fabulous damsels, everyone felt a boost in morale. Furthermore, the banner's government, in order to welcome this first batch of Taiwanese visitors, especially hurried up the construction of a newly erected four storey government hotel, completing one wing that very day for the warm feelings of the guests. Everyone quickly enlivened in spirit. That evening's festivities were particularly grand, as some officials of the banner government kept the guests company and stirred up the atmosphere. The Taiwanese tourists had ventured to the mainland's frontier lands and had encountered nothing but warm feelings; day by day, little by little, the feelings had grown, that day culminating in strong emotion. The evening party turned into a thanksgiving celebration. Those from Taiwan offered thanks to General Manager Chiao for carrying out his burdensome duties. They thanked the petite Miss Hsu for her perseverance. They thanked bus driver Li for his hard labors, thanked Buhe, thanked professor Li, .... The folks from the mainland also thanked their Taiwanese friends. General Manager Chiao proclaimed with animation, "You all are the best. I've been in the travel business for more than ten years, and I've never guided a better group than you. I don't think of you all as my customers; I thnik of you as my friends." As he said this, he lifted a glass, and yet another glass, of erhkuotou wine, tossing them down into his belly. As one might expect, he was drunk after the first glass.

That day all the men managed to get inebriated. Buhe, however, could not shake from his mind that they had not been able to glimpse the stars out on the plains. Mr. Li also insisted on driving the bus at midnight to the closest steppe to let everyone see the stars. But because the night was chilly and because they worried about the safety of the road, many people said they did not want to go. Finally, no one could bend the iron wills of those two men, so the group of sober wives, each carrying a rolled-up blanket, climbed into the bus at midnight to go view the steppe. A local police officer who had become acquainted with everyone felt concern for their safety at night and volunteered to accompany them.

The stars that night were truly lovely. Tsai Lifen said that she had never seen so many shooting stars before, that it really was like a sky full of sesame seeds, densely sprinkled. That summer night on the steppe there were many shooting stars. When the first star fell, everyone was stricken with surprise, excitedly yelling out. Every few minutes another star would drop, and everyone stopped screaming and stopped making wishes. That most beautiful summer sky in the grassland finally etched a mark in their hearts.

Several days of "cross-strait exchange" had afforded everyone a number of insights: the mainland companions discovered that Taiwanese tourists did not necessarily have to be picky and arrogant, because they had eaten everything in their bowls when they were served food. Moreover, those Taiwanese, so often finicky about toilets, learned in just a few days' stay in the steppes to "take care of business the natural way." In fact, some of the especially hearty reckoned that when a cool breeze was blowing that method was quite effective for relieving tension.

As far as all the extra nutritional provisions the Taiwan tourists brought along to fill their gullets, not a single packet was used, because once they adjusted to the local conditions, even the inflexible fried fish they playfully named "mummy fish" started to taste like the world's finest cuisine.

The roads they had traveled down had been smooth beyond anyone's expectation, actually not at all in record with the famous saying of Professor Lin, "If you don't have a mishap in the mainland, you haven't even been there." The mishap occurred after all when they were preparing to leave for Peking, at the Huhhot train station.

The tour group had made advanced reservations for soft sleepers from Huhhot City to Peking. Suddenly they were confronted with the news that all of their tickets had been cancelled. Upon inquiring as to the reason, they discovered that the very train they intended to board had been requisitioned by a high ranking official of the communist party; naturally, none of the soft sleeper cars could fit other passengers. This was quite a hopeless situation, because the tour group had already set airplane reservations to return to Taiwan. After some deliberation, they determined to take the hard sleeper. General Manager Chiao felt that it was due to negligence on his part that they all lacked proper seats, so he took it upon himself to pay for everybody's new train ticket. The whole lot objected a thousand times, because this was not a small amount of change. Besides, who could say whose fault it really was? Nevertheless, once mainlanders get stubborn, there is no budging them; he just refused to take money, and he also gave everyone a Mongolian knife to compensate for his error. Could the Taiwanese tell him to stop, just because they had money?

Finally, everyone boarded the train. How did they know this turn of events was not a blessing in disguise? They were riding the same train as a high ranking official. The train was not late, the staff cleaned up arduously, the police inspected from time to time, and no one worried about safety.

The farewell scene at the train station could also not easily be forgotten. All the friends from the travel service, Buhe and his wife, the musician from Inner Mongolia Yang Shu-shan and his wife, all gathered at the train platform to send them off. It was really too hard to bear! The children yelled from the train, "Goodbye, steppes!" As the train began to move, everybody spontaneously began to sing "Faraway Grasslands": "In that faraway place, I miss my hometown so fair/ In my heart I'll never forget, my silver haired mother there...." General Manager Chiao beside the train was a little moist around the eyes.

A few days after returning to Taiwan, those friends who had gone to Inner Mongolia had a common experience: occasionally around midnight in the midst of their dreams, they would forget where they were. When they awoke, they found themselves situated in their own soft beds, not on the steppes at all. They found, as well, that they were slightly disappointed, because that grassland of stars and smiles was suddenly so far away.

[Picture Caption]

p.114

The scenery in the steppes is like a painting; the sturdy Mongolian horse is a Mongolian's best friend.

p.116

A Mongolian yurt is warm in the winter, cool in the summer, just as Mongolians are cool on the outside and warm at heart.

p.117

Here and there in the steppes can be seen a flock of sheep eating grass. After the grass has grown long in autumn,the cattle and sheep appear poetic grazing among its windswept blades.

p.118

The grassland can be muddy after a rain, and with one careless slip a vehicle can get bogged down.

p.119

The night of festivities in the Mongolian yurt was hard to forget. To honor his guests from faraway lands, the old dad took the first slice of their feast, a whole sheep.

p.121

The horse head lute is the traditional musical instrument of the Mongolians. Its vibrations are deep and resonant, telling fully the ballad of loneliness in the grasslands.

p.122

Pictured here are Taiwanese and mainlanders, Han Chinese, Mongolians, Moslems and ethnic Koreans. Can you tell them apart?