Series 2 | INNER MONGOLIA

Hailar is the largest city of the Hulum Buir prefecture of Inner Mongolia's Northern region. During winter, it’s often described as a drab and colourless place, being a landmass that's mainly grassland and rural habitation. Drops in temperature see greens turn to brown, and the frost exposes the prickly tips of the land. This was an environment where my eyes could scan an entire plain without focusing on a single building, an uncommon concept to the cluttered landscape of the China I'd experienced prior to this.

In Hailar, I stayed with the family of a friend I'd met in Beijing. Being a heavily agricultural based society, mutton and milk became staple items in my dietary intake. Every morning the smell of the steam-filled kitchen would beckon me to the plump white dough (waiting to the kneaded), half-devoured shanks of mutton, and milk tea.

Autonomous regions in China like these have political and economic limitations. The Chairman of Inner Mongolia (who is most often ethnic Mongolian) reports to the more powerful Communist regional committee secretary, who is usually from a different part of China. There are 25 different resident minority groups in the region, and only 17 percent of the population is ethnic Mongolian. Increasingly, younger generations are encouraged to become more 'Chinese' rather than preserve their Mongolian heritage, for the sake of future opportunities.

During my stay, one of the family members took me to a museum, where the central focus of the main exhibition room was a miniature suburban landscape. The local officials had pieced together a prospective town plan as a three-dimensional model. Here, the streets ran parallel, facing one another in the Western style of manicured suburbia. Traditional Mongolian yurts were sanctioned to the ‘grassland’ area that had become considerably reduced. Welcome to Hailar in ten years.

- TAMMY LAW