Mongols in Inner Mongolia see little attraction in unification with the far poorer Mongolian republic to the north (and few in the republic show much interest in expanding their territory southward).
It recently laid official claim to creating Mongolian throat singing (much to Mongolia's consternation).
IN THE 18 years since the nation threw off Soviet domination and embraced democracy, Mongolian politics have been vibrant and even chaotic; but never violent.
In a huge security operation encompassing several Inner Mongolian towns and the regional capital, Hohhot, the police have confined students to campuses.
The police are continuing to keep an Inner Mongolian activist, Hada, in what appears to be illegal detention, mostly incommunicado.
Unlike Tibetans or Uighurs in Xinjiang, many Mongols have little if any mastery of their ancestral language.Chinese leaders must therefore have been shocked when protests broke out in a handful of Inner Mongolian towns over the course of several days in late May.
Again China provides a ready market, but the mining boom has exacerbated Mongolian fears of a Chinese takeover by commercial stealth.
Until then, I had been using paid-for accommodation through sites such as Wimdu.co.uk, and had stayed in some enchanting, unusual spots: a chateau in Puybelliard and a Mongolian yurt near La Rochelle.
First Najib Razak, Malaysia's ambitious deputy prime minister and Abdullah's presumed heir, was linked in sworn court testimony to the 2006 murder of a Mongolian female translator with whom, it was claimed, he once had a sexual relationship.
The government fared no better when the deputy prime minister, Najib Razak, was recently accused of links to a murdered Mongolian woman.
With his leather jacket, jeans and shades, multicoloured tassles hanging from end of his handlebars and dance beats blaring from his mobile phone, he looked to me like some kind of Mongolian easy rider: maybe not destined to spend the rest of his life farming in the mountains.
