Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 2, Number 42, DeMotte, Jasper County, 2 March 1933 — MONGOLIA HAS DE LUXE RAIL SERVICE [ARTICLE]

MONGOLIA HAS DE LUXE RAIL SERVICE

Express Trains Now Connect Peiping and Paotow. Washington.--Modern Asia is the land of the paradox and China is the home of many contrasts which even the head-line hunter may miss. “At a time when foreigners are leaving the scenes of hostilities on the Sino-Japanese front north of Peiping and European mail formerly routed via the Trans-Siberian railway is taking the long sea voyage through the Suez canal because the Chinese postal administration refuses to send mail through Manchoukuo, the Chinese government railways are advertising an improved railway service, with sleeping and dining cars, over a railway line not far inside the battle front,” says Dr. Maynard Owen Williams in a communication to the National Geographic society. Lasso Ponies With Pole Nooses. express trains a week now leave Peiping and run to Paotow in Inner Mongolia. Not only does this railway, started in 1905 and engineered by a Yale graduate, connect comfortable and colorful Peiping with the Great Wall, the Ming tombs, the des-ert-edge city of Kalgan, highly productive mines of some of the earth’s finest coal, and Fifth century Buddhist grottoes of Yun-kapg, but it carries one into Inner Mongolia. In this little-known land wild game can be shot from a speeding motor car, Mongol herdsmen lasso wild ponies with slip nooses on long poles, and a reception for the Dalai Lama scatters rainbow fragments made of silken robes through a princely encampment, where permanent quarters are reserved for distinguished foreign guests. The Mongol chiefs prefer to live in felt yurts, or tents. “Paotow, present terminus of the deluxe railway service, is the hoppingoff place for nomad life such as the deepest recesses of the Sahara no longer offer. Dangling from a telephone post in the city where railway meets camel caravan, there may be a bandit head, between whose lips some one with a misplaced sense of humor has forced a cigarette, to indicate that even the desert is being made as secure as possible for those who seek thrills but want safety first. “North of Paotow a fair motor trail climbs to the bleak Mongolian plateau where thousands of gazelles can be seen at once and in whose hills a wide variety of horned game awaits the hunter. “Here are several Catholic mission stations whose main contact with the outside world comes when a party of huntsmen seek shelter while enjoying

some of the finest, and least known, hunting in Asia. Trans-Asiatic Expedition. “American motor cars more or less regularly follow the Mongolian trails and although communication with Urga, because of political conditions, is less common than formerly, there are a score of interesting regions within easy reach of Paotow or Kalgan. “The Citroen-Haardt Trans-Asiatic expedition on its way from Paotow to Kalgan, looped north through Inner Mongolia, visited the Lamaseries at Peilingmiao and Sharamuren and passed Chinese New Year’s day as guests of Prince Hsi Ssu Nying at his desert ‘camp’ before descending on Kalgan over a much-improved trail. The road from here to Peiping, by way of the famous Nankow Pass, pierces the Great Wall at one of its most picturesque spots and has been much improved within recent months.

“Near the Mongolian threshold to Peiping is a hitherto inaccessible region now open to the adventuring motorist. The tourist who seeks unusual experiences can spend a week in surroundings unknown to all but a few, but well worthy of study. No early Buddhist grottoes in Asia are as accessible as those of Yun-kang, near which now pass sleeping and dining cars from whose luxury only a few hardy travelers will absent themselves, however much Buddhist carvings enliven old grottoes or .Mongol tribesmen spatter golden, purple or red robes across the barren plateau so familiar to the hordes of Genghis Khan. “ ‘By sleeping car to the Middle ages,' is true enough, but the frontier of romance is beyond the sleeping car, where the true lover of the desert can sleep on the wind-swept plateau undisturbed by an American-born iron horse.’’