ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief introduction to one region of Inner Mongolia settled by both Mongols and Chinese, each people seeing a very different landscape in the same territory. These landscapes arise within ways of life and memories; they are sedimented outcomes of many centuries of difference. The main line of the well-known ‘Great Wall’ was built to the south of the studied area between 1470 and 1480 during the Ming Dynasty. The literature on the Great Wall undermines a constant monocausal explanation by proposing that they had different purposes at different periods. The Mergen Monastery had no surrounding wall but rather a circumambulation path called gorio. Similarly, the Mongolian oboo is a cairn that stands in the open, encircled by the invisible path of the worshippers. The Mongols have a strong sense of ‘place’, that is, particular, meaningful, named sites to which things belong.
