As the sun rises in the sky, it shines on the beautiful “grassland city” of Hohhot, a new day begins for the milk tea house settled in the center of this bustling yet quiet landscape. In a milk tea house located in the city center, buckets of freshly delivered milk are poured into a copper pot and stirred around by the gentle motions of the shop owner.
Boiled over a high flame, fresh milk and fragrant tea are mixed together.
A magical combination that gives out a distinctive and fragrant smell: the one of milk tea! With an almost rhythmic sound coming from the kitchen, small plates of milk tofu and clotted cream are placed in an orderly manner, the only thing that stops them from being savoured, is the arrival of the first loyal customers.
In Hohhot, milk tea houses can be found everywhere. It’s where the people of this city “recharge themselves” in the morning and get ready to start the day.
The steam and the delicious milk fragrance that comes from milk tea houses, invades the store, and spreads throughout the surrounding streets, lingering around from morning until closing time. Even during the hot summer days, the milk tea fragrance is still a delicious one. The milk tea house is also the best place for locals and tourists from all corners of the country to meet, talk and sometimes become friends.
Hohhot in the Mongolian language means “green city”. It is the capital city of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region and of northern China.
There are 3.45 million people living here, and its ancient origins can be traced back to the Da Yao Culture, over 700 thousand years ago, with a history of over 2300 years.
This city used to be a trade center for many merchants and more recently “businessmen” travelling to Mongolia. It was a sort of transfer point along the “Silk Road” for tea and camels, as well as the final stop of Wang Zhaojun’s interracial marriage beyond the Great Wall. But today, Hohhot is greatly renowned as the Dairy Capital of China.
The Chilechuan grassland, located in northeast Hohhot, is blessed with cool breeze and blooming flowers. If you wander here in the morning of a hot summer day, you can see the green of the wild mountains, that spread out like curtains, the green grass a natural floor to steady your feet on, and the clear lakes that blend with the white fabric of Mongolian yurts, a color that adds radiance and compliments all other elements.
This scenery looks like a scroll painting slowly unfolding before the onlookers eyes, showing a real version of what this poem embodies.
Historically, Hohhot has always been a place with an abundance of water and grass. It is located on the commercial belt renowned for the production of high quality milk. Plenty of sunlight and rain, the suitable temperature and fertile soil, which can in turn grow high-quality forage grasses, also contribute to its reputation. The vast grassland, clear lakes and abundant feed resources offer an excellent growth environment for cows, which has enabled Hohhot to gain the reputation of Dairy Capital.
On the vast northern grassland, the techniques for milk harvesting and production of milk derivatives have been passed on for thousands of years throughout the history of this area's civilization. In these ancient grasslands that have seen centuries of animal husbandry as the main source of living, dairy based foods are one of the main products produced by the people inhabiting this area.
Many people may not know that living a nomadic way of life, contrary to popular beliefs, means that meat can’t be served at every meal. Dairy based dishes are instead, the staple food consumed daily by nomads. An ordinary day of a nomad often starts with the milking of its animals.
The freshly harvested milk, is transformed through a series of manual processes, which turns it into a variety of milk products, such as Mongolian clotted cream, milk tofu, sour cream, milk tea, yogurt, koumiss, etc.
These dishes have been widely distributed throughout the grasslands for thousands of years and have been loved by people of all ethnic groups living in the Inner Mongolian Regions.
Modern dairy products including ice cream, popsicles, powdered milk, and condensed milk are all rooted in the ancient northern nomadism.
A cup of good milk for the Mongolian people, is the evidence of the time-honored grassland culture.
Hohhot is striving to build the Yili Health Valley and Mengniu Dairy Industrial Park, to create a dairy industrial cluster of 100-billion-yuan level, to achieve world reputation as the Dairy Capital of China, and in turn, to evolve itself into a Dairy Capital of the world. These efforts can be seen as a blueprint for revitalizing the dairy industry.
For the sake of keeping the culture of this way of life and the quality of the local production, the city of Hohhot is promoting a new path of high-quality development that prioritizes ecological conservation and boosts green development.As a result of this, the city has always ranked 1st among many other cities in China in many important aspects of milk production like the number of fine-breed milk cows, the yield of fresh milk, the milk consumption average per capita and the milk processing capability.
Hohhot has, during decades of development of the dairy industry, incorporated thought of “better-raised cows make for better milk” as a philosophy to pursue into the urban development course.
This way of thinking has continuously sparked new vitality in the industry and launched new patterns supported by new policies and measures that have launched milk production into the new era.
By constantly breaking-through key production links in the dairy industry, the dairy industry chain has experienced a full-process leap with high competitiveness.
Stepping into the new era, Hohhot makes continuous efforts to strengthen milk source bases and to improve supply quality. It focuses on developing white food health industry dominated by dairy industry and has nurtured Yili and Mengniu, two world class dairy enterprises that ranked 5th and 8th respectively in the global dairy industry in 2020.
From 22 to 24 June 2021, the 14th Global Dairy Congress was held online. Yili was nominated for nine awards in 2021 World Dairy Innovation Awards and won three awards including Best Milk Beverage, Best Functional Dairy Products and Best Package Design.
In the future, with key enterprises in dairy and high-tech industries taking the lead, Hohhot will fully exert its polices and integrate resources around the world to form a new development pattern that focuses on industrial clusters and integrates primary, secondary and tertiary industries.
We are devoted to offer a taste of health from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia to the world, and this all starts with a glass of milk.
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