This is Mongolia, I was here on the grassland.

There was no access to Internet.

No telephone lines were connected, not to mention internet service. Mobile phones could be used when necessary, but you had to firstly go up to the peak of a hill to get the transmission signals. Of course, we were just too lazy to buy the Mongolian telephone cards. After all, I just wanted to have a taste of being away from the world. Although my mobile phone was offline, there was still a song saved in it, “Ji Xiang San Bao”, which, once heard by the kids, would generate an exclamation, “Mongolia song!!” When listening joyfully, everyone would sing together. The friends from France didn’t know what music it was, yet they ended up singing it fluently after the brainwashing rendition of the children. Unbelievably, and indeed with the great power of music, mobile phones drew people closer together in the end.

There was no streetlight here.

Electricity network was not well laid. Nor the availability of light at fixed locations. Nonetheless, my own headlamp was not really found to be useful. Mongolia enjoys a long period of sunlight in the daytime of July. It means the sun rises in the morning at 4 a.m. while it stays until 10 p.m. At that place, one day can be utilized as much as two days in Hong Kong. The energetic Mongolian kids have plenty of time to consume you. After dusk, you who are so exhausted would sleep so sound in the simple Mongolian yurt. If it’s too much a waste to go asleep just like this, why not just go out of the yurt before bedtime to try counting the stars. Please try to switch off your headlamp as there are simply countless stars emitting light for you from the sky above the grassland. I still remember that night with a full moon, the moon was so shiny as if it were telling everyone, “Do you really think you NEED the streetlight?”

Moreover, there were no tap water, no air-conditioners and no toilet bowls…..everything was so different from Hong Kong. Nothing modern was offered there, everything was back to the origin. You may call her ‘backward’, but I would like to call her ‘natural’. Everything is available here in Hong Kong, except the lacking of her simplicity and down-to-earth nature. That is, as quoted by “zhuang zi”, “the use of the useless”

When life is away from modernization, the themes of chats are also back to the nature. Here, the chats among the volunteers were without politics, finance or technology. In fact when we became so ignorant about time, we never cared whether it’s a weekday or weekend because the so-called work was nothing but farming and cooking. Whether it should be work or entertainment depends on how you define it. As for me, there’s even no need for any definition…

On the grassland, the scorching heat of the sun coming out of the horizon became more and more burning, resulted in ‘free-time’ when work was not feasible. No need to bother about how to kill time, as the work camp contained a great deal of different games left by the past volunteers: bamboo dragonfly, Frisbee, bubbling game, bamboo sticks game, playing cards, bead crafting, sketching….although they were simple and retrograde, they just matched the fragrance from the grassland. Without high technology, joy just came around in such a natural way.

We never made a deliberate effort to teach the children English. It’ was because when the children had the chance every year to immerse themselves with volunteers from all over the world, the elder children were usually able to speak fluent English. The founder of the work camp even said, “The teachers from the school sometimes even asked the children about English!” It was unbelievable how they managed to learn through playing. Not only working and playing. I could hardly find any demarcation between playing and learning.

In a highly developed modernized city, people depend so much on all kinds of technology. Should something go wrong on one side, big chaos even big disasters result. Here, when we were free from most modern stuff which we formerly classified as ‘necessities’, we still managed to survive, and even live more happily.

Without being carried away, the things which make us happy become prominent. Such as, laughing faces from the innocent children, friendship without boundaries, the simple and naïve nature around.

It is my utopia even without a plum blossom tree.