Hohhot
— — the blue the steppe gives back to the sky.
Not only on a wall.
“The Blue City, capital of Inner Mongolia, on the Tumed Plain south of the Daqing Mountains. Altan Khan laid out the old town in 1581 around the Dazhao Temple, and the Five-Pagoda Temple still keeps its Mongolian star chart on the back wall. North of the city the grasslands begin. The cuisine runs to lamb and milk tea and the music to the horsehead fiddle.
Hohhot, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hohhot is the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, on the Tumed Plain at about 1,065 metres above sea level. The name comes from the Mongolian Kökeqota, meaning Blue City, after the dark grey-blue brick of its old walls. The city was founded in 1581 by Altan Khan of the Tümed Mongols and grew as a centre of Tibetan Buddhist learning. Its population is about 3.5 million, and it lies roughly 480 kilometres west of Beijing by rail.
Dazhao Temple, built in 1580, is the oldest surviving Gelug Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Hohhot, and its silver Buddha was consecrated by the Third Dalai Lama on a visit in 1586. The Five-Pagoda Temple, completed around 1727, carries a rare cosmological star chart in Mongolian script on its back wall, one of only a few celestial maps in that script known to survive. The Great Mosque, founded around 1693, marks the centre of the Hui Muslim quarter, with a minaret built in Chinese style.
The grasslands north of Hohhot — Xilamuren and Huitengxile, each within a few hours' drive — turn green from late May, peak through July and August when temperatures stay cool at altitude, and brown by mid-September. The Naadam festival of wrestling, horse-racing, and archery is held across the region in July. Winters on the plain are dry and cold, often below minus fifteen Celsius, and the city itself sees only modest snow because the Daqing Mountains block much of the moisture from the south.