"Where are all the people?"

I asked this question somewhat rhetorically several times as my colleague, Hou Liqiang, and I were being driven to the Mengxi Otog Front Banner Photovoltaic Base project site, where a seemingly endless number of solar panels were being erected on a vast, sandy field.

As we headed to the site, all I could see out the window was a blue sky above and flat land with patches of grass, with the occasional sheep or goat munching on some of the blades. But there weren't many people out there in the rural, southwest corner of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

We eventually encountered a few at the site, workers devoting themselves to setting up the panels, rows of which stretched as far as the eye could see. It was here that Hou and I discussed the plan for the video we were going to make of us assisting with the installation of these panels, so that we could appreciate just how hard these people were working to meet the region's goal of providing clean, green energy to its residents.

Our guides took us to our hotel to check in, and then out for dinner. Their English wasn't strong, and neither was my Chinese, but we were able to communicate thanks to Hou's prowess in both languages. The meal was good, although I had some things that were not really conventional for me, including a glass of salty tea and some turtle soup.

I was really uncomfortable in my hotel room and barely slept that night, which was really a shame because we had to get up early so that we could reach the project site by 6:30 to have breakfast with the workers. I tried my best to shake off my exhaustion, though I dozed every chance I could every time I got in the car.

Hou was very enthusiastic about getting involved in the work. I helped some, but admittedly not as much as he did, because I was afraid of messing things up and making things harder for the real laborers. As we were filmed, we erected poles that would be used to hold the solar panels in one area of the field, and then later actually assisted with the placement of the panels themselves on slats in another part. I didn't interact much with the workers myself due to the language barrier, but that was fine. They were busy, and I tried my best to help while not getting in the way.

After spending the morning filming and working, we were taken to a restaurant that I was told was run by a farmer. In a region famous for its lamb, it was the pork at this restaurant that was the most memorable thing I ate during the entire trip. It was truly some of the best I had ever eaten. The owner wanted a picture with me after we ate, and having had such great food, I gladly obliged.

Hou and I were then taken to the Dashatou Ecological Culture Tourist Area to get a true glimpse of the desert. What we found was… unexpected. It was like an amusement park surrounded by sand, and because we were there on a Tuesday afternoon, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

We took a ride on a bus to a platform that was deeper in the desert, and from there we had to scale a sandy hill to an area where we were supposed to take a cable lift down to the next area we were meant to visit. Unfortunately, we learned upon getting up there that the cable car wasn't operational, and the only way to really get to where we wanted to go — besides walking down some other treacherous, sandy hills, a method I promptly abandoned when, after just a few steps, I nearly took a tumble — was to ride a sand sled down said treacherous, sandy hills, which I vetoed right away. I'm a large man, and I was confident that I would get hurt if I tried it.

Instead, we went back down the hill, and the bus took us around to the part we couldn't reach. We engaged in a few activities — riding all-terrain vehicles on a desert course, shooting at targets and trying our hand at archery.

We then left the park and went out for dinner, our last meal in the region. During the meal, our kind guides saluted us with baijiu, a Chinese spirit, and expressed their happiness for our coming to Inner Mongolia. One of them even sang me a song, which I was really touched by.

Our time in Inner Mongolia was short, but certainly memorable. I was deeply impressed, not only by how hard and quickly the solar panel laborers are working, playing a key role in shaping the future of energy distribution in the region, but also by the generous hospitality shown by everyone we met during our trip.

Contact the writer at jamal@chinadaily.com.cn