Hailar is the main city of Hulunbuir Prefecture, the vast northeastern swathe of Inner Mongolia that contains the region's best grasslands. The city itself — a mid-sized Chinese administrative centre on the banks of the Hailar River — is less important than where it puts you: within easy reach of the Hulunbuir Steppe, one of the genuinely spectacular grasslands of the world, where the grass is tall, the sky is enormous, and the density of pastoral life is something not found in the more touristed grassland areas near Hohhot.
The Hulunbuir Grasslands around Hailar are the real draw. In summer, the prairie turns a deep green broken by wildflowers, and Mongolian and Evenki herding families still move their livestock across the open land. Hiring a car and driver to reach one of the yurt camps a couple of hours from the city gives access to riding, archery, and the kind of evening around a fire that justifies the journey to Inner Mongolia in the first place. The Irguna Wetlands to the north, one of China's largest wetland ecosystems, are a different experience — slow-moving birch forests and reed-edged rivers, better for birdwatching than the open steppe but just as remote.
The city has a historical dimension that most visitors miss. Hailar was occupied by Japan during the Second World War, and the Japanese Imperial Army built an extensive underground fortification complex here in the 1930s, intended to defend against Soviet attack. The World Anti-Fascist War memorial park, built around the partially excavated tunnels, is a sobering site — the scale of the underground works is larger than most visitors expect, and the memorial gives context to a chapter of Inner Mongolian history not widely known outside China.
Hailar is accessible by air from Beijing and Hohhot (Hulunbuir Hailar Airport, code HLD), and by rail from Harbin in about twelve hours. The city divides between a modern commercial centre and older residential streets where Russian architectural influence from the Chinese Eastern Railway era is still faintly visible. Summer is the only practical time to visit for grassland travel; winters in Hulunbuir are brutal, with temperatures regularly dropping below minus thirty.