The Old Town quarter around Dazhao Temple is the most historically layered part of Hohhot — a compact area of Buddhist lamaseries, the Great Mosque, Mongolian market streets, and Hui Muslim food culture compressed into a few square kilometres. Walking from Dazhao south toward the Five Pagoda Temple takes you through streets that retain the scale and commercial character of the Qing-era city, with low shopfronts, covered walkways, and vendors selling everything from incense and prayer beads to dried yogurt and cashmere scarves.
The neighbourhood is liveliest in the evening, when the food stalls set up along the main temple approach and the restaurant terraces fill with families. Mongolian dairy products are everywhere: yogurt in small clay cups, milk skin (naipi) dried and cut into strips, and large blocks of dried cheese. The juxtaposition of Buddhist monastery and halal butcher, prayer wheel and lamb skewer, is characteristic of Hohhot and nowhere else in China quite duplicates it.