Hohhot's main railway station (not the high-speed station, which is at Hohhot Dong) is a late Soviet-era building from the 1950s, architecturally typical of the Chinese railway stations built with Soviet technical assistance during the first Five-Year Plan. The station serves ordinary-speed trains to Beijing, Baotou, and destinations across Inner Mongolia and northern China, and its forecourt is one of the more animated public spaces in the city — taxi drivers, food vendors, porters, and travellers of every description.
The neighbourhood around the old station, between the station and the old town to the south, is a transitional zone of budget guesthouses, noodle restaurants, luggage storage shops, and money changers that is typical of Chinese railway station districts everywhere and is one of the most lived-in and unpretentious parts of the city to wander. The wholesale night market that operates near the station from midnight to 5 AM supplies the city's restaurants with fresh produce and is worth visiting if you are jet-lagged and restless.