Baotou is a city of steel and rare earths, and it is a good place to see how northern China industrialized. The Baogang steelworks and the nearby Bayan Obo mine, one of the world's largest rare earth deposits, shaped the city in the twentieth century.
The mountains north of the city hold a different layer. Wudang Monastery, a Gelug Tibetan Buddhist complex built in the eighteenth century, sits in a valley of the Yin Mountains, and the Yin Mountain rock art records the lives of herding peoples thousands of years ago.
