From Herding to Hacking: A Mongolian Coder in Shenzhen
At 9 p.m., Shenzhen’s Nanshan district is still humming. Inside a brightly lit office, 27-year-old Galab closes his laptop, stretches, and glances at a small photo frame on his desk. It shows a line of yurts under a huge blue sky. That sky is about 2,000 kilometers away, both in distance and in memory.
Galab is a Mongolian programmer from Inner Mongolia, one of China’s autonomous regions. He grew up herding sheep and horses with his family on the grassland. Today, he writes backend code for a fintech company here in Shenzhen, the city often called China’s Silicon Valley.
If you’re from Europe or the U.S., you might find his path surprising. In many countries, tech workers tend to come from cities and elite universities. In China, too, the tech industry is competitive, but it’s also more open than you might think. Rural and minority youth are increasingly part of the story.
A Childhood Under the Big Sky
Galab was born in a small banner (a county-level division in Inner Mongolia) near the borders of Mongolia. His parents are herders, raising sheep, goats, and horses. As a child, he didn’t play video games or browse the internet. Instead, he learned to ride a horse before he could ride a bike. He remembers counting sheep under a starry sky so clear that the Milky Way looked like a river of milk.
But when he reached middle school, the world changed. His school was one of the ‘schools with the Internet’ program, and for the first time, he saw a computer. In his remote village, the only connection to the outside world was a single phone line and, later, a satellite dish. The first time he typed a keyword into a search engine, he typed the Mongolian word for ‘grassland’ and was amazed by what appeared on the screen.
‘It felt like magic,’ Galab remembers. ‘I wanted to know how it worked. So I started tinkering with the school’s old computer, even though I was afraid of breaking it.’
The Path to Shenzhen
After high school, Galab moved to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, to study computer science. He was the first person in his family to leave the grassland for higher education. At first, he struggled. His Chinese (Mandarin) was accented, and his classmates seemed far ahead. But he had a habit from his herding days: patience. ‘You can’t chase a stray horse with anger,’ he says. ‘You have to wait and plan.’
In university, he attended his first hackathon. He didn’t win, but the experience planted a seed. He started learning programming languages by reading English textbooks, watching online courses, and practicing on his second-hand laptop. He also learned about Python, Java, and the rising tech hubs in southern China.
Graduation brought a choice: stay in Hohhot and work at a state-owned company, or take a risk and move to Shenzhen. ‘Everyone thought I was crazy,’ he laughs. ‘Shenzhen seemed like another planet.’
Inside China’s Tech Factory
Shenzhen is a city of migrants. Its tech park, Nanshan, is a grid of glass towers, shared bikes, and food stalls. Galab moved here in 2020, just as China’s digital payment boom was peaking. He got a job as a junior developer at a startup, working on payment systems that handle millions of transactions daily.
The first year was tough. The pace was faster than anything he’d known. He worked late hours, lived in a tiny apartment, and missed the silence of the grassland. But he also discovered a community of young people from all over China, many from rural areas, who shared his hunger to learn.
‘Shenzhen is like a giant computer,’ Galab explains. ‘Every part is connected, and everything runs on code. But the people are like the hard drive—they store memories, traditions, and cultures.’
Why This Story Matters (and Why It’s Not Just About Technology)
Galab’s story is not just about one person. It’s about how China’s technological leap is creating new opportunities for ethnic minorities. In the past, many young Mongolians were expected to become herders, teachers, or local officials. Now, platforms like JD.com, Alibaba, and Tencent hire programmers, product managers, and data analysts from minority backgrounds.
Of course, the picture is not perfect. The digital divide still exists. Rural schools often lack good teachers and equipment. Galab himself admits that he didn’t see a computer until he was 14. But the gap is shrinking faster than in many other countries. China has invested heavily in bringing internet access to remote areas, even to the grassland. In 2023, over 99% of China’s administrative villages were connected to broadband, and high-speed mobile internet covers most of the country.
To an outsider, this might sound like a state slogan. But for Galab, it’s personal. He returns to his hometown twice a year, carrying his laptop. His younger cousins now attend a school with a computer lab and a robotics club. His uncle, a herder, uses a smartphone app to check weather forecasts, find the best grazing spots, and sell sheep online.
Carrying the Grassland into the Code
Galab still keeps Mongolian traditions alive in his daily life. On his desk, he has a small khata, a blue ceremonial scarf, draped over a monitor. He listens to Mongolian throat singing when he’s debugging. And he has a personal project: he’s building a Mongolian-language input method and translation tool, because he noticed that many Mongolian-speaking elders can’t type in their own language.
‘Code is like a language,’ he says. ‘It has grammar and logic, just like Mongolian. When I write code, I feel a connection to the way we think on the grassland. We’re good at seeing patterns in weather, in animal tracks. Code is also about patterns.’
What an American or European Reader Might Find Surprising
If you’re from a Western country, the idea of a minority-group member moving to a megacity and joining the tech industry isn’t new. But the specifics here are different. For one, China’s tech industry is less concentrated in a single hub. There are tech parks in more than a dozen cities, not just Shenzhen. This spreads opportunities across regions.
Also, the state plays a bigger role. In the U.S., programs like Title IX or affirmative action focus on race and gender. In China, policies like ‘rural revitalization’ and ‘Education for the West’ aim to bring resources to poorer regions, including minority areas. For Galab, this meant better internet in his village, a scholarship for college, and a student loan that didn’t require collateral.
But there’s a subtler difference: the idea of identity. In the West, identity is often about difference from the mainstream. In Galab’s experience, his Mongolian heritage is something he carries with pride, but it doesn’t make him an outsider in Shenzhen. His colleagues are curious, not dismissive. They ask about horses and the grassland, and he shows them photos and dishes. It’s a kind of cultural exchange that happens naturally in shared workspaces.
The Road Ahead
Galab has been promoted to team leader at his company. He now mentors five junior developers, three of whom are also from minority or rural backgrounds. He sometimes runs a side project—an online course that teaches programming basics in Mongolian, aimed at high-school students in Inner Mongolia.
‘I want to be a bridge,’ he says. ‘Not just between East and West, but between my grassland and the digital side of China.’
His dream is to one day build a software incubator in Hohhot, so young people don’t have to move 2,000 kilometers to chase their dreams. ‘The grassland has its own kind of logic. If you can learn to read it, you can learn to code.’
Conclusion: A New Chapter in an Old Land
Galab’s life is still a work in progress, like the software he writes. He’s not a billionaire entrepreneur; he’s a regular developer with a distinctive story. But his journey from the grassland to Shenzhen mirrors a larger movement inside China: the old and the new are not separate. They are being woven together by people like him.
When you meet Galab, you might first notice his slight accent, his white sneakers, and his habit of checking the weather app on his phone. Then you’ll see his notebook, filled with Mongolian notes about algorithms. It’s a small, personal symbol of a country that is moving forward without forgetting where it came from.
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