Mongolia - Land of the Eternal Blue Sky

The stars were so numerous and clear in the endless night sky that my shoulders felt their pressure, they were so close. Never, in all my travels, had I seen such a panoply of galactic splendor.

Such is my memory of the night sky and the unending blue horizon of Mongolia, the land of the Eternal Blue Sky. I have just returned from Ulaan Bataar, my second trip to Mongolia and this time a trip deep in winter. The capital Ulaan Baatar, affectionately known as UB, is only a 2-hour flight from Beijing, China, and behaves more like a frontier town than a sophisticated capital. Businessmen from Russia, Turkey, China, Korea, Japan and Australia come for trade or mining, while nomads from the countryside come for occasional business, a pilgrimage to the Gandan Temple, or to visit relatives in the growing town. A hodgepodge of traditional gers (round felt tents) and rough wooden structures encircle and expand around the small city center of Soviet-style buildings, new hotels, stores, and government buildings. I first visited UB in August 2005. In four and a half years construction and traffic had both grown. Fewer people were wearing traditional garb and the number of cars on the streets and cacophony of beeps were far more. The city is growing. As one Mongolian explained, in the past a local could always find a place based on landmarks and building names; now it is not always possible to do so and the city residents are transitioning, slowly, to using more precise postal address formulas for locations.

I am fascinated by Mongolia. Although a neighbor of China, and in fact, past ruler of China (Khubilai Khan, one of four grandsons of Genghis Khan, founded the Yuan Dynasty as Emperor Zhongtong, 1260-94 a.d.), Mongolia is completely different from China in both culture and landscape. An exhibition at the National Museum puts this plainly; a diplomatic missive from Genghis Khan’s court (1206-1227) to China begins in this way: “To the people of hats and huts, from the people of horses and arrows-…“. The movie Mongol by director Sergei Bodrov also illustrates in lush cinematography a culture big on landscape but not on dialogue (which is just as well, since the movie is shot in Mongolian and Mandarin Chinese); its covers the early years of Genghis Khan and life on the steppes and is supposed to be the first of a trilogy.

Jack Weatherford, the author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, further and brilliantly brings to life this great Mongolian leader and shows how innovative military strategies and weaponry led to the Mongol conquest of lands as far away as India and Siberia, Vietnam and Hungary, and Korea to the Balkans within a 25-year period. Unimaginable!! Under Genghis, Mongolians supported and in some cases created the trade routes linking these lands, and avidly encouraged the intermingling of ideas, knowledge and technologies. Genghis “put the power of the law above his own power, encourage(d) religious freedom, create(d) public schools, grant(ed) diplomatic immunity, abolish(ed) torture and institute(d) free trade. … The Mongols introduced the first international paper currency and postal system and developed and spread technologies like printing, the cannon, compass and abacus.” How is that for transformative! In one scene Weatherford describes a religious debate in the court of Mongke, Genghis’ grandson, between Christians (including a visiting Franciscan monk), Muslim clerics and Buddhist monks in the year 1254. According to Weatherford,
“an official lay down the strict rules by which Mongke wanted the debate to proceed: on pain of death, no one shall ‘dare to speak words of contention’. … The debate ranged back and forth… with shifting coalitions among the various religions according to topic. … Finally, as the effects of the alcohol (drunk between each round, according to Mongolian wrestling tradition!) became stronger… no side seemed to convince the other of anything. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simple too drunk to continue.”

I rather like this idea, that on pain of death, no one may speak words of contention! Would that solve our world’s problems now, I wonder?

Genghis, or Chinggis as he is known in Mongolia, is still revered and also used in numerous marketing ways, as evidenced by the winter advertisement the ice sculpture for Chinggis Beer. Now, obviously, things have changed quite a bit for Mongolia since the 13th century. In fear of Chinese annexation, it turned to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and was communist until 1992. In the 1960s purges of Buddhist monks, intelligentsia and nationalists swept through the country, but after the fall of the Soviet Union it underwent a peaceful transition to democracy. People speak Mongolian; Russian was instructed during the last century, but English is now a popular second language, along with Korean, in schools. (In fact the Minister of Education bemoans the lack of engineering and other books in English!) Its population of 2.6 million, a third of whom follow their traditional nomadic lifestyle, is squeezed between its two populous neighbors Russia and China. It is rich in natural resources (which explains the many businessmen I meet in UB who work in the mining industry) but manufacturing is limited and livestock outnumber people 15:1. The Gobi Desert to the south is a major paleontological site of fossil finds and the natural beauty of the country encourages ecotourism. And so do I!

The window for countryside touring is small if you don’t want to run into snow or freezing temperatures. That means July and August, more or less. In the first week of August 2005 we and another family arranged a 3-night ger stay at Jalmon Meadows in the Tuul River Valley near the Terelj National Park through a Swedish-Mongolian outfitter called Nomadic Journeys (see http://www.nomadicjourneys.com/). Now, if you look at a map, the distance between UB and the park is negligible, but let me tell you, it took our old schoolbus almost 2 hours via highway and 5 hours bumping along a barely-there dirt road . The ger camp was clean and included two outhouses, a shower ger, a dining ger and several gers for sleeping. Our family of four stayed in one ger, our friends’ family of three in another, and there was an eclectic mix of Europeans, North Americans and others staying as well. With three children ranging in age from 9-12, we chose this site because of the variety of activities: horse riding, river swimming or pontoon riding, archery, traditional Mongolian games, hiking, etc. It was breathtakingly gorgeous and lots of fun!! Our 9- and 10-year-old boys made friends with the camp dogs and a Mongolian boy roughly their age named Oogie. On the morning of our horse ride, Oogie whistled for the horses and a dozen appeared out of nowhere, to the great admiration of our boys.

UB has a different personality and different sights.

1) The Gandan Monastery is one of the few Buddhist monasteries to survive the destruction of religious sites under the communist regime. Here you can see a library of old texts of traditional Mongolian medicine and astrology, a 25-meter tall statue of Magjid Janraisig (the lord who looks in every direction) and several Buddhist colleges.

2) The Choijin Lam Temple Museum is a small monastery located south of the main square and is not very old. It was built at the turn of this century by the decree of the Bogd Khan, the last Khan or Emperor of Mongolia when Mongolia declared independence from the Qing dynasty of China, for his younger brother. After surviving the destruction of Buddhist monasteries during 1930s, it ironically became an anti-religious center set up by communist powers.

3) & 4) The National and the Natural History Museums. These museums are about a block apart and both are rather small; the Natural History Museum is an especially archaic communist throw-over, with small rooms of natural flora and fauna (pressed plants, pinned butterflies, taxidermy, etc.). However, you should go to the Natural History Museum if you’d like to see world-class dinosaur bones and fossils, most found in the Gobi Desert. The Museum of National History is a good place to start to learn the history of Mongolia, especially if you have kids. The diplomatic missive I’ve already quoted, highlighting the difference between Chinese and Mongolians, is there, as well as letters from circa 1246 to and from the Vatican and Mongol court, each side inviting the other to submit and give tribute!

5) Cashmere and Wool shops. Okay, you didn’t think I’d leave out shopping, did you? Remember, livestock outnumbers Mongolians 15:1, but in the area of cashmere wool and camel hair, Mongolia produces the best. (And I live in China, a clear competitor, but still I insist Mongolia has better.) The long and cold winter of Mongolia ensures the dense and long goat hair from which cashmere is derived. The same applies to camel hair. Sweaters, coats, blankets and more can all be found. Major brands include Gobi (http://www.gobi.mn/), Evseg (http://www.eermel.com/), Altai (http://www.altaicashmere.mn/) and Goyo (http://www.goyo.mn/), to name a few. You can find them all on display at the State Department Store on Peace Ave., as well as in small shops, but according to a Mongolian friend the best prices are at the factory stores. One store is the Cashmere House boutique at #5 Peace Ave. (tel. # 976 11 326867; fax # 976 11 325393; email cashmerehouse@mongolnet.mn) There are 2 or 3 more stores all along Peace Ave. and in the square opposite the State Department Store.

I want to especially recommend the Tsagaan Alt Wool Shop, opposite (kind of) the State Dept. Store in what I call Beatles Sq., as here residents personally funded a wall sculpture honoring the Beatles. The shop sells high quality felt and wool craft products made by Mongolians from disadvantaged backgrounds who received training from the Wool Processing and Marketing Project (WPMP), a social development project supported by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission in Mongolia. The shop is non-profit, the products beautifully arranged, and the website www.mongoliawoolcraft.com is to be commended for its clarity and ease of use. Its contact information is as follows: Address opposite State Dept. Store, #68; tel. (976 11) 318591; fax (976 11) 318591; email: tsagaan-alt@magicnet.mn.

One expatriate in UB told me the following. In a survey of potential Peace Corps assignments, Mongolia was way down the list as not being of interest to volunteers. However, in a survey of actual Peace Corps volunteers, those who had worked in Mongolia had one of the highest satisfaction levels amongst all Peace Corps volunteers worldwide. And so it is, a little-known country with a difficult-to-learn language and a breathtaking landscape and impressive history captures our hearts. Go, explore – it will capture your heart as well.