Posts (page 4)
I am almost convinced that it's true when they say that a Mongol is born in the saddle. Man, can these people ride...
We have been spending a lot of time wandering Ulan Baatar, with Chris remaining amazed at the changes from when he was here last, in 1989. When he was here last, there was (and I quote) ''No food. Nothing to do. Nothing to buy."
Well that's changed, but in a good way. Not a turbo-charged Coca-Cola fuelled full-on blitz like China, or a completely and utterly materialistic, brand-name-is-all, aggressive way like Russia.
No Buddy Mac's yet, no KFC. Yet. Lots of sexy bars, lots of travellers and bright eyed tourists, with the occasional lost looking tour bus thrown in.
Most people seem to be here to simply say they have been, or to go to the Gobi. And this week, it's all about Nadaam, the national 'homecoming' and festival of the 3 manly sports. More on that later....
I did manage to try all kinds of fermented yogurts and cheeses and tried Mongolian tea and mare's milk but DAMMIT no Airag (the fermented mare's milk that supposedly kicks like a mare does too). I saw it being sold out of great barrels, ladled into a bowl shared by all customers, but I was not quite in the mood for a spit sharing experience with several dozen strangers.
The diet here is completely based on mobile food. The nomad life is still very much a part of the culture here. And that means mutton. Lots and lots of mutton! I think I can safely never eat sheep bits again.
What a vegetarian would survive on in Mongolia is beyond me
It's a 'ger' not a yurt, actually. And here in beautiful Mongolia, you see them every single where....
Made of felt, covered with white cotton canvas, the people use these all over the country. The nomads move them around to follow the herds and live in them all year round. In the city, the people set them up in the yard for extra, cooler bedrooms.
Functional and beautiful and damn are they comfy. We have been staying in them as we travel around. Interestingly, gers can be set up anywhere in the country - the land is all 'the people's'. This really is a country without fences
PS gers are always set up with the doors facing south. Real handy for orienting out in the desert :)
We made it to Ulaan Baatar, capital of Mongolia, and yippee! we can use any internet cafe to get to any website we want! I feel like bathing in binary...Big updates to follow shortly :)
Imagine a life with no brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles. A nation of single children. Now try to imagine China.
From 1979, anyone with more than one child is so heavily taxed and penalized that virtually no one has a (registered) second child.
So everyone has one child. And mom and dad get to lavish all their love and attention on their solo 'little emperors'.
Ads and commercials only depict the happy couple with their happy single child. Cartoons and children's animations only have one child at a time. Cereal boxes have one kid, and i note that toys are solo things - airplanes, hula hoops - and nary a checkers set or Trouble game in sight.
The exception is a rural family, that can have two, with permission or by establishing need (eg. the farmer is chronically ill, the farm is too big, etc.). Or, as seems to happen too, the families just don't register Child No. 2. Who then cannot go to school, the doctor, etc. because s/he is not registered...
And, thanks to some archaic Confucianistic ideology, that child pretty much needs to be a boy. At 119 boys to every 100 girls, China is a genetic time bomb.
This woman is rightly thrilled, as she has twins! Multiple births are not taxed, and sales of illicit fertility treatments to increase the odds of multiple births are reportedly out of control.
Suddenly, I really really really appreciate my big giant family even more.
The Chinese have to be the most fit people ever. They seem to be constantly in motion - stretching and bending and moving moving moving
Every evening, the people seem to hit the streets to just exercise. I am particularly amused by the ones walking backwards. Which we tried and is great for the calves
And then there is this cool fan dance, as seen here in the Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing. Groups of mostly middle aged women, some in costume, many with fans I lusted after, would do this great little line dance
A band of brothers with traditional instruments would strike up and the dance would begin. And let me tell you, it exercises pretty much every joint we have.
I caused great delight by joining in, as it was really just a groovy line dance.
No wonder everyone looks so damn spry and the 80 year olds out pace me!
Generally, the Russians make me nuts. But then they come up with solutions to complex problems that stagger me because they are so simple
In the MIR Space Station, NASA spent a reported 12.5 million dollars inventing the Space Pen - the pen that writes even upside down, so that astronauts would be able to take notes in zero gravity.
Presented with the same issue, the Russians just shrugged and handed out pencils.
This beautiful simplicity was brought to me again at the Chinese Mongolian border. The Russians, with their huge country of largely undefended borders, were worried about invasion overland, particularly by train.
So, they made different train tracks. Fully 2.3 feet wider than any other train in the world, Russian tracks would be impossible to use by any other nation. With the notable exception of Mongollia, as Russia built the rail network in that country.
As a result, when we got to the Chinese/Mongolian border, each of our coaches needed to be brought into a special shed where the bogies (wheels) were replaced. It was fascinating, even if it was 1am and our coach was in eerily and very disconcertingly suspended in mid air while the wheels were replaced
Everywhere, the women of China cover up. Umbrellas or at least hats on every female in sight. And those who work outdoors, well, you can see the approach in this picture.
Every gardener, newspaper
seller, street cleaner, etc. covers up every exposed body part even on rainy
days such as this.
For the white collar girls, I was especially taken with the long cotton elasticated gloves, so that you can cover your arms and still wear that sexy shoulder strap top.
Meanwhile, I have been trawling every store I see looking for sun screen. The thing is, right, that the type sold in China usually has whitening (bleaching)
agents.
I continually amaze salesgirls as to why I don't want to bleach my skin. Why I would want to (lightly) tan is deeply puzzling.
Hell, they will probably have the skin of an 18 year old in their 80s.
This is actually the Temple for Bountiful Harvests - part of the massive and so beautiful Temple of Heaven park in Beijing.
Arranged on a north - south axis there was a series of temples and buildings through which the Emperor would, once annually, go to the Temple and take on the sins of his people.
Through sacrifice, penance and ritual (all done, it should be noted, to animals, acolytes and monks respectively) the Emperor would thus wash away the sins of the world. Sound familiar?
I did offer up big asanyas for my farming friends and relatives but mostly I was disturbed by the sometimes clumsy, sometimes very, very subtle but nonetheless massive restoration that had taken place at the Park.
Then Chris found the one and only photograph of the temples taken in 1971, when work to restore damage done during the Cultural Revolution was begun. And I began to muse on how many of the people now milling around as tourists would have been Red Guards 40 years old.
Imagining Mao, the great soldier - perhaps with a soldier's distrust and disgust of things creative, cultural and artistic - ordering all 'old things' to be purged. Temples, instruments, paintings, scrolls, jewellery, pottery, poetry and pots - anything at all 'old' destroyed or defaced. And the kids racing out to do it.
Even the birds, which we only spotted in the temples (as the monks are vegetarian ha ha) were driven from the sky by people banging pots or making noise so that they could not alight (and then eat the crops, you see).
Ah, it's a beautiful and sad place.
China is making me sad, lovely as it is...
I think after a month here, that I am glad of our upcoming mini-break to Mongolia - we arrive there on Chris's birthday (June 26) and will be staying right through for Nadaam!
Then it will be back for another couple of months in China....
I am hoping that democratic but still a little lacking on infrastructure Mongolia will let me blog and flickr at will :-)
see you then
