meal out

To thank Ganbaatar and Alta for their hospitality, I took the family out to a Chinese meal on Peace Avenue. I was really pleased that their three daughters and three sons all joined us. I knew this would be an unusual experience for the kids.

I asked each of the children to select a favourite dish. It was an exciting task for them, looking through the elaborate menu with exotic names. Their son Muugii and his younger brother were giggling shyly when discussing their choice of food. It happened that their favourites were close to mine – almost all dishes are of Sichuan cuisine. (This feast for fifteen persons cost only £36.)

When the dishes came, the kids looked more fascinated with the colours and variety than the actual taste of the food. The round, rotating table allowed them to see all the fifteen dishes in front of them. It’s probably an agricultural habit (not that I came from an agricultural background) to believe that the abundance of food is a joyful sensual experience. But when I saw the expressions of excitement and curiosity on the children’s faces, my theory’s confirmed.

But there was one unhappy person in our midst - Ganbaatar and Alta’s eldest daughter has never smiled since I’ve met her. She looked sad and miserable even when breastfeeding her son, Ulaana, in the lounge-bedroom of their house. The only time she did put on a vague grin was in her three-hour-long wedding video that her parents had made me watch. The entire wedding was a big singing session in which all family members took part, one after another, from the five-year-old to the seventy-year-old, through the super-loud amplifier.

That looked like a very happy wedding, but perhaps more so for the family than for the eldest daughter...Since she got married, her husband had gone to work in another part of Mongolia. She had to move back to her parents’ in order to get help with childcare. No one was asking the question of why the husband doesn’t come back to visit.

Muugii, who can speak some English, was sitting next to me. He told me that he might like to go to study in London. This is a migrating family, as I’ve come to know. Ganbaatar’s brother works in the US and hasn’t returned to Mongolia for years. His sister is living in France, although Ganbaatar hasn’t heard from her for some time.

‘And my sister-in-law, Tseegii, works as a domestic helper in London. You can call her and meet her,’ Ganbaatar said to me. I promised to show her all the family pictures.

Half way through the meal, a young couple, both in jeans, walked in and sat down. They didn’t seem to greet anyone at the table.

‘He is my son,’ Ganbaatar introduced the young man with a beard. I suddenly remembered this is the eldest son of whom Ganbaatar is so proud. He and his wife both work in computing. She had gone to work in Tokyo and left their new-born baby daughter, Baika, for Ganbaatar and Alta to look after.

The couple has moved back from Tokyo to live in Ulaanbaatar. But because of their hectic work, they felt they had to let the parents carry on with the childcare. They hadn’t seen their daughter Baika for a few weeks now. But since they arrived at the meal, the couple hardly ever looked at the child.

Baika stayed in Alta’s arms, crying a lot because of all the noises around. She has probably become used to having her grandmother as the mum a long time ago – she didn’t seem to need to go to her mother’s embrace. All throughout the evening, Alta tried to calm the crying granddaughter while her son and his wife enjoyed the dinner. This made me feel guilty for taking the family out and causing this extra stress to Ganbaatar and Alta!

party member

Walking the cattle back home wasn’t a light job – they were as easily agitated as kids. The whole process took over an hour to complete. I was exhausted by the end of it. When we retreated back into their ger, Alta’s mother was already sitting there waiting for us. She had changed into a deep pink traditional costume, looking a world different from the same woman I saw herding out there. She had also pinned her own medals on her chest for me to see.

‘Where are these medals from?’ I asked her.

‘From the party. I am a member,’ she replied. She is also an election campaigner.

half an hour before sunset

Alta's mum

We decided to take a walk to find Alta's mother. We walked along with our shadows at dusk. The sunshine still felt warm. A few kids were stepping in the large shadows of the fences, looking like they were walking on a wood bridge. Nature did magic to our eyes.

Smoke was coming out of some houses. The herding farmers must be almost finishing their day’s work and about to return home for supper.

At the hills of the mountains were waves of thick birch trees, presenting themselves in yellow-brownish shade in the setting sun... Along the way, there were a few dry tree branches with blue ribbons tied around them.

The houses became bigger as we walked along, away from the centre of the village. When we walked pass a huge two-floor building with an European-style balcony on the top floor, a garage downstairs, and a metal gate, Alta pointed to it and said to me: ‘It’s the governor’s house.’

‘Who? Who’s the governor?’ I asked.

‘The politician my father’s campaigning for,’ she replied.

As we walked closer to the mountain where Alta’s mother was herding, their daughter called out: ‘Grandma! Grandma!’

‘I am here!’ she shouted back. I couldn’t see anything or anyone in that distance.

A few minutes later, I saw three sheepdogs. Then a few cattle. Finally I saw a woman appearing. She looked strong, walking against the wind as she came down from the mountains.

When she was a few yards from me, I saw that she’s probably in her early sixties. Amazing strength. ‘We have ten cattle,’ she told me. They would be making a living from the diary products that they make.

inside the home of Alta's parents

meeting Alta's dad

Through the large yard of fifteen-something square meters, Alta's father welcomed us into their ger, and put a metal kettle on the stove in the middle. ‘Tsai (tea) is coming!’ Ganbaatar said to me.

‘The sparrow is tiny, but it has all five organs.’ This is how I would describe their well-maintained ger. Inside, they have three cupboards in orange-colour, an utterly compatible orange-colour table, a fridge, a TV, and two beds with layers of red duvets.

Alta's father took out some biscuits for us from the cupboard. Suutei tsai (milk tea) is ready! I could hardly wait. The steam of the boiling tea filled the entire ger. It tasted so delicious. The salt was like nutrition for me at this moment. And the creamy texture of the milky tea is absolutely soothing…

‘May I have another bowl of tsai?’ I asked politely.

Alta’s father was pleased at the request. More tea was poured into my bowl. Four or five sips, I’ve drunk it clean again.

Seeing that I’ve satisfied my thirst, Alta’s father put a large election poster on the table to show me.

‘It’s him! It’s him!’ he tried to tell me. Alta explained to me that this is the candidate for whom her father was campaigning during the election.

‘He put leaflet in every house in the village!’ Ganbaatar told me, giving a thumb-up to his father-in-law, if not just for his hard labour. He’s a village-level canvassing officer, you can say.

‘My party is Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP),’ he told me proudly. ‘I am a Communist.’ Alta then told me that her father has been a party member for all his life.

The MPRP has been very much part of the Mongolian collective memory of the people’s struggle against economic deprivation and imperialism. Alta’s father belongs to a generation that grew up in political upheavals. He was born a few years after People’s Republic of Mongolia was formed in 1924, as the second communist country in the world. Its final independence from China was only followed by the dominance of the Stalinist politics of the Soviet Union. Alta’s father grew up learning the Cyrillic alphabet and seeing monastries taken down. He wanted change, but he also wanted to see Mongolian people making the change for themselves. Soviet Union continued to occupy Mongolia with its military presence and ran the country as a satellite state, until 1990, when waves of democracy demonstrations broke out in Ulaanbaatar. The wishes of Alta’s father were realized by the younger generation – that March, Russia withdrew from Mongolia. In June, the first democratic elections were held, with the MPRP winning 85% of the vote.

The governing Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) won a majority in the June election 2008, gaining 58% of the 76 seats in Parliament. Following the election, the MPRP and opposition Democratic Party (DP) agreed to establish a coalition government for the next four years.

‘Look at these!’ Alta’s father took out a cushion pinned with dozens of medals that he had won for campaigning for the party.

He is also a Buddhist, and saw no contradiction between his communist ideals and the religious beliefs. The “isms” don’t seem to apply to him in his loyalty.

While he was chatting away about heaven and earth with the repeated use of a maximum of twenty words in English, his wife was herding the cattle out there in the mountain two miles away from the ger. She often works alone, all day long.

edge of the Darieh district

into the valleys

It was a Sunday morning when Ganbaatar and Alta came to see me again. ‘Would you like to come with us to visit my parents?’ Alta asked. I was thrilled. What can be a better way of spending a Sunday in Mongolia than with a Mongolian family?

We went by bus to the Darieh district where they live on the outskirt. I followed Ganbaatar and Alta into their local shop to buy some food for their parents. I also bought some chocolates and cold drinks as presents.

Their granddaughter Baika was wrapped up in thick traditional jacket, sleeping deep and sound when we got in. She looked so adorable yet so vulnerable at the same time. Rarely visited by her working parents, this one-year-old always looked slightly uncared for and withdrawn.

Ganbaatar and Alta prepared some mutton dumplings for lunch. ‘Please have some food,’ urged Ganbaatar, pushing a few gherkins in front of me, to go with the heavy dumplings. I was starving. The dumplings tasted particularly oily, which was fine with me – I had a feeling that I’d need these to keep me going for the day.

The couple asked their son Muugii and their seven-year-old, youngest daughter to come along to visit their grandparents. Muugii had to go into the city with his friends. So only the little girl joined us. We walked towards the back of the district. Sunshine glittered in the stream that ran through the rear of the shanty town. We crossed a small bridge to the other side. Three cars were parked right on the edge of the stream – they caught my eyes because cars are a rarity in this place.

We finally got on a minibus after half an hour’s waiting and bargaining for the ticket price. There were about twelve people, including three kids, crammed against each other in this van.

‘This reminds me of my minibus trip to Kharkhorin (also known as Karakorum, the ancient capital of the 12th-century Mongol Empire),’ I said to Ganbaatar and Alta.

‘Kharkhorin? Beautiful!’ Ganbaatar replied. ‘Beautiful place.’

Yes, beautiful, with a magnificent past. There is the 416-year-old Erdene Zuu Monastry as Mongolia’s first Buddhist centre. There is the grandeur of the longest river in Mongolia, i.e., the fish-rich Orkhon River, that rises in the Khangai Mountains of Arkhangai Aimag and flows northwards for 698 miles before joining the Selenge River, which flows north into Russia and Lake Baikal. And there are the Hunnic imperial tombs to be seen in the Orkhon river valley.

And sure, Kharkhorin was also the centre from where Chinggis Khan ruled.

But life is tough there, not only for us budget travellers but the local people.

Back in 2002, even getting a ticket to places like Kharkhorin wasn’t all that easy for international travelers. It wasn’t something that you could just book up from your guesthouse. For our tickets, I mistook a MOT centre for a travel agent. Luckily we met a kindhearted teacher Orgil, who volunteered to take us to the west side of town where the privately-run minibuses gathered.

‘Back then, it was a seven-hour minibus trip taking us 370 kilometers away from Ulaanbaatar to Kharkhorin. There was no public transport – no trains. No buses. And yet at that time the government was considering moving the capital back to Kharkhorin! Can you imagine that?’ I said, recalling that journey bumping speedily across the steppes in central Mongolia, on a van that was supposed to take only seven people but in fact took 16.

I remember the windy dust blowing in my face all the way as I glimpsed the breast-like mountain peaks in the distance. They’ve got pointed nipples with blue ribbons around them…(This is a shamanist practice, popular in the countryside. It’s called ovoos, or offerings, which are sacred piles of stones or wood, decorated with animal skulls, blue ribbons, coins, engravings and broken glass. If an ovoo is near a road, it has a jeep track encircling it, for those drivers who drive round it three times in preference to walking.)

I remember one of our co-travellers was a photographer, Daschka, originally from Kharkhorin. He was returning to his hometown to work there. He was unhappy with the disparity of living standards between town and country. He knew both Ulaanbaatar and Kharkhorin so well. I remember him saying: ‘A tiny two-bedroom flat in Ulaanbaatar can cost you $20,000. Yet in Kharkhorin you can’t even secure the most basic facilities like water and electricity!’

And indeed, we had experienced the lack of basic living necessities in Kharkhorin. Not only there were numerous power cuts, we were also charged extra money for having a hot shower. I was greeted by the guesthouse manager with this question everyday: ‘Would you like a hot shower?’

Back then in 2002, people talked constantly about poverty and unemployment. In the years after the end of the Russian dominance in 1990, the annual GDP was around $300 and there were mass laid-offs in Ulaanbaatar. Urban jobs were scarce and many young people moved back to their homes in the countryside and the problem of over-using the land (livestock exhausting the land) emerged as a result.

The electing of the first non-communist government in 1996 did not seem to bring results in economic betterment. This was the background in which the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) was voted back into office in 2000. Those were Mongolian people’s initial responses to the market economy which was seen to deepen the unevenness of development between town and country. (However, MPRP had a Stalinist origin and wasn’t going to discard market economy but to manage and control it.)

Six years on, poverty and unemployment is still on working people’s lips. Although foreign investment has boosted the private sector and the youth are once again moving into the city and see urban life as the way forward, private-sector jobs are low-paid and far from secure.

Decent pay and job security run against the interests of the international investors. In October 2008, the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation listed Mongolia as “the tenth freest economy out of 30 countries in the Asia-Pacific Region”. The UB Post, one of Mongolia’s largest English-language newspaper, reported that Mongolia received a score of 62.8 in the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom. Mongolia’s “labour freedom” scored 62.4%. It said: ‘Restrictive regulations impede employment opportunities and productivity growth. The non-salary cost of employing a worker can be high, but dismissing a redundant employee is costless. Relations related to the number of work hours are not flexible.’

Being “the tenth freest economy in the Asia-Pacific Region” means a lower living standard and higher unemployment.

One after another, our co-travellers got off the minibus in villages along the journey. Forty minutes later, we reached a village with a Liberty statue. ‘It’s here!’ Ganbaatar urged me to get off the van.

I have to say this is the prettiest village I’ve ever seen in Mongolia. Many houses, with such a variety of colours, have porches outside. Some are tiny and cute – like candy-houses in the fairy tale. There are also a few gers around, like the one Alta’s parents are living in.

friends and Chinggis vodka

A woman in pink came in. Ganbaatar introduced her as Enhjargal. She also went to the same school with them some twenty years ago. I realized this was their reunion party. Enhjargal shook my hand warmly and didn’t seem to mind a stranger in their midst on such an occasion.

She has thin eyes and really thin, tiny lips. She’s dressed up and had put on a pair of gold earnings. She told me she is a business woman and frequently travels by rail to China to purchase plastic table covers and bring them back to Ulaanbaatar for sale. ‘Good money,’ she said.

Enhjargal is also married to a Korean man. She and Otgo would often meet up and chat about their life with their absentee-husbands. Enhjargal’s husband spends most of the year in Korea. ‘My husband is rarely in Ulaanbaatar…I don’t have a sex life anymore!’ she told everyone candidly. Her friends treated it like a joke and laughed loud. But Enhjargal seemed serious about her loneliness.

‘I never look for other men. I want to be loyal to my husband. But he is not here with me!’ she said. Alta looked her at sympathetically, not knowing what to say to make her feel better. Ganbaatar poured more Chinggis vodka in her glass.

The café chef emerged from behind the room, all in white, with a tall chef’s hat on. Maybe she’s the celebrity chef of Ulaanbaatar!

‘She is our old school-mate, too!’ Otgo introduced her to me.

She not only works as a chef but teaches cooking. ‘I many times went to teach cooking in Zhangjiakou (in north China),’ she told me, ‘I can cook Beijing dishes as well as Mongolian and Russian.’ Tonight, she prepared delicious Russian beef salad for us. It was sliced roast beef with onions and went very well with the Chinggis vodka.

Ganbaatar’s old friend also turned up. His name is Ayush and he’s an old-time street artist. ‘Ayush… great artist! Many… many experience!’ Ganbaatar praised his friend with a thumb up.

Ayush had just finished a long day’s work going from street to street, and was carrying a large folder under his arm. I asked to look at his paintings. They were of very mature hands! I like especially those portraits of women and rural family life. I like their expressions that tell the story of life struggles: the daily hard labour such as herding, milking and making food, child-rearing, keeping up the spirit and coping. There is a lot of life in his work. I wondered why he hasn’t tried to exhibit his work in a gallery.

Ayush speaks good English. ‘This comes from years of selling work to English-speaking people!’ he said.

‘Ganbei!’ Ganbaatar raised his glass, practicing his new-learnt Chinese word “cheers”. 'We toast to our generation! Everyone is a child of 1968. It’s a great year!'

‘What were the most important things that happened that year in Mongolia?’ I asked.

‘Oh, nothing much. But Mongolia won three…three bronze medals in the Olympics Games in 1968,’ he replied, shrugging his shoulders.

Then, each of them toasted me, this “friend from afar”. If I ever have to quote Confucius, it would be his saying: ‘Aren’t we glad that friends have travelled from afar?’ These lovely people live this spirit.

We left the place when the last drop of our two bottles of Chinggis vodka was licked clean.

Let's go drink coffee

Ganbaatar and Alta came to meet me one afternoon. ‘Come with us,’ Ganbaatar said, ‘Drink coffee together!’

So I followed them, all over town, to look for their favourite café. It looked like they didn’t visit town centre for social events too often as they kept getting lost. We walked from street to street. Finally, in a small lane, we found the café! It is conveniently called ‘Nice’, a relaxed-looking little place filled with large posters of Marilyn Monroe.

‘Otgo, our old friend, runs the café,’ Ganbaatar told me with pride. ‘We went to school together.’ A few minutes later, Otgo walked in with a leather handbag, looking confidently, like a manageress. She has light brown hair colour – unusual for a local Mongolian. Later, she told me that she is of Buryat origin and had moved to Ulaanbaatar from Ulan Ude with her family when she was a child.

There are currently 50,000 Buryat-speaking people living in Mongolia. Buryat language belongs to the eastern subgroup of the central branch of the Mongolian languages, which are part of the Altaic language family. Most Buryat people live in the northeast of Mongolia.

‘My full first name is Otgonjargal, which means ‘happiness’. Everyone calls me Happy Otgo!’ she introduced herself, laughing wholeheartedly, from her stomach. She is one of the few who speak some English among all her friends, and as soon as she sat down, she became everyone’s interpreter in communicating with me.

Apart from being a successful café owner, Otgo has a busy family life. She is married to a Korean businessman and takes up all child-rearing responsibilities as her two sons live with her in Ulaanbaatar. She seemed happy with the cross-cultural marriage. ‘My husband is often in Korea… We sometimes go over there for holidays. We love it there in Korea,’ she said.

Otgo is clearly well-travelled and speaks fluent Korean, to everyone’s envy. The ability to speak other languages is also a status symbol. ‘My two sons both speak good Korean. My husband doesn’t allow them to speak Mongolian at home, even they live and go to school in Mongolia. They learn to speak Korean and Chinese languages – languages of the future.’

To get anywhere in this world, not only someone of Otgo’s background but many Mongolian people are eager to learn the language of international market. This is much more so now than in 1997 when I was here first time. Back then, following decades of Russian dominance (under which the Latin alphabet was adopted in 1931, the Cyrillic alphabet was adopted in 1937 and the Classical Mongol script, developed for seven centuries from the Uighur alphabet, was abolished in 1941), there were efforts to revive the old Mongolian script and its teaching began at some schools.

However, today, nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is no longer the talk of rejuvenating or even knowing about the old script. Except the street artists I’ve met in Ulaanbaatar who use the old script for decorative purpose in their work, working-class people know little or nothing about their ancient language. This is especially true with the younger generation – they haven’t even grown up with any knowledge of the old script.

Otgo is of Ulaanbaatar’s middle-class. And all of her family’s doing well. ‘You must come to Terelj – my brother manages the whole place,’ she said. I remember Terelj, a stone mountain around 79 kilometers to the east of Ulaanbaatar. It was in Terelj that I saw a steppe squirrel for the first time…

‘Do you like riding horses, Ulaana?’ Otgo asked.

‘Yes…I went horse riding in Terelj years ago, near a turtle mountain, or that was how our friend Orgil called it.’

‘Were you good at riding?’ Otgo asked competitively.

‘No, not compared with Orgil. He was really excellent. My horse was just running after his.’

‘Every Mongolian person knows how to ride a horse,’ Otgo said.


Photo:Top - friends at "Nice" Cafe; bottom - Me before going on a horse ride in Terelj back in 2002.

no gluttony

One morning, I went looking for the city art gallery. My guide book, published this year, was apparently outdated already on this piece of information, and no passers-by had a clue. So I opted for the Mongolian Union of Artists, where they were holding a photography exhibition publicized all over town and in the English-language Mongolian newspapers. It was a second-floor room in a run-down building, with graffiti outside. Some urban youth culture, a good sign?

I expected the vanguard of modern Mongolian photography…To my amusement, the exhibition happened to be all about China, topics ranging from rural life to urban development, and the photography was conducted by mostly Chinese photographers. The only local art wasn’t inside – it was from a street artist waiting to sell his works outside the building.

I’d spent only £2 again on a good lunch at a café. I tried to keep this principle in mind: The cheapness in food should never mean gluttony! I have trained myself to be a constrained eater during the entire journey, intentionally trying not to over-eat.

This was because of my experience of seeking medical help when I caught a bug the last time in Ulaanbaatar. I was in such pain that a doctor was called to visit me in the guesthouse. She wasn’t sure whether it was my stomach or appendix that was the problem. So I was asked to go to the city hospital, twice, for a blood test. Then the doctor told me I must stay in Ulaanbaatar for an operation to remove the appendix. Hell, I thought, I would have to miss my train, which would mean waiting for another week for the next train, which would also mean I’ll miss the train from Beijing to Shanghai which would then mean I’ll miss the bloody ferry from Shanghai to Kobe, Japan, which would eventually mean I’ll miss the damn ferry from Osaka to Okinawa, which would tragically mean I’ll miss the final ferry from Okinawa to the Keelung port of Taiwan.

Luckily, another doctor got suspicious of the first diagnosis and gave me another test. He told me in the end that I just had a bad stomach infection and all I needed were some painkillers and a little break from the delicious Korean food that I was indulging myself in. That was an experience that put me off eating madly (or as the Chinese would say, bao yin bao shi, i.e., eating violently).

power cuts

One night, I got back to the hotel at 1am. As I finally got round to turning on my laptop to read my emails, the light suddenly went out. I mean, completely out. The only light in my room was the light from the screen of my little super-mini laptop. Damn! I looked out the window to the streets. It was pitched black. Even the street lamps were out.

I’ve always disliked darkness. I started to worry that the electricity of my laptop will soon be exhausted. Is there a torch somewhere? Why didn’t I bring that, or a candle with me? I should have expected power cuts in this city. It happens all the time.

While blaming myself, I started to think: Why the hell did no one inform me beforehand? But of course, no one knew beforehand. I tried to call the reception, to borrow a torch or a candle. But of course, the phone line’s dead, too. I started to panic.

There was nothing to panic about, rationally thinking. All I had to do was go to sleep and forget about it. When I wake up, it will be another morning of bright blue sky! Everything will be back to normal tomorrow! But all alone in the complete darkness, I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t close my eyes. This was the first and only time I actually felt alone in Mongolia.

Mama Mia or Chinggis?

One evening after having steamed mutton dumplings (buuz) for dinner, Arghun asked me in her sweetest voice: ‘What would you like to do most in the evening in Ulaanbaatar?’

Good question, I said. The first thing that came into my mind was going to the cinema!

‘You know Tengis Cinema? Next to the Liberty Square?’ I asked them.

‘Yes! That’s the best one in town! Let’s go and see a movie!’ Arghun spoke with her entertaining, slight North American accent that she acquired from her Mongolian teacher. I could see that Urnaa and Gunge were basically dragged along there by us. ‘We just have to follow the youngsters,’ I teased them. ‘Anyway, it’s got to be good for you! You haven’t been home for a long time. You should see a local film.’

But when we got to the cinema, I realized that Tengis Cinema only shows two films at any one time. There were only two possible choices: Mama Mia, or Don’t Die, Empire of Chinggis Khan. I’m definitely no fan of ABBA. But the Chinggis Khan film is in Mongolian language. This is the biggest and best-facilitated cinema in Ulaanbaatar and we wouldn’t find more choices elsewhere. I decided to leave the decision to the hostesses.

I could see that Urnaa fancied the idea of Mama Mia – she studied the poster for twenty minutes. She’s a Christian, converted before leaving Mongolia seven years ago and apparently doesn’t mind Hollywood much. Also, she’s not that keen on historical epic films. But despite being the decision-maker in the family, she didn’t want to impose her choice on this occasion – I guess because I was here.

Gunje said typically to us: ‘I don’t mind. You decide.’ Arghun was much more outspoken: ‘I think we should go for Don’t Die, Empire of Chinggis Khan. Because it’s about our history and it will be very interesting not just for us, but for our guest!’ She smiled at me. A good student in tourism. Chinggis Khan it is then.

Arghun was pleased, and felt like celebrating the victory of her choice. She suggested that we went for a glass of fermented mare milk (airag, or koumiss) sold in a ger next door.

So we sneaked into this ger already filled with people. We were given a bowl of airag each. Gunje and Arghun downed the drink within a few seconds. ‘It’s only a few percent (of alchohol)!’ Gunje told me, urging me to drink it all. I wasn’t worried about the alcoholic volume but the poignantly sour taste. I tried it before and decided then it wasn’t my thing.

A group of Mongolian journalists were making a programme about the national drink. I thought it was amusing that the airag seemed more exotic to them than to me – they were tittering around and filming the act of drinking airag. Each of them was giving me a thumb up when I finally downed the drink in my throat.

To make the evening an utterly and doubly Chinggis night, we went to drink Chinggis beer in an over-decorated pub next door. I wasn’t sure what theme it looked, but it has huge windows, super-large tables and sofas. Loads of Mongolian youth with dyed blonde hair were chatting in there. Everyone was drinking Chinggis beer – it’s much more trendy than vodka here. (In fact, drinking vodka is seen as a middle-aged, old-fashioned thing.)

When Don’t Die, Empire of Chinggis Khan finally started, I realized I wasn’t going to really see the film – Arghun had decided that she will ensure my understanding of the entire film by simultaneous interpreting!

It was a Mongolian version of the ‘Mongol’ by the Russian director Sergei Bodrov. The story line is very similar – it recounts the life of Chinggis Khan from the birth of Temujin by the Onon River in 1162, to when he became a slave, to the days when he conquered half the world in 1206. The differences are that the Mongolian version is richer in dialogue, which gives a clearer sense of the historical context.

When the light was lit up again after two long hours, I saw Gunje and Arghun with red eyes. Many others in the audience were also drying their tears. I almost felt embarrassed that I didn’t cry.

Photo: Arghun drinking a bowl of airag.

Ganbaatar and Alta

Inside the fence there was a yard of around twenty or so square meters. Gannbaatar led us into the house, divided by a white wall with peeling-off paint. On the left side of the wall was a small kitchen with an ancient-looking agar rusted with age. On the other side was the ten-square-meter lounge-bedroom in which all his family – Ganbaatar and his wife, their five children and two grandchildren – eat, drink and sleep.

Ganbaatar and his wife Altantsetseg (meaning ‘rose’) opened their arms to us. ‘Come inside!’ they said. She has a kind face and distinctly high cheekbones. She was holding her one-year-old granddaughter Baika in her arms. She asked me to call her Alta.

Inside the carpet-filled lounge-bedroom, there are two single beds on the side. Alta tugged her granddaughter inside the woolen cover and put her to a nap.

Ganbaatar laid out all his work on the floor to show us. With a cup of tsai (tea), we indulged ourselves glancing through all of his paintings like in a gallery. I particularly had my eyes on a painting in the same style as ‘One Day in the Life of Mongolia’ as he promised.

‘This is what you’re looking for,’ he said. Urnaa and Arghun were giggling and making fun of the details of love making and toileting in the painting.

‘These are just routine functions in everyone’s life,’ Ganbaatar said to them, ‘They are very natural things in Mongolian art.’ He’s quite right – and the Mongolian artists don’t have a hang-up about such things.

‘Once, I sold a copy of this painting to an American, for $1,500,’ he told me.

‘I have never been to an art school,’ he told me, ‘I admired other people’s work, and so I taught myself to draw, from reading art books and doing sketches at first. And then I started painting in water colour. Occasionally I also did oil paints. Over the past twenty years, I’ve come to acquire the skills.’

Ganbaatar is among a few hundreds of street artists trying to make a living in Ulaanbaatar. The trade relies a great deal on tourists and international visitors. Tourism is, after all, a large part of the country’s means of livelihood – it accounts for 18% of the economy. Despite so, tourism only really functions three months a year because of the climate – the severely cold winter with temperature dropping down to 40 centigrade’s is practically the zero season for tourism.

Therefore, the work of the street artists is very much seasonal. They need to make good use of the short time they have in a year to sell their work. In the winter, they would prepare and get their work ready. Once the summer comes and brings back tourists, they would all pour into the streets all over the city. In one day, a street artist would need to walk for miles to search for buyers. They move from spot to spot, from the busy shopping streets to the bars, and to the museums and galleries.

During the off-peak seasons, Ganbaatar makes a living by working as a driver for private companies. Alta works at home, looking after the kids and grandkids, which is more than a full-time job. Despite their dignified appearance, I get the impression that they are struggling hard to make ends meet.

Ganbaatar decided to complete a drawing for me while we were there. We all sat on the beds watching him, while he bent on his knees, lay out the paper on the floor, and mix in the paints carefully. He had not even a canvas to draw on. ‘I did have a studio once,’ he looked up and told me.

The dim light from the shade-less light bulb shone through from the kitchen. His brushes looked as old as his ink. Perhaps he couldn’t really afford to invest on his means of production. He focused on each stroke of his, frowning occasionally as if discontent with what he’d done. He looked like he was completely in his own world.

Alta sat leaning against a huge pile of five or six suitcases, as if the family has only arrived here. She told me that they’ve always lived here. She watched her husband with apprehension, as if he might soon make a wrong stroke on the thin paper. She looked tired, with bits of her hair hanging down her cheeks. This was probably one of the rare moments when her granddaughter’s taking a nap and she could have a little break.

Ganbaatar offered to take us to visit his brother who’s living next door in a ger inside the fence. It is a small ger with not much furniture inside apart from two beds. ‘This is my brother,’ Ganbaatar introduced me to a man sitting on the bed. When I met his sister-in-law Tsegii in London months later, she explained to me that the man in the ger is in fact the brother-in-law of Ganbaatar’s brother. Such distant relative – Tsegii said that Mongolian people tend to call all relatives “brother” or “sister” when introducing them.

Although these two families are living right next to each other, they seemed to maintain quite independent in their life. They don’t even cook or have dinner together.

‘A ger like this costs $1,500 to build,’ Ganbaatar told me. This is double the price of a ger from what I knew back in 2002.

to the outskirt of town

The next morning, I woke up to another day of blue sky outside. Looking out the window, my felt so high-spirited already, and the day hasn’t begun yet! I said to myself: I want to have more of this blue sky! With no hesitation, I decided to stay longer in Mongolia. I got myself ready to go and change my train ticket in town. I just couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the next day!

I walked to a place called the Technology and Science Centre on Baga Toiruu Street. Inside, through a labyrinth-like hallway that can be seen in many old-fashioned Soviet-period buildings, I found the room with a sign “Real Russia” on it. This is the company from where I’d booked the one-way second-class Ulaanbaatar-Moscow ticket that cost me £120. To change to another train, I had to pay T129,955 (£70), which was less than I actually expected. All I had to do is wait for their call and come back to collect my new ticket when it’s ready.

Now I knew I didn’t have to leave, I could embrace this space over and over again!

As I turned up at the Sukhbaatar statue waiting for Ganbaatar (as we agreed to meet here), Urnaa called me. ‘Come to the side of the Square! I have a car here for you!’ she instructed. I realized she had made her own arrangement for me since I told her about my meeting with Ganbaatar the other day. She took his phone number and called him, telling him to stay at home to wait for us. She had organized for a friend of hers to drive us to his place on the outskirt of town.

I wondered why Urnaa never told me about this arrangement beforehand. She just took control. Oh well, if that made her happy. She has been protective, like an elder sister, since I met her on the train from Moscow.

Now I got in the car as she told. A street artist approached me from outside the car. To be polite, I had a short conversation with him about his work. When he was out of sight, Urnaa coached me: ‘Why did you speak so much to him? He’s not a good man.’

‘Yes, mum, I won’t again,’ I answered. So we drove off, into the periphery of Ulaanbaatar. Townships are sprawling around the edge of the city, the number of which has doubled in the past two decades. Half an hour later, we were led into a mass of residential areas called the Darieh district – with tens of thousands of one-to-two-storey houses and gers alongside each other - surrounded by layers of valleys.

We turned a corner into a narrow street lined with short fences on both sides. I could see people going on about their daily life across the fences. Many houses have a ger right next to them in the yard. This is quite common as housing costs are high. Many people live with their extended families right next to them within the same land circled by fences. It is common that young couples are living in gers while their parents live next door to them in the house within the same property.

‘Sain bainuu!’ Ganbaatar came outside of his house to greet us – me, Urnaa, Gunje and their niece Arghun. Ganbaatar looked as exhausted and unshaved as the first time I met him. He still put on his friendly smile in the face of a group of strangers.

‘Sain bainuu!’ we greeted him.

home and away

‘I used to work in the garment trade before leaving Mongolia. For years!’ Urnaa told me. ‘The garment job in Budapest wasn’t my first job in this trade. I was already very experienced and good in my work when I started there.’

Gunje was different. She used to work in a candy and bakery company in Ulaanbaatar. Her first job in Hungary was in a Chinese restaurant. ‘They knew I hadn’t done catering work before. So they had me cheap and gave me loads of work to do.’

Urnaa said she’s leaving for Hungary again soon. She had no choice to but continue working abroad. ‘Work is little (scarce) in Mongolia,’ she said. ‘Too many people have no jobs. If you have rich relatives, maybe you’ll be OK…We have no one rich to rely on and we must be independent and make our own living. In fact, we work abroad and help our families at home.’

Unemployment in Mongolia is now between 30%-40%. Urnaa isn’t in an unique situation at all. In fact, there are at least 120,000 Mongolians working abroad (over 8% of the country’s workforce), according to the Consular Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, although informal estimates are as high as 300,000. Official sources also say that the largest number of Mongolians are residing in South Korea (35,000), USA (22,000), the Czech Republic (11,000), UK (9,000), and Kazakhstan (9,000). Their earnings are an important source of revenue for their home country.

‘Those Mongolian people in South Korea and the Czech Republic mostly work in assembly factories…in industrial jobs, especially in Czech Republic,’ Urnaa told, ‘Those like us in Hungary are mostly in manufacturing jobs or in kitchens.’

As a rule, migrants are subject to harsh working conditions. ‘It’s normal to work more than eight hours or ten hours a day. It’s not only in Budapest, but everywhere, in other countries…Mongolians in South Korea and the Czech Republic, and the USA, always work too much…’ said Urnaa. ‘Many Mongolians in Czech Republic and Hungary have good skills and… qualifications… Most of them have the right papers. But they cannot get the right jobs. Their jobs are no good and sometimes dangerous.’

The hardship of working abroad has turned some back home. This was one thing that Gunje told me again and again when we were sharing the cabin on the train from Moscow. ‘I am not going back to Hungary with my sister. No way,’ Gunje told me. ‘I’ve done enough hard work there. I’d spent all my youth there. Now I’m middle-aged - I want to think for myself.’

‘You’re absolutely right to think for yourself! So you’re definitely settling back in Mongolia?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I want to find a nice Mongolian man and get married! and I want to have many children!’ she said, laughing loudly. ‘I have to work hard for that!’

‘What about you, Urnaa? It must be difficult for you to be parted from your husband?’ I asked.

‘I’m divorced,’ Urnaa told me for the first time.

kimchi and rice

The five-storey State Department Store is the best place to get a reasonable shopping done if you’re looking for clothing, cashmere, or just any souvenirs. They were all enthusiastic window shoppers. Arghun insisted on explaining to me about most of the items in the souvenir department while I tried to find a pair of wool shoes for Urnaa’s new-born grandson.

I decided to dump the budget eating plan and splash out on a good Korean meal with the girls. The young Arghun had never had a Korean, and she was very excited. ‘It will be fun for me,’ she said. We picked a second-floor restaurant and ordered kimchi (cooked cabbage marinaded in chilli sauce) as starter and five large dishes – the well-known Dwaeji-dwen-jang (sesame-seed-powdered pork steak in soy bean paste), chilli beancurd and the hot and homely potato and beef stew among them. The whole meal cost the four of us £8.

We ate like crazy and took snapshots of each other while swallowing our food…I could never have enough of kimchi! I had to order a second portion. ‘I could live on just kimchi and rice,’ I told them, winning their laughs.

‘We didn’t usually eat like this when we were working in Budapest,’ Urnaa said, ‘It’s so good to be home.’

‘I’ve put on too much weight since I’m back here!’ Gunje said, shoveling beancurd into her mouth.

reunion

Meeting Urnaa and Gunje again was lovely. They giggled and joked as much as they did on the train from Moscow. Urnaa worked out that we’d better do with an interpreter, so they brought their niece, Arghun, with them. She is a seventeen-year-old student of tourism and translation. She has straight long hair, and a pair of almond-like eyes. Arghun was dressed up in a suit, like she was going to a job interview when she came to meet me. Politely, she introduced herself and her brother who is also a college student (equivalent of A-levels) in Ulaanbaatar.

‘I left Mongolia for Hungary seven years ago…My niece was only a child then,’ Urnaa told me, holding Arghun’s hands. ‘Now she’s seventeen! Look at her – she’s turned into a beautiful girl!’

‘Big Mama’s back!’ Arghun said, caressing Urnaa’s hair. Urnaa responded by touching her face and kissing her on her lips. They were not in the slightest embarrassed about displaying their emotions, in a physical way, in public – and certainly not in front of me.

Gunje watched them but felt a little left out. She pouted a little, and then joined in – she kissed her niece warmly on her cheeks and lips. Three of them cuddled up together.

I’ve never seen this kind of expression of affection in a Chinese or Taiwanese family. Saying “I love you” to each other in public would be a big thing for many families I know in China and Taiwan. I do envy Urnna and Gunje.

‘Let’s take a walk to the State Department Store!’ Urnaa suggested. We strolled along, arm in arm, through the little alleyways that Arghun calls short cuts. Urnaa started humming a folk song. She kept asking me: ‘Are you happy?’

meeting Ganbaatar

A man stopped me when I carried on walking. ‘Hello! Hello!’

I turned around and saw a forty-something man with an open folder in his hand. ‘You want to see this?’ the man asked.

There were pages after pages of water-colour paintings on thin papers inside the folder. ‘You want to see?’ the man asked again, pushing the paintings towards me.

He watched me with his eyes focused anxiously as I looked through all his work. It was as if he was anticipating an evaluation. The deep wrinkles at the end of his sincere eyes seemed to tell me something about him and his life.

‘What you think of these paintings? You like?’ he asked, concentrating my attention on his work.

‘Do you draw people?’ I asked politely. He’s clearly specialized in doing sketches of animals, particularly horses, which I used to draw when I was a kid and in which I’m no longer interested.

‘I like horses. They are very important in Mongolian life,’ he answered. ‘But I also draw people sometimes.’

‘Have you done anything similar to “One Day in the Life of Mongolia”?’ I asked, remembering one of the masterpieces by Balduugiin Sharav (1866-1939) that I saw last time in a museum. It is the most impressive, liveliest portray of rural Mongolian life, from birth to death.

‘Ah, you know that painting…!’ he was glad to hear it, ‘Yes, yes, I have!’

He told me his name is Ganbaatar. And I told him that the second character of my Chinese name means Red, which is “Ulaana” in Mongolian.

He laughed, and said: ‘Yes, Ulaana! Ulaana!’ Thus Ulaana became my Mongolian name.

I asked where he lives, intending to invite myself there for a visit.

‘Outside of Ulaanbaatar,’ he replied. ‘My family owns a ger. I do drawing in there sometimes.’

‘May I visit you sometime?’ I pushed.

He hesitated, not knowing my intention.

‘I’d like to see where you produce your work.’

He smiled, with a relief. ‘Fine.’

‘Shall we meet tomorrow?’ I didn’t want to give him time to regret.

‘Ah… Fine.’ We agreed to meet under the statue of Sukhbaatar the following afternoon.

City of Red Hero - then and now

Urnaa called to say that they will come in a few hours to meet me. Having time on my hands, I decided to take a walk to Choijin lama monastry that I visited years ago in 1997. It’s situated two streets away, in the south of the Suhkbaatar Square.

The monastry was built in 1904-1908 by the brother of a Tibetan lama Bogd Khan. It survived the destruction of monastries in the 1930s because it was used as a museum to demonstrate the country’s feudal past.

I wanted to see the monastry again because I still remember the magnificent display of tsam masks in the main temple. Tsam, also called the “meditation in action”, is an ancient religious ritual mask-dancing that reflects Buddhist teaching and combines with Shamanistic traditions. It is part of the art form named “Doigar”, depicting independent imagination as wisdom according to ancient Indian philosophy. It is also a unique theatrical experience that stimulates your senses. Skilled dancers are dressed in elaborately ornamental costumes and bear faces - in the form of wildly painted coloured masks – of apostles. The dance was supposed to fend off or exorcise “evil spirits”.

The tsam dance was introduced into Mongolia in the eighth century when the Indian saint Lovon Badamjunai was invited to Mongolia to sanctify the construction of the first Tibetan temple Samya. It became a traditional ceremony in Ulaanbaatar in 1811. Although the dance came into Mongolia third-way, through its popularisation in Tibet, the art became highly developed in Mongolia. Today, more than 500 monasteries of the 700 Mongolian monasteries have had their own local variations of the ceremony.

Although I’m not a believer of guai (supernatural mysteries), li (forces), luan (chaos), shen (gods and dieties), I was fascinated with these almost frightening-looking and monstrous faces and the functions that they served. One of the main characters, named Dharmapala, is a three-eye, large-ear creature with dark pink wrinkled face decorated with five little skeletons on the head. Its tongue stuck out a little in between its four sharp teeth. Who else could fend off “evil forces” if not Dharmapala?

When Buddhism was suppressed in 1937, practices like tsam was also buried. The government launched a Mongolian-version of the Stalinist purge, wiping out most of Mongolia’s monastries. Up to 30,000 monks were massacred, and thousands were sent to labour camps in Siberia.

When religious and cultural freedom was finally granted since the end of Russian control, people no longer knew Buddhism in Mongolia – they had to learn it all over again! Tsam’s revival has been a result mainly of the fast developing tourist industry rather than a cultural renaissance. Instead of it being a forum for understanding folk cultural practices, it is an attraction for the purpose of adding to the country’s revenue. Thus, religious relics have been bringing in cash for the country since the end of 1990. Tsam performance began once again in monasteries. Cultural traditions and ethnicity have become precious commodities. Young monks have been cultivating their Buddhist beliefs and learning the skills of tsam in their monastries, now protected as the nation’s treasures.

Out of the Choijin lama monastry, I wandered into Nairamdal Park by chance. It’s a popular weekend leisure resort for local people. Motor plastic ducks filled the pond, with dozens of families around. Leisurely I found my way back to the busier part of town, onto Peace Avenue, one of the most lively street in the city.

The place has changed a lot in the past decade. Back in 1997, Ulaanbaatar was still primarily filled with Brezhnev-era flats and Soviet-style government buildings. It looked more like another post-Soviet city. There was not very much in between the old – the temples and monastries mainly built between 17th-20th centuries by Chinese and Tibetan architects – and the relatively new of the Soviet period. In 2002, when I visited again, the city had acquired a newer look, with service industries growing – there were more shops, more restaurants with foreign cuisine becoming more popular, and even more internet cafes. More Mongolian people were going away and back to Ulaanbaatar. A bohemian sub culture was emerging in the capital.

Now in 2008, I was seeing more of all those, with greater intensity. The fast growth of the private sector is obvious to see – it is actually now accounting for 80% of Mongolia’s GDP. Traces of foreign investment are there in front of your eyes – posh Chinese-built hotels, for example. One of the biggest investors is China, making up 40% of foreign investment in Mongolia.

The diversity on the surface of the urban life not only reflects the growth of the private businesses, of incoming products and influences, it also displays the growth in the cost of people’s housing and living. The income gap between the top and the bottom of society is widening fast – to the discomfort of many who have migrated abroad for work. While a tiny minority of Mongolians might be able to live in a luxury apartment in the city centre – with a mid-range, two-bedroom, family-size 100-square-meter flat in Ulaanbaatar costing up to around $100,000 (£68,710), the vast majority of people could never dream of affording it.

The expansion of the ger suburbs outside of Ulaanbaatar is a result of people’s incapability to cope with high-cost housing inside the city. However, ger, the cheapest housing and the only traditionally Mongolian construction, has also gone up in price and now costs on average $1,000 -1,500 to build.

Among the changes is also the city’s increasing demand for migrant labour. The size of the migrant communities in Ulaanbaatar has grown – the North Koreans, for example, have entered in larger number in recent years and work as labourers and catering workers. This trend will grow as Ulaanbaatar and Pyongyang have reached an agreement in February 2008 allowing North Koreans to work in Mongolia - It permits up to 5,300 North Korean workers to come to Mongolia over the next five years. There are also many Chinese workers contracted to work on construction projects around the capital. The growing number has made these migrants more visible than before.

My first lunch at the centre of Ulaanbaatar cost me more than my budget eating standard of T3,000 (£1.6). I’d spent – T4,500 (£2.4) on a bowl of rice and beef threads at a café on Peace Avenue.