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.
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