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.