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.
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