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.
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