Mongolian Luck, How Mongolia could become the Norway of Central Asia
“To Search for the Hermit and Not to Find Him” is the title of an old Chinese poem from Jia Dao, an author from the Tang Dynasty. This poem crossed my mind as I rumbled over the porous sand tracts in the dusty slums outside of Ulan Bator in a Jeep with my acquaintance Tsedved.
I had already given up hope, but we found him anyway after almost two hours of searching – the hermit. Dovdon is 102 years old. He lives in a wooden hut with pigeons constantly fluttering about, and spends his time in study and meditation. Dovdon watched as the Communist Party formed a new state in the 1920s: as they destroyed almost all of the monasteries and temples in the land, as they stood tens of thousands of monks against the wall and sent other tens of thousands to the gulag. Thereafter came the chaos following the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the poverty of the transitional years, and with it the growth of the slums, in which he himself lives today – and finally the upswing that Mongolia has experienced of late.
There reigns an almost astonishingly good atmosphere in the country. Two weeks before my visit with Dovdon and Tsedved, I landed at the Genghis Khan Airport in the capital on my way from Beijing. Compared to the boomtown spirit that grips swaths of China, Ulan Bator comes across as a pleasantly sane city. No one there gave the impression of being excessively busy; instead of snappy parades there is a Bobby-Car rental in the central plaza. Children in small red plastic toy cars make their rounds at the feet of the gigantic statue of Genghis Khan before the Parliament building – a non-authoritarian atmosphere that is unimaginable in Beijing.
This Mongolian luck is an unlikely coincidence of two improbable things: a functioning democracy and an economic miracle with rates of growth that even Chinese rates pale in comparison to. The reason for the upswing is a natural resources boom that in the long run – and with a bit of luck – could make Mongolia something like the Norway of Central Asia.
Of course that does not mean that everything is splendid in the country. Drinking is a problem, mainly vodka (the most-beloved brand is called Genghis Khan; “Man of the Millennium,” is printed on the label) and above all by the many unemployed young men in the capital. There are also many destitute people in Ulan Bator whose improvised wooden shacks surround the city.
Despite this, an image developing during a five-week trip in which I spoke with nomadic pastoralists, mining bosses and their critics at local NGO’s, university students, aid workers, abbots, monks, and government officials of a country that is optimistically tempered and that can tolerate itself quite well.
This relaxed self-image is striking because for 60 years, the Communist government went to great pains to tear down the national identity of the Mongolians. Thus the party told its underlings that Genghis Khan was the class enemy of the people. Evidently no one believed it. Khan is not considered a tyrant in Mongolia, but rather “Man of the Year.” The long years of propaganda against Buddhism have also not worked. When the Communist government fell, there were only a few dozen monks left in Mongolia. Today there are about 6000, and the number increases every year.
The monasteries in which they live are mostly new, and Dovdon and the barely 70-year-young Tsedved are also involved in the business of monastic construction. Tsedved owns a Buddha factory on the outskirts of Ulan Bator. Before the door of the unplastered brick building lays a pile of scrap metal. It will be melted down in the courtyard and recast into ornaments and pedestals for the statues which decorate the new monasteries. The statues themselves are made of copper and gold, in accordance with thoroughly researched models.
To perform his research on Buddhist figures, Tsedved traveled to Inner Mongolia in China, where the Cultural Revolution had not been as destructive as the “cleansings” in so-called Outer Mongolia. He also traveled to see the Russian Mongols, the Kalmyks, in order to learn about the old Buddhist artwork of Mongolia. His most important sources, however, are people like Dovdon, who still remember well the old times and thus have rescued many a scrap from the ruins of the old cloisters. And that is yet another form of Mongolian luck: that the treasures of the monasteries are emerging at the same time as the treasures of the earth. Without the new money it would not be possible to rebuild the old temples. But that does not surprise Dovdon. During the sixty years of repression, he says he did not for a minute doubt that it would happen – one way or the other. Things will return to normal in Mongolia.
JUSTUS KRÜGER is a freelance journalist in Hong Kong and Beijing. He reports for Mare and Geo from China and neighboring countries.
I had already given up hope, but we found him anyway after almost two hours of searching – the hermit. Dovdon is 102 years old. He lives in a wooden hut with pigeons constantly fluttering about, and spends his time in study and meditation. Dovdon watched as the Communist Party formed a new state in the 1920s: as they destroyed almost all of the monasteries and temples in the land, as they stood tens of thousands of monks against the wall and sent other tens of thousands to the gulag. Thereafter came the chaos following the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the poverty of the transitional years, and with it the growth of the slums, in which he himself lives today – and finally the upswing that Mongolia has experienced of late.
There reigns an almost astonishingly good atmosphere in the country. Two weeks before my visit with Dovdon and Tsedved, I landed at the Genghis Khan Airport in the capital on my way from Beijing. Compared to the boomtown spirit that grips swaths of China, Ulan Bator comes across as a pleasantly sane city. No one there gave the impression of being excessively busy; instead of snappy parades there is a Bobby-Car rental in the central plaza. Children in small red plastic toy cars make their rounds at the feet of the gigantic statue of Genghis Khan before the Parliament building – a non-authoritarian atmosphere that is unimaginable in Beijing.
This Mongolian luck is an unlikely coincidence of two improbable things: a functioning democracy and an economic miracle with rates of growth that even Chinese rates pale in comparison to. The reason for the upswing is a natural resources boom that in the long run – and with a bit of luck – could make Mongolia something like the Norway of Central Asia.
Of course that does not mean that everything is splendid in the country. Drinking is a problem, mainly vodka (the most-beloved brand is called Genghis Khan; “Man of the Millennium,” is printed on the label) and above all by the many unemployed young men in the capital. There are also many destitute people in Ulan Bator whose improvised wooden shacks surround the city.
Despite this, an image developing during a five-week trip in which I spoke with nomadic pastoralists, mining bosses and their critics at local NGO’s, university students, aid workers, abbots, monks, and government officials of a country that is optimistically tempered and that can tolerate itself quite well.
This relaxed self-image is striking because for 60 years, the Communist government went to great pains to tear down the national identity of the Mongolians. Thus the party told its underlings that Genghis Khan was the class enemy of the people. Evidently no one believed it. Khan is not considered a tyrant in Mongolia, but rather “Man of the Year.” The long years of propaganda against Buddhism have also not worked. When the Communist government fell, there were only a few dozen monks left in Mongolia. Today there are about 6000, and the number increases every year.
The monasteries in which they live are mostly new, and Dovdon and the barely 70-year-young Tsedved are also involved in the business of monastic construction. Tsedved owns a Buddha factory on the outskirts of Ulan Bator. Before the door of the unplastered brick building lays a pile of scrap metal. It will be melted down in the courtyard and recast into ornaments and pedestals for the statues which decorate the new monasteries. The statues themselves are made of copper and gold, in accordance with thoroughly researched models.
To perform his research on Buddhist figures, Tsedved traveled to Inner Mongolia in China, where the Cultural Revolution had not been as destructive as the “cleansings” in so-called Outer Mongolia. He also traveled to see the Russian Mongols, the Kalmyks, in order to learn about the old Buddhist artwork of Mongolia. His most important sources, however, are people like Dovdon, who still remember well the old times and thus have rescued many a scrap from the ruins of the old cloisters. And that is yet another form of Mongolian luck: that the treasures of the monasteries are emerging at the same time as the treasures of the earth. Without the new money it would not be possible to rebuild the old temples. But that does not surprise Dovdon. During the sixty years of repression, he says he did not for a minute doubt that it would happen – one way or the other. Things will return to normal in Mongolia.
JUSTUS KRÜGER is a freelance journalist in Hong Kong and Beijing. He reports for Mare and Geo from China and neighboring countries.
Comments
Post a Comment