Worth its Wait in Gold

The Strongest Day

Work’s hard as the day is long, but one advantage to staying busy at the UB Post is 24 hours never seemed to end faster. It can be disorienting. I’ve lived in Ulaanbaatar seven weeks now, but 14 days ago I was telling everyone who asked that I arrived in town months ago. Occasionally this distorted sense of time passing makes me feel like a city insider, but I’ve gotten reminders that there’s plenty to discover about life in UB.

Most notably, near the end of week one at the Beijing Games, I found out how to celebrate in Mongolia—I had one million teachers. On Thursday morning, August 15, N. Tuvshinbayar, a stocky Mongolian wrestler turned judoka, began an improbable run toward Olympic glory. In his first 100kg judo match, he slammed a Japanese competitor who won gold in Athens. Then he beat everybody else.

At 8:00 pm, I walked into my gym to empty equipment as the ten patrons and two staff members had gathered around the facility’s TV. I joined them; everyone looked exceedingly happy. “It’s a Mongolian in the gold medal match,” two male spectators told me several times. On the screen, Tuvshinbayar grappled with a blue-eyed Kazakh giant. The Mongolian had just upended his opponent for a 100-point lead.

Golden 100 kilograms

Judo can be nerve-racking because no matter how big one’s scoring advantage, suffering a devastating throw can cost you a bout—any judoka pinned by an opponent for thirty seconds or tortured into submission by arm lock also automatically loses. The gym atmosphere remained tense, even as Tuvshinbayar expanded his lead; but, with five seconds remaining, people started celebrating.

Objectively, it appeared they never had much to worry about. The Kazakh had a better chance of throwing a shipping crate than Tuvshinbayar, whose strength, low center of gravity and square frame made him an impossible target.

As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the small gathering cheered like Americans whose underdog team just won a playoff series. Some people gave me high-fives. “Mongolia’s first gold medal!” It was pretty exciting to see. I thought I knew how they felt (2007 Golden State Warriors … we believe…nobody?).

Tuvshinbayar tied his black belt, pumped his fists as the referee declared him the winner, then burst into tears while hugging his coach. “Za za za,” said the spectators (“So, so, so” in English) and politely turned back to their exercises, reassembling a few minutes later to watch Mongolia’s anthem play and flag rise as the now composed judoka accept his medal. A few more people told me Mongolia it was Mongolia’s first gold.

Stare to be Stupid

Back in my apartment at 10:00 pm, I noticed the city’s perpetual honking sounded unusually consistent and loud. I looked out my window to see the street packed with cars. Every other vehicle had a Mongolian flag and drivers laid on their horns, whooping and hollering along with their passengers, who leaned out windows and sunroofs to high-five passing motorists and pedestrians or heedlessly sat atop their rides.

Fireworks exploded nearby and a loud hum now accompanied the general racket. Later that evening, I turned on the TV and saw politicians making speeches before a buzzing crowd at Sukhbaatar square. This was a bigger deal than I expected. I should go check it out, I thought, but it’s probably over now. Besides, if I want to see grandstanding politicians, I can watch C-SPAN. I went to bed and spent the next week kicking myself for it.

The Unflaunted Country

At work the next day, I learned 10,000 people more-or-less spontaneously filled the square, celebrating Mongoli a’s first Olympic triumph. Most stayed there until 4:00 am; many didn’t leave until late that morning. Throughout the countryside, people watched the final match in gers with generators or electrical hookups, later throwing their own raucous celebrations.

I’ve never seen a country, or an entire city, unite in celebration. Maybe it happens in Europe and South America when a team wins the World Cup, but I can’t imagine anything like it in the U.S. It could be the country is too big and diverse (by contrast, Mongolia has three million people, mostly Mongols), however, it seems like people in the States simply believe everything worth doing has been done. This year, Michael Phelps won 8 Olympic golds, but he was just breaking a record of seven held by Mark Spitz, another American. I didn’t hear about the nation running wildly into the streets. Eventually, we must think, some other U. S. citizen will swim to nine.

Even on a smaller scale, in a great sports city like New York for example, people don’t celebrate like they did in Ulaanbaatar that night. So the Yankees win the Pennant: that’s happened 65 times; there are plenty of New Yorkers who just don’t care much about baseball, and then there are those thousands of ravenous, bitter Mets fans.

Undivided Attention

In Ulaanbaatar, it looked like each of the one million men, women and children in the city celebrated in some way. The country united like young Mongolians had never seen and the nation hadn’t experienced probably since independence from China. Tuvshinbayar became an immediate national hero. His face appeared on billboards all over town Friday morning. However you saw it, Thursdays night’s celebration was incredible: a testament to Mongolian national identity; to the power of sport; etc.

Seeing it from a window wasn’t great, but it still made a decent story. Weeks before an angry mob protested Parliamentary election results in Sukhbaatar square. During an ensuing fray, rioters burned down the ruling People’s Revolutionary Party Headquarters, calling into question the country’s political stability and national cohesion. After maintaining allegations of election fraud Thursday morning, Thursday night, MPRP and opposition Democratic Party leaders drank vodka and sang the national anthem together in that same square before a mass of overjoyed spectators.

Square Dance

Well, I thought, that’ll never happen again. What a remarkable moment to sideline myself in an apartment. 10 days later I was proven wrong. Mongolia’s boxing prodigy E. Badar-Uugan won his gold medal match and the city erupted for another party. After waiting its entire Olympic History for one gold medal, Mongolia saw no problem holding a second celebration for a second Olympic Championship.

The match ended at 2:30 pm and the horns, high-fives and shouts didn’t end until early the next morning. I had learned my lesson. When something important happens, go to Sukhbaatar square. That evening, a raucous crowd surrounded the courtyard’s statue of Sukhbaatar, Mongolia’s great revolutionary hero.

People climbed on top of one another, danced, and sang as they waved Mongolian flags and embraced. An old, intoxicatingly happy man approached me. “This is a great day for Mongolia,” he said. “I am very happy.”

There weren't 10,000 people, but I saw a Mongolian Olympic celebration, and that took some sting out of my earlier abstention. More importantly, it gave me a first great look at a city I’m starting to know.