A New Year: Mongolia’s White Moon

Hungry, Hungry Holiday

There’s no bad time to eat mutton and drink vodka in Mongolia, but there’s never a better time than Tsagaan Sar. The holiday, which came late in February this year, literally translates to ‘White Moon’ or ‘White Month’. It serves as the nation’s primary New Year celebration and gives people a chance to visit relatives around the city and the countryside. Any given family will make up to 1,000 buuz (mutton dumplings) for guests during the four or five days off work, and buy a corresponding amount of vodka.

Chinggis Khan moved the holiday from summer to spring, making it an occasion to feast after the lean winter while welcoming some warm weather. Everything being relative, 5-15 degrees feels great after a Mongolian January, and with Ulaanbaatar suddenly quiet, Tsagaan Sar offered a chance to walk around the city, and catch up with some of my favorite statues.

Stars and Statues

Stern likenesses of political figures—like honorific medals and Russian soldier hats—are part of Mongolia’s cultural inheritance from the USSR. The best statues around town are a forward-leaning Lenin, a diminutive cast of Zorig (the murdered democratic reformer), and a dynamic Sukhbaatar (an independence hero), who sits atop a horse on his eponymous square.

Sukhbaatar looks kind of like he’s waving to a bronze Chinggis Khan, reclining in the Parliament Building’s central alcove, but this statue has too much of a “Luke, I am your father” thing going on to crack my top three. Plus, there’s a better monument in his honor. You can see Chinggis’ face everywhere from beers to barbershops, but it comes out most clearly in a 40-foot Chinggis edifice just east of Ulaanbaatar.

Tsagaan Sar is not only a chance to traipse around the city, but also to get out of it, so a group of friends and I headed out to see this giant, to spend a few days at a ger camp, and to get a taste of traditional- Mongolian holiday hospitality. Our guide and host for the trip was a guy named Aigii, a broad Mongolian who graduated from UW Stout, and who told stories, mostly about ass kickings delivered by him.

Haunt Me History

Driving toward the extra-large Chinggis, we passed an isolated cluster of conifers—the 100 Trees, Aigii told us. Once upon a time Mongols ambushed and slaughtered a contingent of Turks and their prince at the site; since then, it’s been haunted. Don’t count the trees because it’s bad luck (I don’t think there are actually 100), but definitely don’t fall asleep or disturb anything in the outcrop. Of the two people Aigii knew who had done either of these things, one went insane after seeing a faceless woman in white calling out to him from horseback, and another broke his leg soon when he fell from a horse.

We arrived at the statue. This Chinggis looks like a battle-ready tinman, and reflects the sun remarkably well from the top of his massive horse. An article in the UB Post referred to it as one of the modern wonders of the world. I wouldn’t go that far, but anything that big with a face is pretty incredible.

After 15 minutes, we returned to our van and drove off the main road, across a small bridge and to an encampment of eight gers and three small buildings. We were the only people staying there besides the caretakers, the security guard and Aigii and a big dog. Better yet, we were near the 100 Trees. That'd be our first destination on a hike around the mountainous areas surrounding the camp.

The Great Wall Caper

Before the Wall

My girlfriend and fellow journalist Bijani and I, along with our guide Tony, headed by van to a secluded section of Great Wall. Tony said it would be cold, but having just arrived in China from the Mongolian winter, I figured we could handle it.

Bijani had no jacket, so I gave her mine, convinced a light coat and fast walking would keep me warm. Wind and morning shade made for a cold first 400 meters, but after we had paid a gatekeeper, and walked past a small farmhouse, the adventure seemed more manageable.
A steep path wound us up a valley side, toward the high-ridge where we would ascend the Wall itself. After a few minutes of hiking, we turned to look behind us. The pale land below— with its small farmsteads and icy lake—and the rutted mountains opposite stretched into a panoramic. Our trip would be beautiful, but the trail in front of us displayed why no one chooses this spot for leisurely excursions.

Bijani and I clambered over rocks on a narrow track as Tony led us toward our destination. We stopped often along the way to catch our breath, including once in a dark, but very warm cave. Tony told us that chains of soldiers had passed stones up this same trail to construct the Wall. It could have been worse, but the trip was already harder than I bargained for.

Tower of Dour

Half an hour later, however, that didn’t matter. We rounded a corner to see a guard tower looming above the brush. With no modern restorations, this section of the Wall gave the impression that we’d stumbled on something lost for hundreds of years. A pile of gray stones had tumbled into a makeshift stairway leading to the brick structure, and I whipped off my gloves, climbing to the top for a view. It was the last time I was happy for two days.

A perch atop the tower afforded a magnificent view, but I’m embarrassed to say I only appreciated it for five seconds. The Wall plunges and rises along peaks that divide two sweeping valleys, but all I could think while standing on perhaps the world’s greatest man made barrier was how badly I wanted shelter in the tower from the wind ripping through the valleys. Maybe it’s nice in summer, but if I'd been emperor of China, I would have given the Mongols and other hordes this place if they wanted it and built a wall further south.

We retreated into the tower for lunch. Tony had kindly brought us subway sandwiches, cookies, and some hot water, which we ate quietly in the brick enclosure's corners, that seemed to trap the cold, while allowing the wind a free pass. My sandwich tasted strange, but I didn’t care; I just wanted something in my bloodstream.

Wallk About

We packed up our trash and headed out, now along the walkways of the Wall. Wind pushed us toward gaps in the fortification, where chunks of stone had decayed. I kept my hands over my face, protecting them from the cold and my eyes from a thicket that had grown through the stones. We crept along the sheer path, but after 20 minutes, Bijani turned to Tony. “I think I need to turn around.” For the last hour, part of me hoped she’d say this.

“We’re half way there,” said Tony. “If we turn around, it’s just as long back.”
I remembered he said this was an eight kilometer hike. Then we were already dead. Cold is like fear in that it prevents clear thinking, so I composed myself, wondering how we could be rescued. Tony had a cell phone, and I waited for somebody to suggest using it. We kept going and I started to feel nauseous.

A Wall to Remember

Bijani and I had both brought cameras, but the batteries had frozen before we could take photos. Luckily Tony’s still worked, and we stopped a few times for a picture. “If we don’t get photos out of this,” Bijani whispered, “it’ll be our worst trip ever.”

Tony must have cut our journey short, because we got off the wall fairly quickly and headed back down the valley. We descended and the wind subsided, but I felt sicker and not much warmer. I had to relieve myself and needed Bijani’s help because I couldn’t close my fingers on the zipper.

We made it back to the waiting van. I wanted to ask Tony to take curves slowly on the way back, then decided not to. I managed to keep everything down on the windy road back to our apartment, but as soon as I was inside, I locked myself in the bathroom and told Bijani to leave me alone. I spent the evening throwing up my sandwich and cookie and some soda.

Rough Writers

It took another day to recover, but after some rest I felt ready to venture out onto the streets of Beijing. Bijani and I met up with our colleague Kirril and had a more successful experience at an exotic food court, where you can order pretty much anything you can think of, on a stick. Everything was deep fried, which meant it all just tasted crispy, but the meal felt like an accomplishment.

I’d wanted an adventure and I’d gotten it, and now I was in no hurry for another ‘big’ one. What I wanted was to go back to Ulaanbaatar and to my old journalist job, where I could resume writing, mostly about the exciting things other people do.

A Wall is for Adventure

Learn it. Like it.

Six months into my stay in Ulaanbaatar, I have two typical workdays. On the first, I wake up at 8:30 and head into the Mongol News Company building. On the second, I wake up at 7:30 and go to school, now as an English instructor.

I know the routine for both jobs. At the office of the UB Post, I check the internet for Mongolia-related stories, look at yahoo sports, look at my email. Then I write messages to people, like the man from the Mongolian Olympic Committee who never returns my calls. If it is Wednesday, I’ll edit stories; if it isn’t, I’ll head out for interviews around Ulaanbaatar. I used to have a Thursday paper route, but since last issue, interns took that over.

Three times a week, I hustle to a school four blocks east of my house, and teach. I know which kids I will send out of class, who will have their homework, and what time I leave. I also know how sorry I am for judging any of my former teachers. We students deserved it.

Writing Habit and Beating it

Every day I write something, or at least I’m supposed to write something. It’s my favorite activity, but it’s challenging work and frankly I didn’t expect writing to play such a dominant role in my Mongolian-newsman life. Wolf Blitzer, Jean-Paul Marat: great journalists I’m sure, but I planned on getting out as much as I could--like Belgian Cartoon Character Tintin, boy reporter. The best part about him: world famous journalist and you never see him working. He’s too busy adventuring.

I’ve had plenty of interesting interviews, but I wanted an adventure.

And then I caught the break I needed. Mongolian Customs Law says you must leave the country to get a new visa, and I needed one. That meant a chance to skip town, a vacation to Beijing, and a trip to see the Great Wall.

Kirril (my friend and former-colleague), Bijani and I took a new train south to Beijing. It’s a 30-hour ride that reveals the country outside Ulaanbaatar. From our cabin’s twin bunks, we saw dry expanses of hills, a fox, gazelle, a herd of camels, and a few dusty orange towns near the tracks.

Olympian City

I woke up in China. On either side of the train were mountains, farms, and automobiles (after six months in uneven Ulaanbaatar, perfectly paved roads looked fascinating). Within hours, our train rolled into Beijing, where we were greeted by 40 degree weather and Tony, a friend of a friend of a friend, who showed us around town for our first couple days.

“It’s summer,” we told Tony. He laughed—a cold wind would arrive from Mongolian tomorrow, he said. It didn’t matter; Beijing is a remarkable city. Every street is wide, but the metropolis’ main road, the one that passes Tiananmen Square, looks like a highway. Tony said Mao wanted it that way to land a bomber on it, in case things went wrong. By law, virtually every car in town is less than 10 years old and residual cleanliness, plus publicity, lingers from Olympic preparations.

All our city maps were misleading; it’s not the kind of place you can walk around quickly. A series of rings form Beijing’s districts, with many famous sites like the Forbidden Palace, Tiananmen, and Jin Shan Park (where people gather on mornings for tai chi, hacky sack and other exercises) impressively situated in the innermost circle. Toward its outer rings, the city becomes suburban; but downtown—outside alleyways that preserve an old-city style—everything, especially the buildings, seems huge and new.

On day three, Tony took us out of the city toward the Great Wall. Parts of this engineering marvel lie just over an hour outside Beijing, and we decided to visit one of the wall’s lesser known stretches to avoid tourists.

(to be continued)