When in Rome...

To get to the studio where I am taking dance lessons I pass through a tunnel that crosses under Ulaanbaatar's central road. The other day as I made my way back from class I was walking close behind an older man dapperly dressed in a gray tweed suit with a cap and spectacles. Distracted by the colorful array of umbrellas set out front of one of the shops in the tunnel, I accidentally trod on the back of his foot. He began looking around in confusion, not only to see who had stepped on his shoe, but more importantly because the custom in Mongolia if you step on someone's foot is to shake their hand. This demonstrates that you had not done it intentionally. Apparently young Mongolians sometimes take advantage of this custom as a way of meeting people at bars: "accidentally" step on someone's foot then offer your hand to him/her to apologize, and introduce yourself at the same time.

Earlier this summer when I first arrived in Mongolia I stepped backwards to allow people off a bus I was waiting to board and accidentally crunched down on a lady's toes behind me. Although I had just that day learned what was proper to do in such a situation, unfortunately I was so flustered by the commotion of boarding the bus that I did not offer my hand until it was too late. This time, though, I was ready! It took me about ten seconds to get my arms into a position where the man could see my hand (during which time he continued looking from side to side confusedly). When he finally saw my proffered hand, though, he clasped it strongly for a brief moment and then we continued on our way with no additional interaction.

That simple gesture of offering my hand resolved the situation neatly, but imagine if I had not known what was proper to do? I keep picturing the man turning his head back and forth and wonder how long he would have searched for a hand, and how unsettled he might have been had I not known to extend him mine. It made me realize once again just how important it is to know the culture and customs of the place you are visiting. The English phrase, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," nicely sums up this idea. Mongolian also contains a similar saying: "Усыг нь уувал, ёсыг нь даг," which translates to, "If you drink the water, follow the customs." Having drunk a lot of Mongolian water this summer, then, I am glad to follow Mongolian customs.

Cultural Naadam

Sorry to have fallen off the map (ha!) the past couple of weeks. This past week was Naadam, one of Mongolia's two major annual holidays. Therefore I had the week off from work, as did most of Mongolia. Although you might think this would give me plenty of time to update the blog, in fact it turned out that I lost the internet for the entire week. It went out Monday morning and since nobody was working, did not come on again until yesterday.

Naadam (which translates literally as "game, festival, celebration") consists of three days of wrestling, archery, horse racing (Mongolia's three national sports). This year, as well, the government organized two weeks of cultural events preceding the actual Naadam festival which takes place July 11-13. One of these events was actually a four-day extravaganza called the Grand Celebration of Mongolian Folkarts in which performers from each of Mongolia's provinces (as well as the districts of Ulaanbaatar) were selected to come to Ulaanbaatar to give performances representing their region. It began with a giant opening ceremony on the city's Soviet-style central square and concluded with performances in the Wrestling Palace. On the days between these two ceremonies the performers gave two shows per day. The provinces were grouped into seven or eight clusters, and these clusters held their performances at various cultural venues throughout the city. 

Although I only attended one cluster's performance the differences between the dances, songs, and costumes of each of the provinces caused me to realize something that I have known for a while but had never stopped much to think about. Although Mongolia's cultural and ethnic segments have many unifying factors they also represent an enormous amount of variety. It will be interesting to see how Mongolia (and Mongolians) deal with these two truths in coming years, and gets at one of the larger questions of globalization: how do we maintain our sense of cultural identity while at the same time connecting in to the ever-more globally standardized norms?

Tourism, Mongol Style

This past weekend I had the opportunity to experience two different kinds of tourism in Mongolia. This first was a visit to the gigantic statue of Chinggis Khaan, which handles busloads of tourists at a time. The second type of tourist experience -- a set of camps aiming to represent 13th century Mongolia -- caters to a smaller, more select audience. Both play off of Mongolia's rich history, especially the era of Chinggis Khaan, but do so in different ways.

A tour company built the enormous statue of Chinggis a few years ago. Located only about an hour's drive from Ulaanbaatar, the developers originally envisioned the site including tourist ger camps, a golf course, spa, and hotel radiating out from the central focus of the 131 foot tall statue. The global recession interfered with these plans (I think) and development beyond the statue was put on hold.

A museum displaying artifacts from ancient Mongolia (belt buckles, metal arrowheads, jewelry, etc.) is housed in the statue's base and is included in the entrance fee (roughly $5 for Mongolians and $10 for foreigners). The statue's atrium holds a giant Mongolian boot and oversized replica of Chinggis Khaan's riding whip. Visitors can rent period costumes to pose in front of the boot and/or whip, which is fun both for them and other visitors.

My favorite part of the statue by far, though, was climbing the narrow, winding staircase to the top of the horse's head. Although a bit crowded, the views of the surrounding countryside from the overlook are beautiful. It was also fun to get a closer look at Chinggis's features.

After spending about an hour at Chinggis Khaan we packed up again into our vehicle and headed further out into the countryside to visit the "Thirteenth Century" camp. At Erdene soum center we turned off the paved road, driving up into some beautiful country of green hills dotted with boulders and ridgetop outcrops. After a while our road crossed through an opening in an odd-looking high wooden and stone wall, leading us to a small camp of odd-looking gers. We had arrived at the "Thirteenth Century"!

The camp is sort of like a Mongolian Colonial Williamsburg, in that the buildings are reconstructed versions of the past and staff members dress in period costume. Instead of being clustered together in a town, however, the six sites of the "Thirteenth Century" camp are spread out along a half-hour driving circuit. As with the statue there are different prices for Mongolians and foreigners, but it is significantly more expensive (~$70 for foreigners, including a meal). Not knowing the price beforehand (and, as our language teacher and host kept telling the workers, being students not tourists) we decided to forego seeing the inside of the camps.

Since we were there we decided we might as well still drive around to each of the camps to see how they looked from the outside and enjoy the scenic countryside. This was actually quite fun! We saw lots of beautiful views, pretty flowers and interesting bugs. At the last camp we visited on the circuit (the "Craftsmen Camp") the attendant let us climb down on the wooden walkways within the camp, as long as we didn't go inside the gers themselves. Later we circled back to the first camp site and after waiting until all the other tourists had left the guards let us in for free to look at the inside of the gers. I guess our persistence paid off?

While searching the internet for exact measurements, etc. for this blog post I learned an interesting fact: both of these tourist destinations are part of the same tourism company, the GENCO tour bureau. This actually made a lot of sense. Both are about history (specifically Chinggis Khaan's time) and are located fairly close to one another. Although they are admittedly a bit cheesy in some ways (and take liberties with historical accuracy), on the whole these seem like good sorts of tourism for Mongolia. Each allows different styles of tourists to get out of the city into the countryside (the "real" Mongolia) without having to travel too far. The statue complex was designed to accommodate giant tour buses full of tourists with perhaps more limited budgets, while the ger camp offers a more intimate experience, catering to tourists with more money and time to spend. It was also interesting that the tourists at each of the sites were a mix of about half Mongolians and half foreigners. Perhaps most importantly, both offer employment opportunities in rural areas, which is rather rare in Mongolia beyond herding, and will hopefully make rural life a more sustainable prospect in the future.