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?
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?
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