Ger (yurt) Camp

That's the wooden door to the felt ger. Virtually all of those we've seen are also covered with a layer of white canvas and have white sheeting inside. Brightens things up. So does the bright painted decoration on all the wooden parts.
There were about 20 gers at this camp. Ours was the closest one in this photo. That may even be BoomBoom standing there watching the full moon rise over the steppes of Asia.

Sunset on our last evening. OK..OK so it could be a sunset anywhere, but, trust me, it is setting over the steppes of Asia. We were seeing it from near a stone circle that could be a burial mound from Ghenggis Khaan's time. Or a pile of rocks formed as the herders tossed them out of the way of the track their animals take.  More questions than answers, that's for sure.

The Mongol herds (of horses, that is)

The Mongolian horse is much-renowned for hardiness and speed. They are not big animals and look a little bony this time of year. But some of them have these glorious l-o-n-g manes and tails (almost to the ground). They are mixed colors, too. I have seen some that approach Appaloosa coloring, a couple of paints, and at least one palomino.
Look at that tail! The others are smart to gather around to get the flies flicked off.
Looks like a Dr Doolittle push-me-pull-you,huh?
Oh, and dappled grey, too.

YAK-ety YAK

Yup: yaks. We think that some or all of them may be the cross-bed yak/cows that reputedly have more milk than yaks but are more cold-tolerant than cows.  the lake behind them is all but dry this year at a time when usually it would be full of water. drought is so scary for the herders.The yaks are wonderfully shaggy, with long swishy tails.
Same group, but showing the large mine behind them. It may be an abandoned coal mine or??

So much we don't know! Cal says "ignorance grows faster than knowledge, which is to say that the more you know, the more you see how much you don't know."

HERDS

Having spent 6 years of my childhood on a small sheep farm in Missouri (my father being a "gentleman farmer", whose hobby was raising the black sheep that he had become interested in while in India during WW II) and, as a young adult, having a very small flock of goats in the foothills of northern California, as well as a life-long fascination with horses, you may well imagine that I am in heaven in Mongolia. And so it is. I am at least as interested in the herd animals as I am in the wild ones and spent hours watching them while we stayed at the nature reserve.The herds are mostly mixed, most families having a combination of animals. Those with mostly goats are the poorest and would much prefer to have more sheep and/or cows. As a former goat-herd, I find this outrageous and unfair! Goats don't get no respect! I think it's because they are so much smarter than sheep or cows and therefore more challenging for humans to manage.

But that's just a theory. They do produce cashmere, of course, but somehow the wool from sheep is a bigger cash crop. Maybe there is more wool per sheep than cashmere per goat?
More goats, here..I couldn't help myself. The goats and sheep and cows are all mixed colors: there do not seem to be specific breeds. 
We saw both yaks and camels in this area, which seemed odd to me: are yaks not from high mountain plateaus and camels from the desert? Which leads me to think that they must have been introduced by humans, perhaps recently, rather than being indigenous and having been domesticated here back in the mists of time. But, who knows? Sometimes I wish that our mode of travel (read budget) included hiring an interpreter..there is so much that we miss. 

But I liked being amongst these animals and their humans anyway.

Random Mongolia impressions and info

*I write to you just now from my very own bed in a guest house, using my very own computer and the guest house wifi. Meanwhile, herders are moving their flocks/herds to whatever grass there may be out on the plains not far from here. The combination of ancient and modern here in Mongolia is mind-boggling. 

*The book that Cal got the Ghenggis Khaan info out of is "Ghenggis Khaan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford. Pete and other history buffs take note.  A good read.

*30%of Mongolia's lands are dedicated to national parks!

*We entertained ourselves one evening here in Ulaan Baatar by going to the movies. (We had vowed to do just that in every country we travelled in, but somehow never got around to it in China) And what did we see? The new Indianna Jones flick! It was actually fairly entertaining, though awfully LOUD. It was a good place to see it, not only because the theatre was very comfortable, but also because supposedly the "Indie" character is loosely based on Roy Chapman Andrews, an American paleontologist and adventurer who, in the 20's, first discovered dinosaur bones in the Mongolian Gobi desert. 

*Funny that we are spending the longest days of the year indoors in a city in the rain. One of my biggest lessons (and most constant, throughout my life) is that expectations are not very useful and often as not lead to disappointment. 

Though right now I don't feel too disappointed since the wifi connection is good and I can communicate with you, my dear ones! 

Ciao for now

ChaCha

ps

more photos follow

Genghis Kahn's Empire

The photo above is from a mountain above the Khalan River where Genghis Khan first established the Mongolian Nation State. There are burial mounds marking the spot just to the right of this picture.

Genghis Khan, now dear reader please pause for a moment and conjure in your mind the image you have when you hear those two words................................................................................Now most of those images are probably correct, but the Great Khan is a much more complex historical character to know. For many historians he was the single most influential person of the second millennium. Not only did he unite the East and the West for the first time in human history, but his policies influenced the collapse of feudalism in Europe. He brought the idea of secular government to be established for the first time. He divided the spoils of war to all members of the society including widows and orphans. He tolerated and promoted the freedom of all religions. Because of his policies toward the peasants, he influenced the framers of the Magna Carta. He established the first free trade alliances. He set laws governing the environment and the protection of wildlife. He also set laws that he, his family, and government official would be held in account. While he outlawed the buying and selling of slaves, he did conscript millions of people to fight and serve in the army and care for his citizens. I think the main difference between the Genghis Khan and the rest of the Empire builders like Alexander, Caesars, Napoleon and even the great W, is that they were from "civilized" nations wanting the resources of the "backward" nations. But with the Great Khan he was from an agrarian nation wanting the resources of the "civilized" nations. When he won those battles he distributed the wealth and governed more fairly than other civilizations.
Just a short reminder to ourselves that global warming is disastrous, not only for the horrible fires in our own lands, but the top photo, the one that looks like the deserts of Northern Nevada, should be green this time of year. The Environment of Mongolia is very susceptible to the slightest change in temperature. Millions of people that live off the land will be forced to move to the cities where there are already no jobs for them.

Love
Boomboom

Wild Life

Speaking of birds: if you can't see them on your screen, you'll just have to take my word for it: these are a pair of endangered hooper swans. We followed them down the river one day. Apparently, in the time of Ghenggis Khaan, they were so numerous as to blot out the sun!There they are again. We will have to be content with these photos, since the truly exciting birds were the endangered white-naped cranes. Unbelievably elegant, big birds with lavender-grey backs and brilliant white long necks and tails. We didn't see them in flight, but their littler cousins, the hooded cranes, also quite elegant, were lovely to watch in the air.
This clutch of eggs was just in the middle of the stones by the river..any old yak or camel orgoat or sheep or horse or cow or human could have stepped right on it. But they hadn't yet. 

Ride horse all day, no fences.

It is a drought year here. Most years the valley is all green, this year it's intermittent.The title says it all.
That's Baits Mountain in the background. The endangered Argali (think bighorn) sheep live there. One morning we got up very early and rode horses between the river and the mountain

until we came to a gully leading into it. We climbed for awhile and then our guide, a woman named Ahrona, spotted them! We all grabbed binoculars. I mostly saw their rumps as they leaped away from us...a ram, a ewe, and 2 small ones. They vanished into a ravine. We rode on and caught another glimpse a bit later of just 2 of them, silhouetted against the sky just before they plunged over the ridge.  
Hmmm...well,like I said, photos can't capture it. You can ignore these next 2..boring. 

But, you should know this (Greg Smiley and other bicycling aficionados): there are people bicycling across Mongolia as we speak! Dust storms, sand storms, rain storms, the whole nine yards. We did bike here at the preserve one morning and it was quite pleasant: perfect weather, a hot breakfast before and a hot shower after. We went to a couple of small lakes to see birds. There were some birds, but nothing we hadn't seen before on the river. But it was a good ride.

Ride horse all day, no fences

This is the River Kherlen. it's one of the largest in Mongolia. It is shallow and wide and quite clean. Along it for several kilometers runs a nature reserve called Guun Galuut. And in the reserve is a tourist ger camp. We made it our headquarters for 5 days.Below is the lodge..kinda cool looking, no? Hot showers in the afternoon when they heated up the wood furnace. Electricity provided by a small solar array and a wind generator (plenty of both of those resources!)
This is the inside of the roof of the ger. Of course, I was happy...it's all orange!
Here's BoomBoom heading back to the camp after a long ramble. You can see the squat white gers around the lodge.
The river again. It is a very beautiful place, but in a subtle way that grows on you and that photography cannot capture.  Nothing technological as far as the eye could see. Not a fence, not a road, not a power line. Just space and profound quiet.

Buddhism lives in Mongolia

This is the monastery where we turned the prayer wheels. It also haas the T A L L  gold Buddha of compassion. You get a crick in your neck looking up into his benign face. Buddhism looks different here in Mongolia. But the chanting sounds the same.
The monks we saw where either real young or real old. The young ones look like YOU, Zephyr!
In your next life, you should be so lucky as to come back as one of these pigeons. They are the best-fed, fattest, safest pigeons ever!

Photo I'm sorry I missed: Boom Boom feeding the pigeons out of the palm of his hand.
I loved the way these stupas (reliquaries) looked against the hot bright sky.

Wild East

It is the fabled Trans-Mongolian train. BoomBoom liked the red star.In fact, he liked it so much that we took turns dashing off at a 6-minute stop so we could each have a photo in it.
Ulaan Baatar, capitol of the Mongolia. Note stark terrain just beyond the sky-scrapers.
Kinda looks like the wild west, no? Call it the wild east.
Funny place. 
Even after surviving 24 hrs of funky stomach, during which I mostly just slept, I'm finding it a pretty charmless place. It is in a desert, so comparing to Beijing is not fair, but, hey, how about Santa Fe? The driving puts Xian to shame...the Mongol hordes sweeping down on innocent pedestrians come to mind. We have found a nice little vegetarian restaurant with mostly Mongolians eating there ...go figure....we had trouble finding vegetarian food in China and there was NO whole wheat bread there...well, Ulaan Baatar has potatoes prepared properly (mashed, with butter and milk) and pumpernickel bread (russian influence, dontcha know) and yogurt and blueberry jam. So here in the land of mutton, where we thought we might starve, we are eating very nicely, thank you very much.

A million people live here and most of them are recent arrivals without jobs, so there is definitely a rough feel and some aggressive posturing towards the men.  People are not, in general nearly as curious or willing to engage as we found in China. Hey, that's their right and I hardly blame them, but it's just not as much fun for us.  The majority of the population here is under 35 and they are ready for all the goodies of  modernization. By my tastes and standards, they are choosing the cheesiest and tackiest that is on offer. I was struck the very first day with the prevalence of advertising using a bared female body to sell most everything. It was such a relief to encounter almost none of that in China.

The vibe is different here..not so light as China. Not heavy, exactly, but I don't expect to see any drag shows in the park on Sunday! nor spontaneous group singing. We did go to a performance of traditional song and dance from various parts of the country the other night and it was quite wonderful. The theatricalized versions of the traditional costumes were colorful and exotic.  I especially liked the shamanic dance of the reindeer people of the far north....reminiscent of the plains natives of the US.  Cal was very impressed with the throat singing. Also a buddhist masked dance. 

Although most foreigners find the Mongolian language ugly, I don't. There's a lot of air in it..little puffs escape laterally on many syllables. It also has a music to it that chinese, which is mostly staccato, does not.  It is softer than the people.

We've encountered other things of interest here. But more of that later.

We head out tomorrow for a 5-7 day stay in a tourist ger (that's yurt to you) camp  about 90 miles east of here by a river. AAhh!! Probably lots of photos next post.

xoxox

ChaCha 

train to Mongolia

We left the Beijing Hostel at 5:30 a.m. on Wed. morning to catch the Trans-Mongolia train. As all trains in China, this one left exactly on time. Our destination, Ula an Ba tor, Mongolia. We had heard several stories about the trip, some saying that it took as much as 36 hours. We had what is called a "hard sleeper" ticket, this is a bunk in a compartment that has 4 bunks total, 2 lower 2 upper. We had one lower and one upper. We were fortunate to have a couple from New Zealand as our compartment mates, they were very friendly and didn't snore, which would not have made that much difference since not much sleeping takes place on the 30 hour journey.
The train is Russian, the staff is Chinese and the dining car is Chinese. The scenery was beautiful as we wound our way through Northern China, many farms and as we got to the Mountains we crossed many rivers and streams that actually had clear water running in them, rare in central China. Then a long stretch through Inner Mongolia and the beginning of the Gobi desert. There was a thunder storm as well as a sand storm, the latter lasted much of the trip through the Gobi. At about 8:30 p.m. we stopped at the last town in China where they take every one's passport and tell you to get off the train for two hours. There is a duty free shopping store and a lounge but nothing else. When we returned to the platform the train was gone. Not to panic though, as they had to move the train down the track to lift it up to change the under-carriage from Chinese to Russian because the tracks in Mongolia are Russian. At about midnight we started to roll once again but only for about 20 minutes then another stop where the Mongolia security comes aboard and takes every ones passport and says stay on the train, two hours later they bring the passports back and soon we are on our way, this time with a Mongolian dining car.
We traveled through the night and arrived in UB at 1:30p.m.. What a difference. The capital of this country is rough. The first four people we had conversations with told the same story, don't carry anything of value in any of your pockets or purse or packs. The pickpockets or plentiful and proficient.We were both looking forward to a hot shower after the long train ride but it seems that the capital city has a main hot water system that is being repaired this time of year. Better not to have hot water in the summer than in winter. The streets are grubby and the buses are old and beaten. We are going to the natural history museum tomorrow but won't stay here too long.

boomboom

The Last Days of Beijing (for us, anyway)

Dear ones~

Random thoughts and observations follow:

*the story is that if your first child is a girl, you get to try again (ie have 2 kids, rather than be bound by the one-child rule), since boys are so favored

*It is almost impossible to register your 2nd child (without the exemption due to the dreadful disappointment of having a girl-child on your first try). If they aren't registered, they don't officially exist and can't go to school or work above-ground, so only the most menial work is available to them (this may sound familiar to any recent immigrants from south of the US border)

*and yet, all children appear to be much loved and treasured. I rarely saw a child yelled at and never saw one struck.

*There is no welfare and no social security and no pensions. Young people know that they will be taking care of their parents and probably living with them. It's just an accepted fact.

*Old folks have a good life in cities in China. They are out and about. They're in the parks, doing TaiChi or QiGong or playing cards or just hanging out with their pals. They're on a stool in the street, watching the world go by. They're caring for their grandbabies, They're walking their songbirds. And when all that is no longer possible, they're being pushed around in a wheel-chair, probably by a family member. What they are NOT doing is sitting holed up in their house in front of the TV becoming a human vegetable. They have lives. They have quality lives. Perhaps we have something to learn from this?

* I did try soy bean ice cream. It's better than you would expect.

*Fashion: the pony-tail is the most popular female hairdo. Many perm their hair. Many color it a reddish brown. Almost all (men and women) dye it when it starts to go grey. Baby-doll styles are popular for women. And a sort a prom-dress-gone-wrong look. High heels are the norm, tho funky young rebel or intellectual types are changing that. Women wear ankle-length stockings with their high heels. Young men wear jeans and a few wear them well below the waist. But middle-aged and older men wear their pleated pants above their waists. 

*In some ways it's a pretty egalitarian society. Women do some heavy work and a lot of the management. But I've seen some (all ages) who have this simpery shuffling, cutesy way of walking. The women are ferocious at selling (and funny, sometimes: "You want to pay how much? You're killing me! I'm dying here!"

*The pollution in Beijing was not nearly so bad as I anticipated. However, you may have noticed that my photos seem uniformly grey...that's not only my lack of skill! It's the general pall. The nastiness of the air from all the individual cooking with coal in other parts of the country is palpable and debilitating.

*In case you wondered why I went on at such length about the hutong neigborhoods, it is because my house in Chico is in an endangered historic neighborhood, so I feel an affinity.

*Tai Chi in Beijing has been a little different than in Xian, tho still good. Maybe I just like being up early, while the streets are less busy and the air is fresh. Mostly older people practise. I fear it may die out with my generation.

*We have biked Beijing quite a bit and it's good, but by afternoon rush, can be hard on the psyche and the adrenals! Hectic!

*People love their dogs. (Small dogs) They often walk them in their pajamas (the people, silly, not the dogs!)  common breeds: Pomeranian, Shit-zu and Lhasa Apso (all that long hair beautifully groomed), some poodles (with a handsome rust-red coat on a couple of occasions), one golden retriever, and one dalmatian. No strays. No dog poop on the streets.

* Old men walk their song-birds (in their cages..the birds, silly, not the old men) in the parks. 

*You hear many people singing or humming to themselves as they walk along or work.

*People read a lot. Of course, it may be the equivalent of People magazine, but often it's the newspaper. On walls around the cities, there are boards for the daily newspaper to be posted, page by page, so people don't even have to buy it. There are always people reading it at these boards.

*No, I don't think that the magnificence of art or architecture or engineering excuses an oppressive, hierarchical society. All that beauty or industry or whatever is built on, and demands, so much suffering. Of course, many societies, all over the world do and have done this. It is in no way exclusive to China.

*Beijing adds 1300 cars A DAY to its streets! (But before you start judging that too harshly, think 0f the households in the US that have 2 0r 3 0r more vehicles...think of your own,  perhaps) 

And now it's time for me and Cal to head down the street to get foot massages! A last treat before we board the train to MONGOLIA tomorrow morning. We are going from the world's most populous country to the least. I think I'm ready.

Sai Jen~

ChaCha

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

I couldn't resist this image...we saw this sight in a department store where we had gone to buy needle and thread. If you enlarge it you will see that it says Happy Father's Day on the sign at the bottom. Yeah, right! If your father is Jimi Hendrix!

Saturday in the Park with ChaCha, continued

The parks are the crown jewels of Beijing. They are what make it a livable place. They bring beauty and O2 and contain much history.  With the extreme density, they serve as every citizen's own back yard. These cypresses are in Temple of Heaven park.You probably can't read the plaque, but it says that this was the "Animal Sacrificing Building".

This fellow has chosen to set up his karaoke machine there and practise his traditional instrument playing. (Karaoke is VERY popular) 
Here, for my musical friends (you know who you are, Rainbow, et al) are photos of various instruments which appear to me to be similar to ones played at home. Similar but different. I think that's a Chinese banjo in the back ground and a harmonium in the foreground, no?
While this is...hmmm...a teeny tiny something or other. It sounds most like a fiddle.
But I don't recall ever having seen anything like this before I came to China!

Saturday in the park with ChaCha

And what happens in that Long Corridor? Well, performances of various kinds. Who needs a National Theatre Building when you can see this for free in the park if you're a Beijinger or for the price of admission to the park (about 45 cents) if you're not?

Yes, the above is a man in drag. Much of  Peking Opera was performed by men in dresses, but in the last century or so, there are whole operas in which women take all the parts! I caught bits and pieces of one when Cal was channel-surfing one night and it actually captured my imagination. So, we thought we'd go, but when we found out it would cost close to $30, we passed. And then I wandered down to Temple of Heaven Park and got an equally entertaining performance.

I loved her spangly princess outfit with the sunglasses. And the older ladies with the fluffy fans.

These people are not professionals...nobody pays them to do this stuff. They don't have to audition or rent a hall. They just come out and DO IT!
These gals are spinning handkerchiefs. Very pretty. All to the beat of a small drum and the tune of miked harmonicas.
Then, further down, there was this musical extravaganza. He really had a terrific voice and there was a whole chorus of fellows along the back wall belting it out with him. Loud!
Or, you can just play cards. Lots of that. Enthusiastic and dramatic, too.