Mongolia Profile on Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera did a recent profile piece on Mongolia. It is fairly interesting given the depth of the report, and the new president got some hard questions from the interviewer. Both parts are below.

The freeze frame has two of Mongolia's "Top 50 Most Important People" according to a fun book in the ACMS library. Sumati in the top screen is the director of the Sant Maral Foundation whose survey data I have referred to in other posts. And, President Elbegdorj needs no introduction in the bottom screen.

Summer Ritual

It has taken so long to happen that I foolishly thought this year we might all escape a summer ritual in Ulaanbaatar. It turns out that it is a summer ritual that affects millions of people across the Eurasian continent who are unlucky enough to live in flats supported by a Soviet designed infrastructure. I learned this fact last summer when a reporter from the BBC did a report on the very same ritual happening in Kiev, Ukraine in his apartment block. What ritual, you may ask? The ritual of losing hot water service for 2-3 weeks each summer for "cleaning and maintenance" on the pipes. Hot showers are a distant memory at my apartment block until July 6th when service starts again.

This summer ritual is a curious aspect of the heating and water systems constructed under the Soviet-style centralized economic model. Until seeing the BBC report last year, I had always thought it was a phenomenon special to Ulaanbaatar. However, it seems we are not alone in being deprived the luxury of hot water for the sake of the system.

Someone in the diplomatic corps once told me about a similar situation in China. The Chinese government notified his embassy that hot water service would be discontinued for several weeks for "maintenance" at the diplomatic housing complex. The foreign service officer then replied to the Chinese government by telling them if that was the case, then the embassy would expect a reduction in the price of rent paid on the diplomatic housing. The government balked at this. But the embassy persisted on the claim that reduced service meant reduced payment. The response on the Chinese side was to complete the maintenance in 3 days rather than the normal 3 weeks, which saved the government from losing much sought after rent money but caused another problem altogether. It demonstrated to everyone else that it was possible for the work to be done quickly if the right incentives were in place.

Sometimes I wonder if the summer ritual in Mongolia might also lack the proper incentives to make it shorter overall. That is the reason I call it a ritual. I am not entirely convinced the long wait is anything more than bureaucratic sloth manifest as a yearly occurrence. It's of course silly to complain too much about not having hot water in a city where a significant portion of the population does not even have access to running water hot or cold, but it is indicative of larger problems of efficiency and administration that affect everyone. At any rate, for the next couple of weeks I join millions of other people in the world experiencing this summer ritual.

City Pride

Every so often a musical group produces a song that is a fitting homage to a city. I think the Lemons on their most recent album have done this with their song "1983...1986" which is a light tribute to Mongolia's city. The video is particularly fun for its historical footage of Ulaanbaatar before the frenetic and unfettered development of the last two decades. An idyllic reminiscence of much simpler times gone by.



It is easy to sometimes forget that Ulaanbaatar has a storied past as a crossroads and cosmopolitan destination for Eurasian explorers, travelers, merchants, and spiritual pilgrims. Recently the ACMS library purchased a book that was published in 2006 in commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of the founding of the Great Mongol State. It is a fairly thorough photographic and pictorial history of the city, and includes some amazing archival pictures such as the dedication ceremony of the Sukhbaatar statue on Sukhbaatar Square when the square was an huge open patch of dirt and there was no parliament building. The photos are supplemented with passages describing different aspects of the city's development overtime, which for those unaware, has been going on for 370 years! I would encourage anyone with curiosity about Ulaanbaatar's history to stop by the center and look at the book. It is also available at Internom bookstore at the unbelievable price of 30,000MNT.

Ulaanbaatar can be an eyesore much of the year, but with the budding of spring leaves on the trees the city is becoming greener by the day. The Lemons song, the book, and the reemergence of natural colors outside the center windows does remind me that for all its faults Ulaanbaatar is a unique city that each citizen can find pride in. It is a 370 year work in progress, and, for all its supposed isolation, it has certainly never been a utterly boring place to live.

Hidden Gobi

As part of a weekend trip out to eastern Umnugovi Aimag with friends from Khankhongor Soum, the school driver from Khanbogd Soum (a mutual friend) led our group out to an interesting geological formation about 30km from the soum center. He emphasized to me several times that few people knew about the place, and everyone in the Khankhongor contingent confirmed this by repeating several times they had never even heard of the place let alone had visited it previously.

I am not a geologist, so I could only marvel at the site and wonder how it was formed. The rock looked like a cross between granite and crystalline concrete. It was very rough and it easily broke under modest pressure. It looked as though the rock formed initially under a sedimentary process, and then later the area was shaped by some sort of erosive force. I was compelled based on intuition and knowledge barely remembered from a geology class I took over ten years ago in college to think that it formed under the influence of water. It had several hallmarks of water erosion, especially pock marks born into the sides of boulders. But, that would suggest that a very large sea or other body of water with currents was present at the location at some point in its history, and I am not sure if there was such a body of water in the Gobi. The hypothesis therefore has an obvious flaw, and I remain ignorant of the true cause of the formations.

If there are any geologists out there reading this with ideas, please do offer comments. It was a truly interesting place.

The Other "Tolgoi"

Over the weekend I made a trip out to the eastern part of Umnugovi Aimag with my wife and a group of friends from Khankhongor Soum. Along the way we stopped at Tavan Tolgoi which is Mongolia's fantastically huge coal deposit and the other "tolgoi" after Oyu Tolgoi (the copper and gold mine near Khanbogd Soum). It was an impressive sight to behold. It was a large open pit mining operation, and although it is not even close to working at full capacity, it was amazing to see the amount of trucks coming and going from the pit. We were all greatly impressed by the size and potential scale of the project.

A few kilometers down the road we were flagged down by reporters from Channel 25 who were interviewing truck drivers and people like us about the conditions around the mine and on the road. Listening to our driver talk with the reporters I got a new sense of the uneasiness that regular people feel about the mining agreements at Tavan Tolgoi and Oyu Tolgoi. In particular when asked about the large trucks coming and going from the mine site tearing up the jeep trail used to go from the aimag center to the Chinese border, he made the comment that it was a bit frightening because the trucks were large, wipping up dangerous amounts of dust and he didn't know who the drivers were--Are they Mongolian or not? Who do they work for? Where do they come from and where do they go?

These questions struck me as reflecting a much larger worry of average people. Seeing the shear size of the Tavan Tolgoi mine site one is almost awestruck by it. So much mineral wealth. And, yet, where is it going? Who is going to reap the benefits of that wealth? Is it a very large fraud on ordinary people? If you don't even know who the drivers are, how can you know who the people making the real money are?

Of course, there are answers to these questions if one goes looking for them, but that is not what most people do. Instead in the absence of information people worry and they let their imaginations take control of what they know from experience. In Mongolia this is a particularly unproductive and insidious thing to happen. Owen Lattimore described the following in his book "Nomads and Commissars" (Oxford Press 1962) in a chapter entitled "Autonomous Mongolia: Years of Frustration" when referring to the forces that led to that nationalist movement that eventually became the socialist movement in the 1930s and 40s:

The people felt that every time there was a deal over national autonomy, over debts to Chinese merchants, over anything at all, there was also a sell-out. The big fellows came out of it with new titles, emoluments, and stipends. Then they turned around and wanted more taxes and special contributions from the people to pay for it all. They incited ordinary Mongols to massacre and beat up Chinese merchants and money-lenders, and burn their account books, but that just put the big fellows in a position to say to the Chinese, later, "Well, forget about my personal debt and I'll help you to collect the rest." (pg. 65)

There are some unsettling parallels between that passage and the present situation in Mongolia. One almost feels that it could be written today with "Chinese merchant" replaced by "mining conglomerate." It makes one think of the old adage the more things change the more they stay the same.

It is a real concern that ordinary people do not trust anyone to make the proper decision regarding the mineral wealth of the country whether it be Mongolia's political leaders or the people negotiating the mining deals for the multi-national corporations. I always understood that in an academic and abstract way, but seeing Tavan Tolgoi for the first time made me feel first hand a sense of the real worry that ordinary people have. It is the same feeling you get when you sense that a trick is being played on you. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and Mongolia loses its best chance at accumulating real wealth because people at the top are playing a game.

It is easy to become cynical and read into these feelings that nothing good can come of all this, as if the sentiment that the rich get richer; etc, is the only alternative. The mining agreements have been painfully slow to move towards fruition. On the one hand, this could mean that the "big fellows" are just trying to position themselves to become even wealthier at the expense of everyone else. On the other hand, it might mean that the worries of ordinary people like my driver to eastern Umnugovi are actually having an influence on the process. A third option is that both are occurring with a whole lot of other political machinations in between which makes the whole thing one big Gordian knot. Whatever it is, it is certainly not easy.

Complain and Ye Shall Receive

This weekend I was pleasantly surprised to find that the stretch of the Selbe river between the US Embassy and Sky Center was cleaned up. All the trash was collected in piles and burned, and even the shrub brush was cleared. There was still a lot of plastic in the water, but overall the river was relatively clean. I am sorry I missed the actual cleaning, because I would have liked to have seen how many people it involved. Needless to say, it was a victory for the "nature"-lovers among us city-dwellers. Many thanks to whatever city officials or concerned citizens group orchestrated the clean-up effort.

Garbage in Ulaanbaatar

I recently saw in a news item that the mayor of Ulaanbaatar has decided to get tough on the garbage problem in the city. His solution struck me as a bit curious. He wants to recruit private business in the effort to clean up the streets, presumably by better enforcing or encouraging responsible disposal of trash. This may be a fair solution to one aspect of the trash problem, but I certainly hope it is not considered the panacea for the problem.

It has been striking this spring since the snow and ice has melted to notice just how much trash there is in the city. The other day I was looking out my apartment window at a group of new mothers standing and chatting while rocking their babies, and I noticed that they were standing among trash. It was everywhere. Plastic bags, bottles, broken glass, bones, you name it, and it was there. The Selbe River is not much better. This river which runs north to south past the US embassy and the Sky Center is looking especially polluted and trashy this spring. Now, it is possible that businesses are dumping their trash up stream or near the playground by my apartment building, but it seems more likely the trash is coming from poor sanitation services or households disinclined to properly dispose of waste. In my neighborhood, at least, it seems primarily to be a household and individual problem rather than a private business one.

As a person who utilizes the Selbe River as one of only a handful of precious green spaces left in the city, I certainly feel motivated to help out in doing my part to clean up that space, as well as the playground behind my apartment building. But, I don't exactly feel empowered to do it. For one, even if I did take it upon myself to clean up the Selbe, it would be a Quixotic pursuit at best. There is just too much trash for one person to collect. Another reason is that I am not sure what I would do with the trash once I collected it. I am sure my apartment manager would soon get irritated if I filled up the trash shoot with garbage from the river. Not to mention, I am not even sure if my apartment manager properly disposes of our trash, too!

So, I hope the mayor's office does in fact get tough on cleaning up the city, but I think part of the solution should involve getting private citizens empowered to make a positive contribution to the effort. Whether it's walking the extra five steps to the garbage can on the street to dispose of a ice cream wrapper, or it's forming groups of neighbors to clean up areas that we all live and play in, offering practical ways for disposing of this garbage once it is collected. This stuff does not happen automatically, so someone needs to take the lead role in organizing households and individuals to take the trash problem seriously. Otherwise, we are going to be buried alive in trash in this city.

National Museum and Presidential Politics

My wife and I went to the National Museum this weekend in search of a new display which contains artifacts discovered in Khotont Soum in Arkhangai Aimag. Khotont is where I spent my Peace Corps days, and I had numerous opportunities while living there to hike through areas with Turkish era monuments and artifacts. Our visit to the museum was a sort of expression of local pride. The soum is right on the southern edge of the Orkhon Valley, and in recent years more and more archaeologists have begun venturing into the soum looking for more evidence to understand the intricacies of life on the steppe in the first millennium. Alas, we did not find the display, but we did find that the museum has undergone significant changes over the last year.

Many of the display halls have been renovated and display cases for the most part are very nicely arranged. I have always been a fan of the national costume hall, and I was pleased to see that it had been renovated and, in fact, the museum is adding more costumes to the display cases. But, among the many changes, the most interesting change was the 20th Century History hall which was the last display area before exiting the museum. It has transformed into the Democratic and Free Market Transition hall with displays of protests in the early 1990s, economic and social changes throughout the last two decades, and commemoration of individuals who took part in bringing about the change. Throughout the hall there were speakers pumping in sounds of speeches at rallies, the noises of crowds, and, of course, the national anthem.

I asked the museum worker when the hall was changed. She indicated that the Democratic Party or Democratic Union (she wasn't sure who) gave money for the renovation a few years ago. It must have occurred recently, though, because my last visit to the museum in June 2008 still had the old display cases. I thought the hall was a great improvement over the previous hall, and it included some really interesting information like a satellite image of Ulaanbaatar with marks indicating where underground pro-democracy youth movements operated in the 80s and the official declarations for acquiring personal passports under the law of the Mongolian People's Republic and present day democratic Mongolia.

This weekend was the start of the presidential campaign season in Mongolia, and it was somewhat fitting to make the "discovery" of the new hall at the museum this very weekend. The presidential race will be a rematch of the 2005 race. There might be a lot to be cynical about with that fact. However, the museum did remind me, at least, that a lot of pride remains in Mongolia about the county's history and future. These are not easy choices to make and these are not easy times in Mongolia (if ever there were), but people in general seem to remain with an overall positive frame of mind. This belief was reaffirmed as we passed Zorig's statue after leaving the museum and we saw that someone had put a string of flowers around his neck. The ideal is alive and well in the minds of people even if the execution is sometimes flawed in reality.

Identity in a Globalized World

A confluence of events has made me ponder the concept of identity in our ever more globalized world. Last week Lucy Rees gave an interesting lecture on her research on the cinematic style of Mongolian film and the use of music within movies. She posed the question of how one might define a Mongolian film, and what were the minimum requisites for a film to become "Mongolian." Do the actors need to be Mongolian? Does the director need to be Mongolian? Does the theme need to be Mongolian? All of the above or more?

These questions were answered with another interesting question challenging the sentiment behind the original question, which was how to define the boundary where a person's perspective crosses over from being "authentic" to "foreign," to posit whether even the concept of filmmaking is foreign regardless of the people involved because cameras are not indigenous to the steppe. This question is not trivial, because the question of perspective is very important to great deal of people. A movie about American life, especially if critical, is more likely to be received as "authentic" by Americans if it is produced by someone Americans identify as authentically "American." The case for Mongolia is no different, and that is part of the reason Lucy posed her questions. But, the question that resulted from her questions added another level of complexity to the idea of authenticity and cultural identity.

I came across a blog post entitled: A Few Points about Debate. The author of the post examines the difference between black-and-white thought and black-and-white language. The former is something an open-minded and curious person tries to avoid, but the author argues that the latter is something that is used in debate and conversation to make conveying complex ideas more expedient. It is left to the listener to unpack those ideas and finesse out the greater complexities or to see the emphasis black-and-white language puts on certain points to convey a message but not necessarily to state an absolute truth.

This idea along with some other things I have observed in public debate recently and in a few books I have read has made me think about how difficult it is to discuss the idea of identity in the globalized world. The concept is complex and intricate, but it is also one that stirs up a lot of passion for some people. If we are inclined to mistake black-and-white language for black-and-white thinking, then we are bound to end up not really unpacking the full complexity of the questions authenticity and identity bring up.

The boundary becomes a bit blurred. If a filmmaker raised in Ulaanbaatar makes a film about rural life in Bayanhongor, is this an authentic film? From one perspective it is, because someone might see that the filmmaker is Mongolian and its about a Mongolian topic. From another perspective a person might suggest that maybe its not authentic, because the filmmaker grew up mostly in Russia, lives in Ulaanbaatar only part of the year, and has never actually lived in the countryside. Who is correct here? I am not sure that is even an appropriate question, because it is not really about being correct or incorrect. It is far too complex for that.

These are ideas that in other contexts seem both complicated and contridictory. Is Eric Clapton a real blues musician? Is a McDonald's in New Delhi American eventhough it has a Hindu menu? Are CDs and CD players Japanese? If not, then what are they? With so many cultures and so many traditions coming together and influencing one another, it is becoming increasingly hard to think about cultural identity and authenticity in black-and-white terms.

This is especially interesting in Mongolia because in the last 20 years the country has once again become a crossroads of ideas and identities. Defining what is authentically Mongolian from a literal or absolute stand point is bound to end in contridictions. Mongolia historically has been a place with such talent at absorbing new ideas and modifying them to suit the needs of individuals and groups, that it is often difficult to find things that are, from a literal sense, authentically Mongolian. This is not a bad thing. The same could be said about the United States, and yet there is a sense of identity and authenticity that allows most people most of the time to say "That's American." The same is true for Mongolia.

Identity is ultimately a malleable concept. Something that on an individual level changes over one's lifetime and on an societal level changes over generations. Authenticity is inexcricably linked to identity, because things are not authentic unless they project elements that coincide with a particular identity. A Mongolian film must meet certain criteria in order for people to accept it as a Mongolian film. The trick is that no one really knows what those criteria are, and they don't seem to be static.

In the United States this is an issue that remains unresolved, but a consensus more or less has evolved over the last century that the concept of "American" is not grounded in blood lines and history but rather in shared identity that forms organically in the lives of people who fall within the political boundaries of the territory called the United States of America. In a country like Mongolia where there are only 3 million people, one wonders if the concept of "Mongolian" can derive from a similar process of identity adaptation. I think it can, and it has from at least the 13th century.

This reminds me of a statement that a friend of mine once made in a lecture about Mongolian history. He said, "In Inner Mongolia, the Mongolians veiw the idea of Mongolism as something that must be preserved. In Mongolia, we veiw Mongolism in terms of the practicalities of living in a modern world." In other words, Mongolian identity in Mongolia is a dynamic process changing over time to meet the challenges of the 21st century and not a museum piece needing perservation.

I don't know if there are definitive answers to Lucy's questions or the question her questions elicited, but I do know that identity and therefore the authenticity of things produced by those who identify with one group or another is far more complex than black-and-white thinking can handle in helping us understand the world we live in. As more people come in contact and learn other languages and experience other ways of living, the whole concept of cultural identity will have to be unpacked in all its complexity to really get a sense of what things are. For now it is just something to think about.

Buddhism in Mongolia: Rebirth and Transformation

Smith College will host a symposium on Mongolian Buddhism at the end of March. The main organizer of the event participated in the CIEE study seminar managed by the ACMS last summer, and I gather that the trip had some impact on the content of the symposium. Smith College is a liberal arts college for women in western Massachusetts, and it is encouraging to see that interest in Mongolia is finding its way to new corners of the world. Given the people involved, I think those interested in Buddhism and particularly Mongolian Buddhism would be disappointed to miss this event. More information is available on the Smith College website at Buddhism in Mongolia: Rebirth and Transformation. The photo on the website of the fallen statue has an amusing backstory, so those who attend the symposium should ask Jamie Hubbard to tell the story of the world's worst ger camp redeemed by warmish beer and wine.

Mamma Mia! I can still do without mutton.

Recently my wife and I watched the musical movie sensation Mamma Mia!, which is a screen adaptation of the musical by the same name. Given the movie's popularity--it recently unseated Titanic for highest grossing film ever in the United Kingdom--I probably do not need to explain what the film is about. However, I would like to mention that it is a musical entirely set to the music of the Swedish pop group ABBA, and this is relevant to what I am about to write.

I was never really a fan of ABBA. There was something rather too poppy about them for my tastes. Yet, while my wife and I watched, I found myself actually tapping my foot to the music, and for days afterwards I kept humming the music in my head and sometimes out loud. I was completely surprised by the impression this movie had on me, and it led me to quip to my wife that I've spent five years in Mongolia and all I've got to show for it is a stinkin' appreciation for ABBA.

ABBA, Bonnie Em, Suzie Quatro and Chris Norman, these are all musical "sensations" that live on in Mongolia hearkening back to a much simpler and drabber period in Mongolian history. This new found appreciation for ABBA comes from me thinking what it must have been like to hear this music for the first time on bootleg tapes in the 80s when it first made its way into Mongolia. It must have sounded like the most exotic and addicting of sounds, which I think says something more about the condition of life in Mongolia at the time rather than the musical depth of the groups. ABBA is catchy. You don't have to understand the lyrics to begin to dance along, and many of the songs have simple refrains which to the snobby critic might seem fatuous but to a non-native speaker of English are easy to pick up and sing. "Waterloo! Blah-blah-blah, da blah, my Waterloo!" is a good example.



This music has a special meaning in Mongolia because it has nostalgia attached to it which you won't encounter anywhere else. Watching Mamma Mia! I began to imagine it must have been a breath of fresh air or a window into a more colorful world beyond the Soviet Union when the music first began to be traded among high school and college students in Ulaanbaatar. It was something really easy to dance to at a time when many of Mongolia's senior democratic revolutionaries and conservatives alike were young and very impressionable. My new found appreciation for ABBA has a lot to do with understanding how something as frivolous as pop songs can really have a profound effect on the world. One can imagine that Zorig, Elbegdorj, and even President Enkhbayar were inspired in some measure to change the political landscape in Mongolia by the sounds they heard from groups like ABBA and Smokey (even if it doesn't seem to inform their decision making today). It's a really odd thing to consider, but is more believable and real to me now that I am sitting writing this and humming "Stumblin' In" to myself.

It is a fact that living in Mongolia walls off many mainstream sources of music, as well as many other forms of entertainment, by the standards I grew up in. But, really that happens in any country where you have the time to begin to appreciate the local tastes because of an inability to recreate one's world of entertainment back home. Living in Mongolia has definitely stretched my appreciation of Swedish and other pop music and the nostalgic position in holds in modern Mongolia. And, yet, I can still do without mutton, so Mongolia still has a long way to go in modifying my tastes overall, I suppose. But, ABBA is one victory I will give it.

Senegal: The Movie

One of the participants in the recent Council for American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) conference in Senegal put together a video montage of our time in the country. The video gives the impression that we spent most of the time dancing, which is really not too far from the truth.

Russia's Crown Jewels

Now for some news from the weird. Chinggis' tomb may have a competitor for the title of most elusive (and likely non-existent) treasure in Mongolia. According to a LA Times story, a LA socialite is convinced that the last Russian Czar's crown jewels are buried somewhere in the Gobi Desert. It is a family legend that includes bandits, a map, and failed attempts to recover the hidden booty. I think the story pretty much speaks for itself, so I won't write anymore. Read the full LA Times story by clicking here: Russian Crown Jewels.

CAORC Meeting In Senegal

The ACMS is a member of a consortium called the "Council for American Overseas Research Centers," otherwise known as CAORC. I recently returned from the CAORC US & Overseas Directors meeting which was held January 4-5 with an extension tour January 6-9 in Senegal. The West Africa Research Center (WARC) hosted the conference at its center located in Dakar. Approximately 50 people attended the conference to discuss future collaborative work among the member centers as well as other institutions with area studies programs. CAORC organizes these meetings every 2-2.5 years, and they are a great opportunity for the member centers' directors to share ideas and learn about how other centers operate.

CAORC has been instrumental in securing funding for several programs and activities at the ACMS. The US-Mongolia Summer Field Research Program has been funded with CAORC support each year since its inception, and much of the computer hardware available in the center was purchased using CAORC grant funds. The Digital Library for International Research (DLIR) is also a CAORC project which provides the ACMS, along with other member centers, with an online catalog for its library.

More information about CAORC, its programs, and the programs of member centers is available at www.caorc.org.

Cold has Arrived

A few weeks ago I wrote on this blog that it was unusually warm for Mongolia in November. This week the weather seems to be making up for lost time. On Tuesday the temperature dropped to -26 F (-32 C) for a nighttime low, and it only made it up to -9 F (-22 C) for a daytime high on Wednesday. Brrrr! It's currently -20 F (-29 C) and snowing.

This level of cold does funny stuff, mostly in terms of freezing things to other things. Metal glasses freeze to noses, tear drops freeze to eyelids, and, the old classic, beards become frosty on walks to work.

Either you love the cold or hate it. I am one of those people who loves the cold, so entering my fifth winter in Mongolia I am not altogether disappointed with the change in weather.