Khan you dig it? (10/5/2005)

Hi Everyone.

Genghis Khan wouldn’t wax poetic about Ulaanbaatar. The last (business) stop on this trip has brought us to the Mongolian capital – a city nestled in the middle of the subsiberian plain, a steppe both into deep history and an uncertain future.

Contrary to belief or biology, Genghis lives. The Mongols idolize him, and like a Byzantine icon, his image watched over several of the offices we visited. As one of history’s few figures who could walk into a bar and indisputably proclaim himself THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD, he built the largest land empire ever, brought the Black Plague to Europe, and even overtook history’s greatest restraining order to the south. Recently, scientists ran genetic tests on men from Beijing to the Caspian – 16 million of whom revealed a Y-chromosome linking them to a common 13th century ancestor. THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD was clearly a seduction artist in his spare time.

The city itself … eh. Its location is virtually accidental – the 17th settlement of a nomadic population that just happened to be here when the communists smacked them around and told them to stay put. As a result, little is particularly historical. Soviet highrises surround downtown, a grid of wide lanes, 4x4s, and packed trolleybuses. From my hotel window I have a view of the rooftops, punctuated by factories that spew less than pleasant inhabitants of the periodic table into an azure sky. The omnipresent haze is particularly disturbing, given the otherwise stunning vistas onto the hills.

Mongolia is a nation of nomads, and any foray here wouldn’t be complete without a countryside jaunt – thus the aforementioned 4x4s aren’t for convenience or compensation. Of Mongolia’s claimed 49,250 kilometers of highway, 1724 of them are paved – the rest is rolling grassland, trampled by shepherds, horsemen, and herders and dotted by gers (“gerrrrrrrrthy”) – felt-covered tents that Mongolian nomads carry, pitch, and live in wherever they feel fit. Communism, capitalism, feudalism … time decelerates here more pronouncedly than anywhere I’ve seen.

Sandwiched between a fading and emerging superpower, Mongolia finds itself at a unique crossroads. Aligning with neither, the country has to crawl back from socialism without much outside help. While capitalists have flooded Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, and Warsaw, and Vilnius, Mongolia still remains without a McDonald’s or western hotel 15 years after demarxification. There are relatively few English billboards, but the UN did make sure to put one on the main square, reading “Sex with children is a punishable crime.” Thank God they cleared that up.

One more stop, one more blog. Be well.
Matt