I already blogged this morning about yesterday but today has been so full that I think I need to again before I forget anything. I'm also super tired...
After breakfast and blogging I decided to take Lonely Planet's walking tour and hit up a few extra museums on my list. On my way out of the hostel I came across another guy staying there who is totally off his rocker and he ranted at me about the Chinese for about 30 minutes. It was absolutely fascinating. He had spent months there in the minority provinces and has traveled to 112 countries. He went on and on and on about Han complacency and the oppressive government. I suggested that maybe not all Han Chinese follow the party line as he suggested (thinking of our family friend Yangkan) but he didn't believe it. Everyone I know who has spent some time in China has strong feelings about it.
First I walked down Peace Avenue, the huge street with the State Department mall. I took it to Sukhbaatar Square, named after the man who declared Mongolia's independence from China in 1921. There's a big statue of him in the center. The square is surrounded by the Parliament house which has a huge monument/statue of Chinggis (hey, that's how they write it) Khaan and Kublai who is is next to him on the east, the Palace of Culture and the State Opera and Ballet Theater which is pink. In the square there was a really interesting photo exhibit. I didn't have to read the captions to get the message behind pictures of overindulgent politicians and the homeless. There were a bunch of people all around it too- just regular folks checking out the art in the square.
From there I went on to the museum of Mongolian Costumes. It's a really crappy museum and they charged me $25 to take the pictures I needed to take. (Thank you Fund For Teachers!) It also took a lot of work to figure out what the woman working there was trying to tell me. I communicated in broken phrasebook Mongolian and she answered in Mongolian I couldn't decipher. Uuchlaarai, bi mongoloor yairdaggui. [I'm sorry, I don't speak Mongolian.] Though it was a crappy museum, I did get to see the fabric store and successfully used Mongolian to figure out how much a meter cost and when they were open. I'm hoping to bring some traditional fabric back to my students.
Then, on to the museum of Mongolian History which happened to have an excellent exhibit on traditional clothing and beautiful jewelry. Each region has a distinct style and you can kind of tell where they are from. The silk brocade stuff is obviously from closer to China while the fur hats and unisex sashes and tunics are from near Russia. The women's hair covering is from the Khazak region. The Khazak clothing reminds me of some Bedoin patterns I've been before. Here's a list of the more interesting things I learned in the museum:
- Communism brought literacy.
- Mongolia was the 2nd country in the world to become communist.
- During the communist purges, 36,000 people were killed and many more went missing. That's out of a population of roughly 750,000!!!!
- The ethnic majority is Khalak.
- They became a democracy in '91.
- There are ancient burial sites throughout the country marked by square stones.
- There are two distinct kinds of gers (yurts) and some Mongolians use tents.
- You can touch anything that isn't behind glass, even the petroglyphs.
The Museum of Natural History came next. What a joke. The animals were done by amateur taxidermists. I mean, you could see the seams. Most of the place was empty and I'm not talking empty of people, well that too, but there were just empty spaces. There was a ton of dinosaur stuff but all of it was kept in broken glass containers with holes in them, resting on thin sheets of Styrofoam. I kept thinking, hmmmm... so, this stuff is 7 million years old and it's in this dusty building without temperature control basically rotting away. Good thing first world countries took the good stuff?
I took a lunch break and I think I accidentally ate some spam. I tried to pick around the sticks of meat in my pasta salad but I think eating canned me is pretty unavoidable in this country. It was going to happen at one point.
After the break I walked to Gaandan Khiid, the large old monastery. The only reason this thing made it past the purges is because VP Henry Wallace wanted to see something Buddhist on his visit to Mongolia (who had helped fight the Nazi's with Russia). The Mongolian leader at the time had to hide the fact that he had just assassinated most of the country's monks and leveled all the temples (or used them to house prominent party members) so he cleaned up Gaandan Khiid and used it as a front. Inside the largest temple in the complex is a, surprise!, giant Buddha (see above). Pretty cool but built in the 20th century. There's also a structure that temporarily housed the Dalai Lama in 1913. Most of it though appears to be run down, dusty and falling apart. It's obvious that the foreign money isn't being use for restoration. Still, 600 monks belong to the place.
OOOOOOHHHHH crazy man is back. Got to go...
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