Mongolia- Part 2!
Hello everyone!
I hope you all are doing well- I'm having a great time over here! Since my last correspondence I have met with both the American and Japanese Embassies here in UB as well as the Asia Foundation and the man who established the first private museum of Mongolian artwork. All were very great experiences, the artwork that Altangerel has collected is simply beautiful (and quite expensive- he runs an antique shop as well). My classes have also been progressing as well. My Mongolian is slowly improving; we have "learned" approximately 65 verbs so far as well as a myriad of nouns. We have even learned a good deal of the tenses, as well as some other grammatical things. Mongolian is a very interesting language! We have also gone through numerous other lectures, the first of which was on "Mongolian History and Ethnography." So for four out of five days we listened to our professor lecture on the history of the Mongolians from Chinggis Han all the way to the modern times and on the last day of that class we discussed some of ethnography as well as some of the politics that are going on in Mongolia as well as the National University of Mongolia. Our next lecture was on Archeology and Anthropology- one day each. In Archeology, as you may guess, we learned about numerous time periods in Mongolia and saw some examples of artifacts found from these time periods. In Anthropology we learned about the 24 ethnic groups in Mongolia, their language, location as well as their estimated population. It was interesting to find out that Mongolian, Korean, Japanese and Turkish all belong to the Altaic Language family (I think that is what it is, I'm typing off of the top of my head). After these lectures we had one on Rural Development, which was delivered by a German man. He was very thorough and knowledgeable about his topic- although parts of it were rather sad. The "nomads" in Mongolia are moving less and less, which is destroying the steppe landscape and causing massive amounts of desertification in the countryside. Our next set of lectures, which begin today, are on economics.
Moving on from the academic stuff- I went to Harhorum this weekend! Harhorum is better known to the West as "Karakorum", also as Chinggis Khan's Capital for the Great Mongol Empire. We had a really long drive, over eight hours! On the way there we saw "Swan Lake", which was just that- a lake. It had a large amount of tadpoles in its tendrils that stretched to the grassland around it. The funny thing about the scenery here was that there were a large group of dunes nearby, although we were no-where near the Gobi. Just something I found interesting. We also stopped by at a Buddhist Temple/Monastery place. That was really interesting, because most of the buildings were ruins. During the Soviet rule, all Mongolian temples were destroyed and all of the monks were killed- part of the USSR's "no religion" policy. There were three buildings that had been rebuilt at this temple and so we visited them. Should any of you ever decide to visit a Buddhist place remember to do everything clockwise for good luck. If you go in a counter-clock-wise direction you will undo your blessings and give yourself bad luck!
After we arrived at our ger camp for the night, a few of us went to see a musical group perform some indigenous Mongolian music. That was really cool! They played a horse fiddle and a.. horse base? These looked like Western orchestral instruments, except the head was in the shape of a horse and each instrument only had two strings. The fiddle also was nestled in between the legs of the player as well. They also had a flute player and a percussion-type player who played something like a xylophone. They also had a throat singer- which was very interesting to hear! He could make two very cool sounds in his throat at the same time, sometimes it resembled a frog and others some other animals. There was a woman who sang as well- she was very talented and her style was quite different from what we as Westerners usually hear. One of my friends, Sarah, bought a CD of them so I may be able to acquire some songs and play them for any of you who might be interested. Moving on, it got really cold at night! The ger did a good job of keeping us warm, though, and I curled up as best I could in the bed that was provided in the ger. The next day we spent looking at Harhorum itself!
Harhorum was actually destroyed when the Manchu's invaded Mongolia to establish the Qing Dynasty (I believe) and on top of that was built Erdene Zuu, a Buddhist Monastery. That, in turn, was destroyed by the Soviets as well as the Communist Mongolians, but it has begun to rebuild. There was a great wall that surrounded the area with 108 stoopas (you'll see them in some pictures that I'll eventually get on the internet). The temples and buildings in Erdene Zuu were very pretty- it is thought that some of the buildings might even have been saved from the destructive Communists. One of the best aspects of Erdene Zuu was that there was a working Monastery. We were able to hear them chanting a sutra! In fact, we were able to enter the building that they were chanting in, which was great. The Sutras, or teachings, are all written in Tibetan. After we exited this area we went outside the wall to an excavation site where they think they may have found Ogodei's, the third son of Chinggis Han, palace. All we were able to see was rubble, but it was interesting to see the outlines of what used to be walls as well as a good deal of debris that actually was a part of the building, or some pottery.
The rest of the way home was uneventful and so has been this week. Although, I have begun meeting with some people for my research project. Actually, I met with a body-builder who formerly trained in Mongolian Wrestling, Kukshin Karate and Samba. That was very informative and will be very helpful to my paper! I have classes up until Tuesday and I think I will be going into the field some day near Thursday of next week until July 5-6, somewhere in there. More details as they come, though! That's it for now, I hope everyone's summer is going well! Have fun!
Bayartai!
I hope you all are doing well- I'm having a great time over here! Since my last correspondence I have met with both the American and Japanese Embassies here in UB as well as the Asia Foundation and the man who established the first private museum of Mongolian artwork. All were very great experiences, the artwork that Altangerel has collected is simply beautiful (and quite expensive- he runs an antique shop as well). My classes have also been progressing as well. My Mongolian is slowly improving; we have "learned" approximately 65 verbs so far as well as a myriad of nouns. We have even learned a good deal of the tenses, as well as some other grammatical things. Mongolian is a very interesting language! We have also gone through numerous other lectures, the first of which was on "Mongolian History and Ethnography." So for four out of five days we listened to our professor lecture on the history of the Mongolians from Chinggis Han all the way to the modern times and on the last day of that class we discussed some of ethnography as well as some of the politics that are going on in Mongolia as well as the National University of Mongolia. Our next lecture was on Archeology and Anthropology- one day each. In Archeology, as you may guess, we learned about numerous time periods in Mongolia and saw some examples of artifacts found from these time periods. In Anthropology we learned about the 24 ethnic groups in Mongolia, their language, location as well as their estimated population. It was interesting to find out that Mongolian, Korean, Japanese and Turkish all belong to the Altaic Language family (I think that is what it is, I'm typing off of the top of my head). After these lectures we had one on Rural Development, which was delivered by a German man. He was very thorough and knowledgeable about his topic- although parts of it were rather sad. The "nomads" in Mongolia are moving less and less, which is destroying the steppe landscape and causing massive amounts of desertification in the countryside. Our next set of lectures, which begin today, are on economics.
Moving on from the academic stuff- I went to Harhorum this weekend! Harhorum is better known to the West as "Karakorum", also as Chinggis Khan's Capital for the Great Mongol Empire. We had a really long drive, over eight hours! On the way there we saw "Swan Lake", which was just that- a lake. It had a large amount of tadpoles in its tendrils that stretched to the grassland around it. The funny thing about the scenery here was that there were a large group of dunes nearby, although we were no-where near the Gobi. Just something I found interesting. We also stopped by at a Buddhist Temple/Monastery place. That was really interesting, because most of the buildings were ruins. During the Soviet rule, all Mongolian temples were destroyed and all of the monks were killed- part of the USSR's "no religion" policy. There were three buildings that had been rebuilt at this temple and so we visited them. Should any of you ever decide to visit a Buddhist place remember to do everything clockwise for good luck. If you go in a counter-clock-wise direction you will undo your blessings and give yourself bad luck!
After we arrived at our ger camp for the night, a few of us went to see a musical group perform some indigenous Mongolian music. That was really cool! They played a horse fiddle and a.. horse base? These looked like Western orchestral instruments, except the head was in the shape of a horse and each instrument only had two strings. The fiddle also was nestled in between the legs of the player as well. They also had a flute player and a percussion-type player who played something like a xylophone. They also had a throat singer- which was very interesting to hear! He could make two very cool sounds in his throat at the same time, sometimes it resembled a frog and others some other animals. There was a woman who sang as well- she was very talented and her style was quite different from what we as Westerners usually hear. One of my friends, Sarah, bought a CD of them so I may be able to acquire some songs and play them for any of you who might be interested. Moving on, it got really cold at night! The ger did a good job of keeping us warm, though, and I curled up as best I could in the bed that was provided in the ger. The next day we spent looking at Harhorum itself!
Harhorum was actually destroyed when the Manchu's invaded Mongolia to establish the Qing Dynasty (I believe) and on top of that was built Erdene Zuu, a Buddhist Monastery. That, in turn, was destroyed by the Soviets as well as the Communist Mongolians, but it has begun to rebuild. There was a great wall that surrounded the area with 108 stoopas (you'll see them in some pictures that I'll eventually get on the internet). The temples and buildings in Erdene Zuu were very pretty- it is thought that some of the buildings might even have been saved from the destructive Communists. One of the best aspects of Erdene Zuu was that there was a working Monastery. We were able to hear them chanting a sutra! In fact, we were able to enter the building that they were chanting in, which was great. The Sutras, or teachings, are all written in Tibetan. After we exited this area we went outside the wall to an excavation site where they think they may have found Ogodei's, the third son of Chinggis Han, palace. All we were able to see was rubble, but it was interesting to see the outlines of what used to be walls as well as a good deal of debris that actually was a part of the building, or some pottery.
The rest of the way home was uneventful and so has been this week. Although, I have begun meeting with some people for my research project. Actually, I met with a body-builder who formerly trained in Mongolian Wrestling, Kukshin Karate and Samba. That was very informative and will be very helpful to my paper! I have classes up until Tuesday and I think I will be going into the field some day near Thursday of next week until July 5-6, somewhere in there. More details as they come, though! That's it for now, I hope everyone's summer is going well! Have fun!
Bayartai!