So here goes. We thought we’d begin in the halls of residence. From here, we will move in no particular direction as points of interest catch our fancy.
We live the third (top) floor of one of the older buildings in the city, which in this case is the 1950s- standards of construction round here are slightly less competent that your average sand castle. It’s one of the standing factors of UlaanBataar- buildings less than three years old look decrepit, and buildings more than five years old fall down with some regularity. But as one long time resident told us, these folks have a civilization that’s been around since the Doomsday Book was a pamphlet, but they only started building permanently in the past few decades. Before that it was (and to a large extent still is) all felt ger tents. There’s not a lot of institutional memory when to comes to know how to building an even flight of stairs, or a door that stays on its hinges.
Despite this, there are buildings going up all over town- cranes and exposed re-bar are everywhere on the skyline. There is such demand for housing that some apartments increase in value by as much 40% within six months of purchase, especially if they can stay reasonably upright for that long. I walked by one construction site last week where a wooden covered walkway had been built to allow pedestrians to pass below. This was just was well, as four stories up a welder was busy melding metal to metal without any of those uptight ideas about protection getting between him and his acetelying that building into shape. Great cascades of molten sparks were tumbling down onto the street below. I saw one chunk of especially glowing aspect fly from his torch, drop two stories, hit a tarpaulin, burn through it and continue on down to bounce glowing yellow on the pavement. The passersby beneath were yelling at the guy to stop, but he was a pro, so he ignored them. There’s really no way round this bit of road without going a long way round, so at each end of the building site, groups of peds would huddle together, wait for a break in the spark shower, and run under the building site, hoping the guy wouldn’t reload his torch in the meantime. After a bit, my group made its dash, but had our timing totally wrong, and as we hit the halfway point yellow metal pieces began tinkling onto the wood above our heads. I took off my backpack and carried it over my head and ran between one salaryman type and two schoolgirls. We all emerged unscathed, at which point everyone just ambled off on their business without so much as a shaken fist directed at the guy in the sky. Just another day on the street.
As the weather has changed from the dust storms and cold temperatures that greeted us on out arrival, the city has gained in attributes of loveliness. The trees, all pollarded and beat up looking without foliage, all seeded, blossomed, and advanced to full midsummer splendor in one week. The other night we sat out on our balcony on a carpet digging the breeze until about midnight- it was so warm and filled with sounds it was like being at the coast- perfectly warm, and a reason to be all in itself. Then again, when it comes to weather, it is always going to be Mongolia. Last weekend when we went to look at the Gandan Khiid monastery it was bright sunshine all the way there and sleet and snow on the way back thirty minutes later.
Weather and housing- how fascinating this must be. It’s all part of my ongoing honing of my expat spouse pose. I go to playgroups, fret about the servants, go shopping and bi*ch about the price of wine and caviar, plan holidays, go to the gym and fantasize about my tennis coach. Or I would, if I had any interest in tennis. And I take lessons in Mongolian three times a week, administered by Amgalan of the Friends Language School. And thus the cliché is complete. This is turning out well longer than I had anticipated, and Amgalan is by this point doubtless en route, but I’ll keep plugging until it’s time to wind up- we’re in the midst of conjugating a list of 36 verbs. Frustratingly, my efforts to apply my lessons on the unsuspecting public have not met with the greatest success. Mostly I get confounded stares- perhaps it’s my Kikuyu accent. Who knows?
The lingua of the steppe is a particularly gristly mouthful of linguistic mutton for a number of reasons, most prominent of which is the fact that the written and spoken form are really only freshman year roommates; they get along fine, and have stuff in common, but long term, they’re never really going to hang out. The Mongolian attitude to consonants is an uninterested one- a b could be a v could be a g could be gh could be ghch could be whatever you want. In order to address this, the alphabet has 35 letters, including all of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, plus two which Russian couldn’t handle. Pronunciation of said characters may or may not be the same as Russian, so please keep your hands inside the moving Mongolian vehicle at all times. Grammar fans may also be pleased to learn that Mongolia has eight cases, including, as I ‘learned’ in class today, the ablative, locative, accusative, instrumental and directive. I imagine John Cleese dressed as Genghis Khan hovering over me saying “To go? But that’s motion TOWARDS, boy.”
Of all of this written language bunch, I think my favourite has to be: b. Lower case b. Not to be confused with lower case b with a bar at the top of the stem (that’s a b) or upper case B (which is V, as we all know), or bI (which my book says is actually y), or indeed b (looks like lower case but is upper case, and is in fact I, apparently). No, no, none of these are as good as lower case b. You see, lower case b is pronounced . That’s right, . Good, you’re getting it: . Only put less accent on the , and more on the . As you can see, little b has no pronunciation at all. It’s role is purely disciplinary. As noted above, consonants in Mongolian can be a pretty unruly bunch, prone to acting out and hassling the vowels as they go about their work. Some consonants are more belligerent than others, and sometimes a b is inserted twixt con and vow to avoid any unseemliness. When the language scholar trips across it in their forays to the Mongolian Cyrillic interior, it should be ignored. Hence, a world like MOPb, meaning horse, is pronounced ‘myrrh’. Clear? Good. Hand in your exercise books to the monitor and change into your games kit, it’s time for sumo.
Beyond the city, as one is told illimitable times, is where Mongolia truly begins. Regardless of the redundancy, it is very much the case. UlaanBataar sprawls in its own way, and is, as previously mentioned, not the handsomest of all world capitals, but it quickly gives way to the rolling steppe. Everything outside the city is generically referred to as the ‘countryside’- you don’t really specify where unless it’s of importance. This will quickly descend into vista-babble, but anyway- the most striking factor is simply the scale of things. You don’t really get this until you try to walk anywhere, and realize that the air is clear and the visibility is that of a falcon. Just walking up that valley can take the better part of a morning. Everything is simply vast. You lose some sense of this because the middle distance is, conventionally speaking, featureless- there is little in the way of trees or vegetation beyond grass in many areas, a tight stubble of grass which grows green thick and short. However, if one looks closer, the ground is teeming with tiny wildflowers, bugs, marmot holes, and raptors in the sky. The best visual approximation I can think of is of the panoramas of the prairies seen is old westerns- the presence of stern men on horses certainly helps, but its sheer sweep is what is most definitive. As one looks at it, it is as much what lies beyond that matters- it is like this all the way to Beijing, and all the way to some far off other point- Moscow perhaps? We haven’t been that far, two and a bit hours away at most, but you look at the map and realize that in Mongolian terms that’s roughly still greater UlaanBataar- a reasonable distance to walk to see a goat with a wonky tail for most steppe dwellers.
Watching Mongolians navigate this sprawl of nothingness is remarkable to behold- we got a bit muddled up on the way west Hustai (home of one of the few indigenous species of horse left on earth, apparently). We were about a hours drive past from the campsite and heading in the wrong direction. This is very easy to do, as there is nothing by way of landmark to reckon from. Zorig, our driver for the day, stopped the car and had a chat with an old, old man who happened to be on his way from somewhere out there to somewhere over here. They had a good think about things and scrabbled in the dust for a while, but in time this old chap had provided up to date instructions on the whereabouts of a place one can’t imagine he’s ever needed to go. But that’s par for the course. When learning the language, you are told to be specific with your mode of instruction- some teachers expect you to swallow 60 vocab words a day. Mongolians are masters of memorization, apparently simply imprinting whole physical or linguistic geographies on the insides of their skulls.
The landscape itself bears few hints as to how you’d work out where you are, if dropped from the proverbial spacecraft. Telephone poles take on a particular resonance, as they are sometimes the only point or line which is anything other than two dimensional. The poles themselves, fact fans, are mostly the same as those found elsewhere, except they ride a solid four feet about the ground. The poles themselves are attached with steel bands to concrete railway sleepers, which are stabbed vertically into the ground. No know knows why this is- some say they were born that way. But the poles themselves, you ask them, they don’t want to say…
Even money is that it’s something to do with how cold it becomes- presumably wood would split when living at -40 for four months of the year. Civil engineering types are encouraged to speculate on this point. Similarly, major trunk roads out of UlaanBataar are not tarmaced in one solid flow of stone, but are rather made up of giant paving stones, about four metres square, lain two abreast. Again, this is presumably to do with freezing temperatures. One is told with some pride that Mongolia is the most expensive place in the world to build roads. Well, I guess someone has to be.
Daraa Oldse (that means until next time, viewers),
Jannie
We live the third (top) floor of one of the older buildings in the city, which in this case is the 1950s- standards of construction round here are slightly less competent that your average sand castle. It’s one of the standing factors of UlaanBataar- buildings less than three years old look decrepit, and buildings more than five years old fall down with some regularity. But as one long time resident told us, these folks have a civilization that’s been around since the Doomsday Book was a pamphlet, but they only started building permanently in the past few decades. Before that it was (and to a large extent still is) all felt ger tents. There’s not a lot of institutional memory when to comes to know how to building an even flight of stairs, or a door that stays on its hinges.
Despite this, there are buildings going up all over town- cranes and exposed re-bar are everywhere on the skyline. There is such demand for housing that some apartments increase in value by as much 40% within six months of purchase, especially if they can stay reasonably upright for that long. I walked by one construction site last week where a wooden covered walkway had been built to allow pedestrians to pass below. This was just was well, as four stories up a welder was busy melding metal to metal without any of those uptight ideas about protection getting between him and his acetelying that building into shape. Great cascades of molten sparks were tumbling down onto the street below. I saw one chunk of especially glowing aspect fly from his torch, drop two stories, hit a tarpaulin, burn through it and continue on down to bounce glowing yellow on the pavement. The passersby beneath were yelling at the guy to stop, but he was a pro, so he ignored them. There’s really no way round this bit of road without going a long way round, so at each end of the building site, groups of peds would huddle together, wait for a break in the spark shower, and run under the building site, hoping the guy wouldn’t reload his torch in the meantime. After a bit, my group made its dash, but had our timing totally wrong, and as we hit the halfway point yellow metal pieces began tinkling onto the wood above our heads. I took off my backpack and carried it over my head and ran between one salaryman type and two schoolgirls. We all emerged unscathed, at which point everyone just ambled off on their business without so much as a shaken fist directed at the guy in the sky. Just another day on the street.
As the weather has changed from the dust storms and cold temperatures that greeted us on out arrival, the city has gained in attributes of loveliness. The trees, all pollarded and beat up looking without foliage, all seeded, blossomed, and advanced to full midsummer splendor in one week. The other night we sat out on our balcony on a carpet digging the breeze until about midnight- it was so warm and filled with sounds it was like being at the coast- perfectly warm, and a reason to be all in itself. Then again, when it comes to weather, it is always going to be Mongolia. Last weekend when we went to look at the Gandan Khiid monastery it was bright sunshine all the way there and sleet and snow on the way back thirty minutes later.
Weather and housing- how fascinating this must be. It’s all part of my ongoing honing of my expat spouse pose. I go to playgroups, fret about the servants, go shopping and bi*ch about the price of wine and caviar, plan holidays, go to the gym and fantasize about my tennis coach. Or I would, if I had any interest in tennis. And I take lessons in Mongolian three times a week, administered by Amgalan of the Friends Language School. And thus the cliché is complete. This is turning out well longer than I had anticipated, and Amgalan is by this point doubtless en route, but I’ll keep plugging until it’s time to wind up- we’re in the midst of conjugating a list of 36 verbs. Frustratingly, my efforts to apply my lessons on the unsuspecting public have not met with the greatest success. Mostly I get confounded stares- perhaps it’s my Kikuyu accent. Who knows?
The lingua of the steppe is a particularly gristly mouthful of linguistic mutton for a number of reasons, most prominent of which is the fact that the written and spoken form are really only freshman year roommates; they get along fine, and have stuff in common, but long term, they’re never really going to hang out. The Mongolian attitude to consonants is an uninterested one- a b could be a v could be a g could be gh could be ghch could be whatever you want. In order to address this, the alphabet has 35 letters, including all of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, plus two which Russian couldn’t handle. Pronunciation of said characters may or may not be the same as Russian, so please keep your hands inside the moving Mongolian vehicle at all times. Grammar fans may also be pleased to learn that Mongolia has eight cases, including, as I ‘learned’ in class today, the ablative, locative, accusative, instrumental and directive. I imagine John Cleese dressed as Genghis Khan hovering over me saying “To go? But that’s motion TOWARDS, boy.”
Of all of this written language bunch, I think my favourite has to be: b. Lower case b. Not to be confused with lower case b with a bar at the top of the stem (that’s a b) or upper case B (which is V, as we all know), or bI (which my book says is actually y), or indeed b (looks like lower case but is upper case, and is in fact I, apparently). No, no, none of these are as good as lower case b. You see, lower case b is pronounced . That’s right, . Good, you’re getting it: . Only put less accent on the , and more on the . As you can see, little b has no pronunciation at all. It’s role is purely disciplinary. As noted above, consonants in Mongolian can be a pretty unruly bunch, prone to acting out and hassling the vowels as they go about their work. Some consonants are more belligerent than others, and sometimes a b is inserted twixt con and vow to avoid any unseemliness. When the language scholar trips across it in their forays to the Mongolian Cyrillic interior, it should be ignored. Hence, a world like MOPb, meaning horse, is pronounced ‘myrrh’. Clear? Good. Hand in your exercise books to the monitor and change into your games kit, it’s time for sumo.
Beyond the city, as one is told illimitable times, is where Mongolia truly begins. Regardless of the redundancy, it is very much the case. UlaanBataar sprawls in its own way, and is, as previously mentioned, not the handsomest of all world capitals, but it quickly gives way to the rolling steppe. Everything outside the city is generically referred to as the ‘countryside’- you don’t really specify where unless it’s of importance. This will quickly descend into vista-babble, but anyway- the most striking factor is simply the scale of things. You don’t really get this until you try to walk anywhere, and realize that the air is clear and the visibility is that of a falcon. Just walking up that valley can take the better part of a morning. Everything is simply vast. You lose some sense of this because the middle distance is, conventionally speaking, featureless- there is little in the way of trees or vegetation beyond grass in many areas, a tight stubble of grass which grows green thick and short. However, if one looks closer, the ground is teeming with tiny wildflowers, bugs, marmot holes, and raptors in the sky. The best visual approximation I can think of is of the panoramas of the prairies seen is old westerns- the presence of stern men on horses certainly helps, but its sheer sweep is what is most definitive. As one looks at it, it is as much what lies beyond that matters- it is like this all the way to Beijing, and all the way to some far off other point- Moscow perhaps? We haven’t been that far, two and a bit hours away at most, but you look at the map and realize that in Mongolian terms that’s roughly still greater UlaanBataar- a reasonable distance to walk to see a goat with a wonky tail for most steppe dwellers.
Watching Mongolians navigate this sprawl of nothingness is remarkable to behold- we got a bit muddled up on the way west Hustai (home of one of the few indigenous species of horse left on earth, apparently). We were about a hours drive past from the campsite and heading in the wrong direction. This is very easy to do, as there is nothing by way of landmark to reckon from. Zorig, our driver for the day, stopped the car and had a chat with an old, old man who happened to be on his way from somewhere out there to somewhere over here. They had a good think about things and scrabbled in the dust for a while, but in time this old chap had provided up to date instructions on the whereabouts of a place one can’t imagine he’s ever needed to go. But that’s par for the course. When learning the language, you are told to be specific with your mode of instruction- some teachers expect you to swallow 60 vocab words a day. Mongolians are masters of memorization, apparently simply imprinting whole physical or linguistic geographies on the insides of their skulls.
The landscape itself bears few hints as to how you’d work out where you are, if dropped from the proverbial spacecraft. Telephone poles take on a particular resonance, as they are sometimes the only point or line which is anything other than two dimensional. The poles themselves, fact fans, are mostly the same as those found elsewhere, except they ride a solid four feet about the ground. The poles themselves are attached with steel bands to concrete railway sleepers, which are stabbed vertically into the ground. No know knows why this is- some say they were born that way. But the poles themselves, you ask them, they don’t want to say…
Even money is that it’s something to do with how cold it becomes- presumably wood would split when living at -40 for four months of the year. Civil engineering types are encouraged to speculate on this point. Similarly, major trunk roads out of UlaanBataar are not tarmaced in one solid flow of stone, but are rather made up of giant paving stones, about four metres square, lain two abreast. Again, this is presumably to do with freezing temperatures. One is told with some pride that Mongolia is the most expensive place in the world to build roads. Well, I guess someone has to be.
Daraa Oldse (that means until next time, viewers),
Jannie
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