Sain bainuu, one and all. Ulaan Baatar is basking in midsummer glow this week- bright sunshine, strong breezes, green trees, and lots of downy seed heads (like dandelions) migrating slowly through the air in great clouds. Grooooovy. Temperatures are well above 30C, and there’s not much in the way of cloud cover, so a thick layer of suncream has become part of the daily regimen. Despite the balminess, yesterday a hailstorm showed up out of nowhere, and turned United Nations Street into a river, so it’s still business as Mongolian usual.
One of our more sharp eyed correspondents who wondered about the heat asked if there are any swimming pools. Thanks for asking, Libby- here’s what’s going on under our bathing cap.
There are a few private pools attached to health clubs, but these are not available to the great unwashed, and inevitably the price of membership is far higher than one is prepared to pay. There is, however, one public pool which is open to all comers. In order to use the facility, one has to undergo a mandatory medical exam on each visit. This practice is not so uncommon, and is likely a holdover from the heady days of socialism- in Serbia, some spas and gyms had a similar practice, whereby a cursory examination (and resultant fee) were occasionally a prerequisite to taking the waters or using the medicine ball.
For the Ulaan Baatar public pool, the exam includes administering an anal swab, to ensure that swimmers are not bringing any worms into the communal pond. Fair enough- no one likes worms. This practice is in place Monday to Friday. Saturdays, however, are free swim, and no medical exam (or swab) is needed. Consequently, this is the busiest day of the swimming week. Mysteriously, despite a rigorous Mon-Fri swabbing schedule, people with clean swabs going in emerge from the water with worms onboard. The medical community is baffled. Can any public health types out there help unravel this wormy problem?
When not swimming in public pools, we’ve been attending concerts at the Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, a peach and white coloured building off Sukhbaatar square. The first ticket arrived in Sue’s inbox inviting Ms. S.Southern (and spouse) to an concert of “World Famous Melodies”, commemorating the 10th Anniversary of cooperation between the Government of Mongolia and the Hans Seidel Foundation. Righto. How SS(+s) got on the guest list is anyone’s guess. In fact, who or what the Hans Seidel Foundation is or does is a mystery, even after the concert. It would appear to be some sort of arts patronage body of some sort, but that’s besides the point. They hand out free concert tickets, so that’s what makes them okay in our book.
So up the curtain, and it turns out that the stage is occupied on one side by the theatre’s resident orchestra, and on the other side by the Morin Khuur Orchestra, a traditional Mongolian ensemble, playing horse’s head fiddles and cellos, the zither like things that are played with stick brushes, flutes and piccolos, and more besides which I couldn’t see. The western style orchestra is pretty much per usual, decked out in tuxedos and evening dress, forming a nice visual counterpoint to the white satin traditional Mongolian gowns sat opposite them onstage. The orchestra also had a dedicated triangle player- always a most underrated instrument, and surely the glue that holds the group together. Ding!
On we roll. The programme is an interspersed mix of western (mostly Austrian, which may be a clue as to Hans Seidel’s provenance) and Mongolian pieces. The western stuff is familiar enough that it’s not particularly worth mentioning; Strauss, Mozart, a smattering of Debussy and Saint Saens. The Mongolian pieces, by dint of their unfamiliarity, are perhaps more worthy of comment. The pieces are all titled “The Awakening Spring”, or the “The Quest for the 1000 Nights” and similar such sentiments. The music itself makes for good concert going, especially for the easily bored, largely because it does not use the small brush. More than one piece began with massed timpani, a mighty blast on the horns, all the violins sawing away like crazy, all getting louder and louder until the cymbals go BOOM! Then the real thundering starts. It’s all crescendo and climax, with none of the tinkly bits which lead one’s mind to drift. Spring is Awakening, so eyes up for the big noise. It sounds like one giant herd of horses galloping over the plains. Splendid stuff, all played too loud to allow for sneaky napping. If this sounds like your sort of thing, then check out the works of Natsagiin Jantsannorov, our conductor/composer for the evening, who was awarded the highest honour the state bestows on arty types in the course of the concert, and is now known as the People’s Artist.
Aside from the music and associated whatnot, the show was also noteworthy for being the first classical gig we’ve ever attended where drunk, excitable youth in the audience played a role. While stopping short of shouting “play Cum on Feel the Noize you bastards!”, they did arrive halfway through the show, hang over the dress circle while talking loudly into mobiles and to each other, applaud enthusiastically every possible chance, snuck down into the front row (trailing enough vodka vapour for rows A-F to order a round of mixers), and kicked off the standing ovation at the end of the night. All of which was surprisingly tolerable, because they were behaving like fans, rather than rowdies. A claque with ambition, perhaps. Who knows? Maybe people are just really, really serious about showing their gratitude to foreign arts foundations.
What’s more likely is that audience behaviour is just really, really undisciplined by western concert hall standards. This idea gained credence with the second show of the week, a performance by the world famous Urna at the same theatre a few nights later. Urna, despite being world famous, might not be famous in your world, so here’s a few pointers. Urga Chahar-Tugchi hails from Inner Mongolia, and is renowned as an a cappella singer of tremendous range, who takes traditional pieces of Mongolian music and puts them out into the world. She has a voice which goes all the way up and all the way down, from quiet to loud and back again. She is also something of a fixture on the world music scene, and often gigs with a sitar player and a tabla player. The UB Post (a newspaper which will feature more prominently in later articles) mentioned that she was at some point voted World Musician of the year by the people who vote on these things. So there you are.
Urna maintains a distinctly spiritual pose in her music, both in lyric and emotion- she is very much at one with many things; nature, love, family, peace, gentleness, and so on. If it’s a good thing, Urna’s with it. The following lines were printed on the back of the ticket: “Life. All creatures beautify the world. Touching each other, our hearts are warmed. A tiny candle; its light bright and far reaching enlightening the universe eternally.” What the ticket began, the show meant very much to continue.
This was her first performance to Mongolia, a country she considers “her brotherland” (UB Post), and this was the inaugural show of the Roaring Hooves festival, a two week extravaganza of music across the country. So all in all, a relatively big deal. We went along to hear her (no free tickets this time) along with many other expatties who read the paper and believe the hype. She was accompanied by Zoltan the Hungarian on the violin, who variously strummed, picked, bowed and thumped his violin as Urna sang. Her voice is really rather something to hear; however, her style of delivery is somewhat contingent on rapturous silence, so one can absorb the haunting vibes and delicateness of the voice work. Mongolian audiences do not do rapturous silences very well. Urna’s voice and Zoltan’s violin were beatboxed by various multiple mobile trills, lots of whispering, sweeties and crisps being given an airing, folks arriving late and leaving early, and many more besides. World famous Urna was a bit taken aback by the lack of reverence among her crowd, presumably because this was her first show in the brotherland. She kept appealing for quiet (Hand on chest, eyebrows raised, smiling in disbelief and index finger repeatedly making the shh! gesture), but those calls kept coming in, and more zesty snacks kept coming out of the hamper. To crown it all, the mikes kept feeding back so much that eventually the show had to have an unscheduled intermission for the one techhie to fiddle with wires to make the fuzz go away. All in all, it wasn’t Urna’s night. She’s probably best heard at an outdoor site, in the company of thousands of peaceable WOMAD types who are ready to feel along with Urna. But if you know of another quiet spot, do invite her round to hum a few chords.
And so we’ll leave it there for this time. We hope that you’ve reflected on the fact that whether swimming or listening to ethereal music, it’s always good to have a checkup.
Sain yavaarai (which means safe journey, viewers),
Jannie
