Texas, the Mongolia of America

Texas, the Mongolia of America

Published July 16th in the UB Post

            There are more similarities between Mongolia and Texas than one would think. They both contain vast stretches of land that host everything from empty steppes to gorgeous mountains. Both have large livestock and mineral industries, and share a sense of pride attached to hailing from the region. Both are patriotic, sometimes kitschy and above all, solipsistic. Even more interesting, some of the hats and boots Mongolian men wear resemble Texas attire. The landscapes are harsh in their own right, one hotter than sin and the other colder than hell. There’s even a Texas Pub in Mongolia, a popular restaurant with burgers and steaks. Mongolia seems to know some about Texas, but how much does Texas know about Mongolia?

While visiting my family in Texas over the summer, I decided to take it upon myself to find the answer to this question and introduce a key point of Mongolian culture to a few of my Texan friends. My first stop was a Mexican food restaurant the morning following my arrival. After ordering some tacos, I explained to the waitress at the restaurant that I hadn’t eaten Mexican food in nearly year.

            “Where did you live, dear?” she asked, putting her order pad into her front apron.

            “I still live there. Mongolia. I live in Outer Mongolia.”

            A look of confusion spread across her face as she tried to place Mongolia.

            “You know,” I said. “Genghis Khan? Mongolian empire? Between Russia and China?”

            She shook her head slightly.

            “It’s far away. In Asia,” I said, giving up.

            “Really? Do they have Mexican food there?”

            “They have one place that mixes Mexican food with Indian food.”

            She laughed. “Is it cold there?”

            “Very cold.”

            “How long is winter?”

            “It depends on your definition of winter. If your definition of winter begins at 32 degrees, then it is cold about seven months out of the year.”

            “If your definition begins at negative ten degrees and below, then winter lasts about four months.”

She shivered. “And the food?”

            “Mutton, mutton and more mutton, except for the capital city,” I said, loading a chip with salsa. “There’s lots of international restaurants there.”

            “What’s mutton?”

            “Old sheep.”

            “Do they know about Texas there?”

            “Actually, they called Texas Tejas…” I said with a smile. Originally, Texas was pronounced Tejas, which happened to be the same way Mongolians pronounced the name.

            “How funny…”

            After quenching my year long craving for Mexican food, I headed over to the Starbucks nearby with a full stomach.

            “Hey, I know you. You used to come in here,” the Starbucks barista said, pouring my coffee. “Didn’t you go somewhere or something?”

            “Yea, I’ve been in Mongolia the last year.”

            “Mongolia? Isn’t that where nomads live?”

            “It sure is. They live in the countryside.”

            “Well, what’s it like there?” she asked, handing me my copy of coffee.

            The inevitable question. How should one describe Mongolia to a Texan? Cold? Full of tradition? A budding democracy? A former Communist country? The pollution? The tradition? The Soviet Blocs? It’s a warranted question that any expat will tell you they have trouble answering.

I went with the easiest answer: “It’s like anywhere else. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.”

            “I saw something about Mongolia on the National Geographic channel,” she said. “They live in, oh what are they called?”

            “Yurts, but Mongolians call them gers.”

            “Yea those tent things. Have you stayed in one of those?”

            “I stayed in a ger last year with a Mongolian family. They had a baby who I thought was a girl but turned out later to be a boy.”

            “That’s nice. How big is Mongolia?”

            “It’s twice the size of Texas with less than half the population of Houston.”

            A few days after my arrival in Texas, I was invited to a birthday party on the outskirts of the city. Knowing that I needed to represent Mongolia and my travels somehow, and secretly hoping to rile some Texans into starting an old fashioned shoot-out, I brought a liter bottle of Chinggis Gold Vodka to the party. I vowed to teach the Texans to drink the Mongolian way, and for the most part, besides the fact that I wasn’t able to get them to finish the bottle completely – I succeeded.

            “Mongolia?” one woman with blonde streaks in her hair and a chest tattoo asked, “Does that place still exist?”

            “I’m living proof that it does,” I replied, as we lounged in wooden chairs around a homemade picnic table. Beers sat on the table, beads of sweat on their necks and ours. “So are about ten million other people. It’s been a bit under the radar the last one hundred years.”

            Another guy asked: “One in six people or something are related to Genghis Khan? It’s something like that, right?”

            “Yea, he was a busy man,” I replied, blocking the unforgiving Texas sun with my forearm.

            “I heard he had like 1,000 babies. That’s a busy man!”

            “I don’t wish it upon anyone.”

            “I’ll be honest with you,” he said, leveling a beer-filled gaze at me, “About the only thing I know about Mongolia is the historical stuff. You know, Genghis Khan and all that. Taking over everything. The rest is a mystery. What’s it like there now?”

            “Its growing in every way imaginable. Who knows how much it will grow over the next ten years.”

            A former co-worker of mine wearing a fifteen gallon cowboy hat knew a bit more about Mongolia than the other party members. As it turned out, her father had been dating a Mongolian woman for some time, which was something of a contention for her.  

“What’s it like there? I mean, what’s it really like?” she asked, after explaining to me how the Mongolian woman had sent her a book on shamanism and how her father had survived a car accident with the woman recently.

            “It’s really cold.”

            “How cold?”

            “Cold enough that your eyelashes freeze.”

            “That’s really cold.”

            Gathering a few of my friends in a walled-in patio built off the backside of the house, I did my best to explain to them how Mongolians make a toast.

            “It usually begins with a Mongolian guy saying ‘za,’” I said, holding up the shot glass. I had brought a shot glass made out of an antler especially for the toast. I explained that Mongolians didn’t normally drink of shot glasses-cum-antlers but I don’t think anyone heard me.

            One of my friends, a hearty Texan in a vanilla cowboy hat held up his beer and said, “Za.”

            “Yea, za,” I said, keeping my shot glass in the air. “So someone holds up the glass, says some nice words about fate, destiny and then they finish the bottle. The youngest one technically needs to fill the shots.”

            “Finish it?” someone asked.

            “Finish it,” I said, pouring the first shot and handing it to my friend.

            “Za,” he said, taking the shot.

            “You only say ‘za’ right before you give a toast,” I explained to him later. “I mean, it’s not a tradition or anything, it’s just someone saying ‘ok.’ Like, ‘Ok, I am toasting to blah blah blah…”

            “So what should I say if someone hands me a shot?” he asked, as I handed him another.

            “You should say bayarlaa,” I said.

            He snorted. “What that’s mean?”

            “Thank you.”

            Later I handed him a shot and he said “borscht,” which is pretty close only having heard the word one time. He claimed that the Mongolian vodka had loosened up the party and set a nice vibe for an evening full of live bluegrass and wide brimmed hats. He also told me to keep the spare room at my apartment open in Mongolia. Apparently, I’d sold him on the country.

            As I walked around handing out shots, I heard various comments regarding Mongolian vodka:

            “It’s like a shot of water with a dash of cayenne pepper. Wonderful.”

            “It’s so smooth.”

            “If I lived there I would drink this every day.”

            “It’s so tasty.”

            “How many bottles did you bring?”

            “Is this really from Mongolia?”

            “Where is that again? This is delicious!”

            “I don’t normally drink vodka but I’ll make an exception seeing as how you brought this all the way from Mongolia.”

            The vodka was a hit at the party, and I left early, after playing devil’s advocate and giving everyone as much as they could take. I even tossed a shot into the wind, thanking the Gods for their blessings, good Texas friends, and the cool breeze that had blown up over the nearby hill, rustling the leaves in the trees and stirring joy in our souls.

My next stop: a Mongolian stir-fry restaurant.

            The following day, I arrived at Genghis Grill in South Austin after a hearty rebound from my night of Texas/Mongolia drinking introductions. The restaurant was nearly covered by the wild foliage outside its dark tinted windows. It sat in the far corner of a shopping complex adorned by a red sign that Genghis Khan might or might not have approved of.

            Walking inside, I asked the host if it was ok if I took a few photos. I explained to him that I lived in Mongolia, something he didn’t seem too impressed about, and looked around the seating area until I found an item actually from Mongolia. Someone, he didn’t know who, had left one of the leather wrapped souvenir bottles of Mongolian vodka on the wooden counter that surrounded the host’s station. I explained to him that the bottle was actually from Mongolia, again he wasn’t impressed, and pointed at the alcohol tax sticker on the label.

            “So, are there lots of these Genghis Grill restaurants?” I asked him, as he continued to stare at me wearily.

            “There are at least twenty-five in Texas,” he said.

            “Really?”

            “Yes. Genghis Grill is a franchise food chain headquartered in Dallas,” he said. “There are lots in Houston.”

            “Has anyone here ever been to Mongolia?”

            “No.”

            “You said it was a franchise, has the owner ever been to Mongolia?”

            “No, I mean I don’t think so. Maybe someone at corporate headquarters went.”

            “Well, this is definitely from there,” I said, turning towards the emptied bottle of Mongolian vodka.

            “That was here before I got job,” he said, turning and walking towards the bar on the far side of the restaurant.

            I looked up at the restaurant’s motto which had been written on the wall opposite the host’s station:

“Genghis Khan and his Mongol warriors heated their shields over open fires to grill food in the heat of battle. Likewise, our Grill Masters take the fresh ingredients you choose to build your bowl, then stir fry them to perfection on our sizzling hot grill.”

            As I sat myself in the far corner of the restaurant, under a pair of black and red flags tied to the ends of fake spears, I wondered if the restaurant’s motto was true. Did Mongolian soldiers really use shields as giant woks or was it another fictitious account of the famed warriors? With so many rumors, tall tales and sentences that began with, “I heard Genghis Khan,” followed by some strange exaggeration, it was hard to tell what was true about classic Mongolia these days and what was false. One thing was for certain, the Mongols conquered more than they knew what to do with and if they are anything like the Mongolians today: they ate meat and lots of it.

The food items on the menu might have shamed a current day Mongolian. Edamame? Summer rolls? Stir fry? Your average Mongolian would have never tasted any of the dishes. My favorite concoction? Khan’s roasted apple pie: a pastry shell with Fuji apples baked inside and glazed with sticky globs of Mexican caramel. Think a desert version of Mongolian huushur and you have about the closest thing on the menu to actual Mongolian food.

            The drinks were a different story: Khan’s Mojito, the Mongolian mudslide (Patrón, vanilla Smirnoff, Baileys and cream), the Mongolian martini, Khan’s kamakazi and the Warriorita all would have quenched the palate of any thirsty Mongol today or 800 years ago. The best named drink items? The Khangarita and my personal favorite, the trademarked Mongorita, a blue margarita in a giant fishbowl shaped glass with thick shards of salt affixed to the rim.

            Maybe Genghis Grill, while ripe with stereotypes, actually captured somewhat of the essence of the thirteenth century Mongolians. I looked around at the restaurant, hoping to validate my sudden epiphany. There were gongs hanging from the tops of the booths, more flag clad spears, a picture of some guys with mustaches on horses that looked like something out of Medieval Times, wood stools with GG (Genghis Grill) burnt into their backsides, track lighting, red walls with black air conditioning piping on the ceilings and the restaurant’s other motto painted on the wall that flanked the bar: “They ate well. Really well.”

            Maybe not.

            The host came back around to take my order. I ordered a green tea and offered him the Mongolian flag that I had purchased at the Chinggis Khan Airport. I won’t say he took the flag reluctantly, but he seemed more or less enthused that I had given it to him.

            “That’s the actual Mongolian flag,” I told him, handing it to him before leaving the restaurant thirty minutes later.

            “Nice,” he said, waving it around like a sleepy man at a Fourth of July parade.

             While they may be worlds away, Texas and Mongolia have more in common than they think. Most importantly, they could also learn things from each other. For Mongolians, Texans could teach them quite a bit about extracting resources efficiently and navigating the fine line between maintaining one’s landscape and reaping the benefits from one’s resources. For Texans, Mongolians could share insight regarding globalization and the importance of culture. Most Mongolians speak more than one language, something that many Texans could benefit from, especially considering their proximity to Mexico.

            Mongolia has been called the Texas of Asia, referring to its vast resources and size. While there is a sister city relation between Darkhan-Uul and Irving, Texas, it seems the only other connections between the two places is a few dinosaur bones that have made their way from Mongolia to Texas. Both share a horse culture and admiration for rebels, conquerors and outlaws. About the only thing separating Mongolia and Texas are a few oceans, a few ideologies, a few nomads, a few countries, and about 11,406 kilometers.