Mongolia Today, Mongolia Tomorrow
Published June 1, 2012
Once, while walking to my home
after teaching an English lesson at the National University of Mongolia, I
heard a familiar bass line drift through the brisk evening air from a second
story window. In an old grapefruit building next to my school, a young
Mongolian band was practicing a cover of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are.” I
stopped, a little surprised to hear that particular song drifting from the
half-opened window. As I continued walking, it dawned on me that the song
defined so much that I witnessed in Ulaanbaatar every day: its startling
individuality, its anachronistic underpinnings, its double-edged hospitality,
even down to its weapons laws.
If there is truly a place where
West meets East, a place where an old man wearing a traditional Mongolian deel and
checking his iPhone with prayer beads wrapped tightly around his wrist isn’t out of the ordinary, a place where
a woman under the age of 30 helped start and run the first Mongolian stock
market, a location where a young man with a sharp Korean haircut and patent
leather jacket is at ease and walking with his arms behind his back while doing
a bit of throat singing, a place as hot as it is cold, as isolated as it is
welcoming, as mysterious as it is pedestrian—Mongolia is such a place.
It is a country where modernity and
tradition have mixed so fluidly that neither seem oblivious to the other and
every time one is in danger of overshadowing the other, the natural way of
things somehow balances the other out. It is an endless knot of extremities and
creature comforts, culture and technology, whimsicalities and sustainable
groundwork, laudable feats and furtive failures, incipient consumer culture and
daily surprises. Mongolia has a dialectical relationship with itself.
Ulaanbaatar is almost a world unto
itself with its own celebrities, its own host of singular magazines and
newspapers, its own clearly defined communities, widening social gaps clear as UB
days cold as UB nights, its own environmental problems, its own fascinating
history, all within the confines of a city that paints itself larger than it
actually is, a city that is the center of its own world. It is a city that
treats itself how New York treats itself: self-important, an obvious center of
something, a place where everything happens, a place to be seen, a place to be
heard. Yet it is truly in the middle of nowhere, miles from any other major
city, on a vast steppe surrounded by vast steppe surrounded by icy mountains,
fields of livestock, sandy deserts and sandwiched by the Russian and Chinese
border.
This solipsistic mentality, this
come as you are belief system, only adds to the uniqueness that is Mongolia, uniqueness
wrapped in justified self-importance. Justified by its historical place on the
world stage, its budding mining sector, its switch to democracy, justified
through its matchless ability blur the distinction between past and future,
tradition and technology, globalization and cultural identity. The Mongolian
mindset is contagious, dangerous at times, but radically distinct at a time in
history when tedious standardization is prevalent and great powers are waning. It
is invigorating in a world weighed down by economic woes and fruitless wars. It
is booming, it is revitalizing, it is growing so quickly that living in
Ulaanbaatar is quixotic, the growth as mesmerizing as it is frightening.
Mongolia is and always will be as
Mongolia does. It’s the Wild West of Asia, the last frontier, Minegolia, the
land of Chinggis Khan, the last nomadic stronghold or whatever buzzword
economists and social historians levy on it. While the sustainability of its
growth is yet to be seen, and many would rightly argue needs to be addressed, the
near future seems to be pretty bright for the unique inhabitants of the Asian
steppe.
