Journey Into Mongolia

To Mongolia...



Being on the train for 30 hours starts to make everyone go crazy look at this...

After crossing the border the train was carefully checked for stoways... in the process all the bathrooms were locked and I needed to go to the bathroom. We waited and waited and waited and finally I had to demand the bathroom be unlocked... I asked the car manager (we named him PorkRind Face for all his unhelpfulness) if I could get in and he said that because the Mongolian military (soldiers) were watching from the outside and the customs officer was passing through the car it would not be possible and he would have to wait... I told him that I needed a bottle (implying I could not wait) in order to persuade him to unlock it but he took it seriously and gave me the bottle... faced with no choice I had to use the bottle... and I went in the intercar-airlock compartment... unfourtantely halfway through, soldiers started peeping in from the outside and the customs officer (a Mongolian woman) started asking what I was doing right in the middle of the affair... somehow I managed to get through the situation.  



Found my first Mourin Khuur on the train... it was in the dining car...

The next morning we woke up pretty late. We had stayed up through the night talking with the train passengers and eventually managed to become friends with quite a few of the passengers. At one point we all went down to the dining car to get some midnight snacks, but we found out that they were closed... and we continued to notice that they dining car was closed all too often, it had an extremely slacker dining car staff that would lie about what they did and did not have from the menu. They would just sit there and play cards and thought Mike also could not speak Chinese but they were surprised when Mike heard them planning their lies right in front of us and he spoke up.

Anyhow, we all went back to bed and fell asleep and woke up in the late morning to the Mongolian grassland.  We got off at a stop to see what the town was like and ended up making a cash withdraw from the ATM, the Mongolian currency is denominated in the 1000s and can look a bit deceiving at first.  Its cool with all the wonderful artistic designs on it, take a look at this picture...



The first town that we stopped in on the train and picked up some money...

This is how the train cars are converted to the Mongolian tracks.

Late in the morning we talked with a train passenger coming from Turkey, he was a mongolian ambassodor to Turkey at the Mongolian embassy in Turkey. He informed us of many things about Mongolia but we found our own way once we got there, and that it was a lot different than we expected...

The train came around several huge bends into a grassy meadowed forest land... with plush hills rising all around. It was a warm feeling and also a very liberating atmosphere. The train eventually passed some huge antenna towers for the local radio and TV stations in the capital which we were headed to.


Mike enjoying the train ride.

Adnan enjoying the train ride.

Adnan enjoying the train ride.


The Gobi Desert

The Gobi Desert and the train


Dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert (still alive!)

Little Ghengis

Rocking!


Within 30 minutes we had arrived at the final train stop, it was the union station in Ulaanbatar. It was a triumphant feeling for me to have arrived here... I initially wanted to visit Mongolia when I was about 17 years old. I am not sure what the exact reason was, but I think that I had studied about Gurs and the nomadic way of life in many regions in Mongolia... I was always attracted to the idea that a non-technological existence could possibly lead to a higher state of consciousness = being insync with the natural world and exposed to the elements: a shorter life but closer to the spark of life itself!

Then in college I became interested in Mongolian music, expecially both male and female singing styles. Everyone is probably familiar with Khoomie, the famous Mongolian singing. I have been studying it for about 7 years, and it
gave me a chance to test it out on the locals and get some feedback... all this was in my head as we travelled there... and when we step off the train it was pouring rain. I did not have an umbrella so I was vastly unprepared for the conditions. We walked along the streets of Ulanbatar after dropping our bags at a youth hostel and we felt an extreme sense of lawlessness.
The traffic and water drainage planning was lacking as every single intersection, small street and turn was jam packed with traffic. Cars honking trying to get a couple of seconds ahead. The pools of water surrounding us
was also challenging... in order to go up the sidewalk we often had to walk on sidewalk curbs to avoid our shoes getting submerged in the water. It was really fun as we had to coordinate with parties passing
from the opposite direction (there was not enough room on the sidewalk curves for us to go at the same time.)

Dodging the puddles along the street.


During lunch I found some environmental literature printed in Mongolian... could not make out the Cyrillic but I could make out the melting illustrations of the north pole increasing every summer and the SOS sign:



Anyhow we made our way into downtown got a Taxi and went straight to the place the ambassador warned us not to go: the black market.

A woman performing at the Black Market...


Here we found all kinds of interesting antiques, a few cheaper instruments including the Mourin Khuur (I purchased and have been playing one for about 4 years... I originally purchased mine when I was in Japan and
saw a very excellent Mongolian orchestra Altaintsurai headed by Khaasbatar... the sold me the fiddle and donated the proceeds to vaccination charities throughout Asia. I also finally purchased horse hair strings for the instument recently and replaced the inferior nylon strings. Two of us purchased jackets here at this market, I think that I will enjoy wearing this jacket for the rest of my life.


Mongolian Jacket

At the market we ran into a really nice musician promoting the upcoming Nadaam festival: an annual event held every year in July around the 12-14th. You could consider it the Christmas of this country.
The entire festival is in celebration of Nadaam, a horse festival and racing and sports extravaganza held throughout the country with large events in the capital as well as just out in the countryside. The friend and fellow musicain that we met, Hulegu eventually became our main contact in Mongolia and we really enjoyed spending time with him. He was a sound engineering student on hiatus (having obtained part of his masters in Washington D.C.). He heloed us ti enjoy various events in the upcoming days... that night we got some food in downtown after making a long walk back from the black market... my cold was getting even worse... extreme coughing, weezing and drainage occurring simultanously. After eating we took a rest for the night and prepared for the upcoming festival days, the excitement was just beginning.

The next day we did not do too much because everyone was tired from the train ride and a couple of us had caught the killer cold... so we stayed inside for most of the day and got ready for the next day which was the opneing ceremony for the Nadaam Festival.

As you can see the city is rapidly expanding:


River Pollution:


and the Coal that is being burned in the winter in the local Gurs is turning the sky black! Its like the 1940s all over again.

When we got up the next day the first thing on our list was to see the Nadaam Festival opening ceremony... it was filled with live music, wrestling, dragon dances, horse and military style marches...



All the variation in jacket color...

After the opening ceremony we went outside and had our first taste of fermented Mongolian horse milk... (I had tried Tuvan fermented horse milk when I was in Tokyo at the 2nd Annual Khoomie Festival about a year before.) The taste as a bit sour but we enjoyed it. Since I was sick I could not really taste all of the flavors, but I would have a chance to try some more on the train ride back to Beijing later in the week.




Kids Dancing On Top of Lotus Flower Displays

From the distance...

After the festival we tried our first horse milk:



After that, we got on a crowded bus and road out into the country side about 40 miles to the location of all the horse racing... along the way we got our first glimpse of the cascading/rolling grassland hills and the big sky... probably looks a lot like eastern Montana except much more hilly. Finally when we got there we were really hungry and decided to get some food. Mike and I tried to wait in the line for a food stand and it was the worst experiencing with Mongolian line butting, people butt more in Mongolia and more aggressively than anywhere. After about one hour we got sick of waiting and went on to the art booths... that was the coolest part... there we ran into Hulegu again... he showed us around, Adnan did some art on a piece of wool, we watched a small orchestra perform and then went the arts council performance tent.. they had brought in booths from republics surrounding Mongolia including Altai, Baikal, Tuva and other regions of siberia... most of the republics are part of the Russain federation now.


The great grasslands in Mongolia at the Nadaam Festival filled with horses!

Riding Horses at Nadaam!

Local Folk Musicians Performing at Nadaam!

Gurs lined up across the steppe!

People enjoying the festival

Local Musicians Playing Folk Music

We ran into a Tuvan throat singer here and he sang for us and then I sang for him... we also sang a Tuvan folk song a bit together Dyngledai

Here is the Tuvan Contemporary Version: (Push the play button on the video to watch.)



This is my favorite song from Tuva:


We exchanged contact information and then i talked a bit with the arts council manager about their programs.... later that night we saw the first annual Nadaam concert on the steppe, it was great to be part of the first concert. It was a collaborative project put together by both Mongolians and Koreans... therefore there was a combination of performances by both Korean and Mongolian artists. The show started around sunset and slowly set as we were watching (since Mongolia is pretty far north like Germany the sunset is around 11 p.m. and it is a bit cold at that time.


Getting on top of a artistic horse sculpture...


Performers at the concert


Sunset

Wonderful Stage Host

Everyone Enjoying the Music

Beautiful Mourin Khuur Playing


After the show we talked to the producers of the show, got on the bus back to Ulaanbatar... after we got there it was really late, but there was fireworks going off around the city, the atmosphere was really nice... although by that time I was getting so sick that I was getting to the edge. We went back had some pizza and talked to the Hostel staff (Monica) who was the waitress and Hostel owners daughter... after that we went to bed for the night.


Back at it the next day with a new style!

The next day we decided to take it easy again since we were getting sick from a long day out the day before.
On the following day, we decided to take a trip to the nearby national park and book a tour through the hostel.
We hired a driver named Sola, she eventually became our friend as we sang along together in the car.
She shared local songs and we shared our songs with her... the trip to the park was about 1.5 hours from Ulaanbatar.
We visited a cave, did a horse back ride, visited another families Gur and had some foods. We returned to the camp we started the horse back ride fromand we stayed in a Gur. We also sang songs for other people camping there (included were locals and Koreans - seems to be lots of Korean tourists).


Turtle Rock

More Saurs!

Sola our friend and driver


The Rock Distinguished as the Rock that Looks like A Guy reading a Book!


Horse Back Ride Across the River!

The Yak with a Cool Hairdew!

Everyone after the horseback ride...


The Gur we stayed in...

The following day we returned to the city and my friend Shuree arrived from Washinton D.C. (We had been friends since college an this was the first time to meet her in her homeland.)We met up for lunch and spent a few hours together, I introduced her to my other friends and we went to a vegetarian cafe... she was so busy since she had just arrived there that she
could only visit with us for a few hours. Shuree is working at the World Bank and has a masters degree from John Hopkins University, she is a really good friend of mine and I was glad to have the chance to introduce her to the rest of my friends.


Me and Shuree

After that we met with Hulegu once again and had a final drink together. He showed us some of the music he had recorded and we sang Khoomie together for the first time.He said it was his first time to hear an American singing Khoomie... he mentioned that he would be returning to the U.S. to get his masters degree within the next couple of years.



He sent us back to the hostel and also came to the train station when we departed to say goodbye. It was a really nice trip to Mongolia and I am glad to have met him and the others.



Our next stop would be the border town on the Mongolian side (this time we would not take a train through Chinese territory back to Beijing and would instead use a bus.)

)

China: From Shanghai to Beijing

Preface:


(Shanghai is one of China's representational cities: working fast towards the future... found a picture here... recently China put up its first nuats in space and plans a manned mission to the moon in the very near future... I would not be surprised if they beat us to Mars with a manned mission= China is called a third world country by economists... I don't think it is appropriate anymore... the country has brought more than 100 million people out of extreme poverty more than a decade ago... has a life expectancy that challenges the U.S., a very large portion of U.S. consumer products are made here... and the country has incredible road and communication systems (an estimated 100 million cell phones are thrown away every year... to get new ones mostly advance compared to U.S. standard cell phones... the health issues in the U.S. are daunting and stagnation in the economy back home are making this country about the same kind of place as the U.S. But I would not call it or the U.S a "developed country" until half of electricity and fuel sources are renewable... who will be first? at this rate it could be China and I will show you why I think so in the upcoming blogs.)

Having fun In Shanghai and exploring the streets:


(This is what a city bus can look like... there are so many different types.)

(Walking along the street in Shanghai, ample public transportation, and an infinite number of VW Jetta's China's Taxi car of choice!)

(Construction and McDonald's all over the city.)

(Panda cigs... helping to contribute to carbon dioxide emissions, lots of Chinese people like to smoke.)

The first night I went down to this place called the bund: the riverside district in Shanghai, the colors were neat but still does not compare to all the buildings in Manhattan... I still think New York is the city of all cities.
(maybe if I went to Hong Kong I would feel differently). There are a lot of famous buildings in this district... when looking at it, I got the feeling that it was kind of hoaxy, put up to impress all the foreign visitors. However, I heard from Joseph that the real estate construction yields almost instant occupancy in almost all new downtown high rises... there is a 10 percent increase almost every year. According to him, there was nothing on that side of the river just 25 years before, so it is pretty much instantly. What an amazing thing to see happening, cities being built overnight, and probably being torn down and re-built within one decade. I wanted to take pictures of myself here at the bund,standing with a travelers bag with a suit on. I think this well describes about me taking care of business in the most unlikely of circumstances.


(I did not feel like taking my hiking backpack this time so I brought this duffel bag.)



(This is the Bund)



(Places to recycle plastic cans, where recycle collectors (underclass) come by about every 2-3 minutes checking to see if there is some pet bottles to trade in for money)



(Fresh water, the drinking water from sinks is probably not safe, so almost everyone buys bottled water (citizens and tourists))

(The river water is pretty dirty, this explains pretty much why you can not drink water easily in this city)

Onwards...

I met my friends, Mike, Adnan and Omar that night in downtown in a shopping district at East Nanjing road. It was exciting and relatively easy to meet everyone.

(IU first ran into Adnan and Omar, my friends I met in Los Angeles... we play music together and they are originally from Pakistan.)

(Mike, my friend that I met originally when I lived in Tokyo (we became friends through a musical connection and ended up moving in together in Los Angeles and became really good friends... he is from northern Indiana. We had trouble meeting up at first but eventually were able to do it.)


(We also found a version of McDonalds (in Chinese - my-don-lao) with Mike's name in Shanghai)

We were greeted by a strange boy asking for money that was reciting very advanced English lines not really knowing the meaning, he said: "I am just a boy, I do not want your money, why wont you talk to me?,
if you do not talk to me, I will loose all hope in society." It may be hard to understand, but he did not appear hungry and to hear him saying this was extremely funny...Ever after seeing this kid we started to compile a list of all the funny people we met, I will introduce later. His name eventually "The Boy Who Might Loose All Hope In Society". We decided he was so ridiculous that I created a picture of him using photoshop, and the Chinese character, yep you guessed it means "hope".

(Mike was also greeted by him while waiting for us on East Nanjing Road, he thought he was annoying too.)

For the next few days we explored the streets of Shanghai, stayed at a great cheap youth hostel, found the incredible recycle centers for scrap metals and all the intensive crash course construction projects (as Joseph said, someone will recycle it even if the marginal profit is null, seeing it made me believe it)...and regarding new construction... it is almost like you can turn your head no more than
180 degrees and you are guaranteed to see a construction crane. We also saw an interesting art district where kids were doing what appeared to be legalized grafitti on the wall. The pictures are neat... but the faces of the painters looked numb, probably from inhaling the fumes of the spray paint cans all day.

(The four of us trying to get used to the humid air and thick pollution.)

(This was a neat temple we visited, it had seven floors on it representing the seven levels of consciousness in on a sect of eastern religious thought.)


(The neat art displays in Shanghai's modern art district, graffiti constantly being over-painted, Adnan really enjoyed looking at these displays since he is a animation artist himself.)




(Drinking Chinese 7-Up was refreshing in the heat.)

(Amazing picture arts, I like such winter depictions.)

(A picture of Omar, who is a public school teacher in Los Angeles enjoying the sunset scenery along the river in Shanghai.)

(I really found the blazing sunsets pretty here.)

(As we made our way towards the center of downtown this night we saw all kinds of trash being recycled and one of the most interesting findings was a huge recycle center we virtually every piece of metal you could find was being sorted out... I could not get a picture as the manager was suspicious.)

(A guy moving recycle materials to the recycle center... it's not recycling as we know it back home, but it gives you an idea of how flexible Chinese people can be to make their income... as raw materials and oil prices rise, I expect to see less and less landfill material and more and more circulation such as this (Jyunkangata in Japanese meaning circulation structured society)or what we also refer to as sustainable infrastructure.)

(Same story with foam packing materials.)

(Scrap pluming materials getting ready for re-use.)

After visiting Shanghai we went west to Anqua Province and visited the city of Anching... this was a really interesting place to see. We took a overnight train from Shanghai, it was my first time riding the train like this in China.
Although the guide books said that there was no interesting things to do in this town, we found tons of friendly people, music and events to participate in.

(Oil prices going up here too.)

(People getting gas.)

(More recycle materials being shipped by truck.)


(This was an amazing temple we visited, this display was about three stories tall!)

(Here is a huge bridge that crosses a local river here.)

From the top of the temple I discovered that in fact China is developing extensive use of solar... almost every house is equipped with this hot water producing solar device, see for yourself...

(Solar panels everywhere and not just in this city...)

(Some friends we made at the temple reciting Buddhists chants, we joined along and recieved a sour lemon treat at the end... the people in this town and many other places we went were very interesting.)

We saw live demonstrations of the local opera which is famous throughout the country. This was demonstrated on the street in front of the train station. When the four of us (Mike, Andy, Adnan and Omar) appreared,
we were asked to do some musical performance for them. We sang a Beatles song "Hey Jude" several of our originals and I tried playing the Chinese instrument R-hu (a two stringed instrument). We also sang a few Pakistani classics including Saheen, Bolea and Jani Bahana.

Following this, we went to see this local club with crazy music... where we did karaoke and they had this wild bouncing floor you could dance on (the whole thing was shaking to the music, difficult to dance on but fun once getting used to). It was like a giant bed and underneath it was springs that made it bounce, it resembled the following diagram I made using Adobe Illustrator.

(This was the best experience so far... the excited on this dance floor and their awesome techno music... it was a mind altering experience, really truly. Feeling the vibes of modern China was the most memorable moment and I will never forget that.)

We also made good friends with a local motorcycle repair man Jong Pin (he invited us to the club). The club was also crawling with meanies, there was a nice guy in the club that was beaten up outside by what appeared to be gangsters in the local town with glass bottles over the head, we tried to help get some medical assistance for him but were advised that there could be trouble with the local police. We were pretty sure it was some kind of fight over a girl, people can act like such dorks about that kind of stuff, its ridiculous.

(A picture of us with Jong Pin near the train station.)

In this province we also visited a very interesting place called Jihuashan, a mountain town filled with temples and people trying to sell you overpriced goodies. We road a bus here on bumpy roads at which one point I bounced out of my bed and almost hit the ceiling... it was crazy.

(This was the most interesting looking temple that we visited.)

(Another shot of it.)

Here at the town... we had a nice hike up to some temples see below and a short night of sleep before getting back on a bus and returning to Anching. This mountain temple town was filled with quit bells (not to mbe mistaken for wind chimes) that added a nice touch to the temple views. In the high mountains above the temples we could reach were many more temples that looked spectacular... what an interesting place hardly known to foreigners.

(Beautiful views in the background at the temples.)

(Sunset next to a bell.)

(If you highlight this picture with your mouse you can see the neat trees in the foreground.)

In Anching Jong Pin came to greet us once again before we got on the local bus to Beijing (16 hours) and took off. Before leaving we used the local internet cafe... they are littered with internet junkies playing video games.
The prices were also extremely cheap, about 10 cents per hour to use the internet. However the machines themselves are incredibly advanced... so I think that there might be some government subsidies on such places.

Going to and arriving in Beijing:

The bus ride to Beijing was brutal and very long... we were acquainted by a goofy local fellow managing the bus routes that remarkably resembled Kim Jun Il... in the end he did not drive but his brother did, so we named him
Kim Jung Il's brother... the bus was stuffed full of children at a "secret second stop" .. Kim Jung Ils brother would yell really loud at the kids everytime we would make a pit stop for the bathroom or something. Overall, the experience was very interesting but the bus was not the cleanest and made for a rough ride to the city of the 2008 summer olympics.

(The bus was packed with people and children... probably going home from summer camps.)

Once arriving in Beijing, we were shocked to see the forgery in construction projects (fake old feel looking new Chinese architecture (everything from high rises to street-side shops)) and temporary brand shop avenues built to I guess to satisfy foreign visitors... while witnessing this we took a pit stop and I got a hair cut... decided to die my hair black, blue, white and orange all at the same time at the local Chinese goth punk rock Hair cutting salon. I wish I could speak enough Chinese to tell the stylist that my sister was also in the profession and really good with her highlight techniques.

(No need to argue.)

(Chinese version of Wal Mart in Beijing.)

In some ways it felt pathetic and insulting to ones intelligence to see a unique culture trying so hard to please tourist in the typical way... at one point near the forbidden city, I saw an incredible site, a 6-10 block street under construction. Need I not say more, an entire street of "new" vendor shops was being built for tourists, seemed kind of dumb... what will Beijing look like after the olympics, it is hard to say, but the air pollution is a serious problem, you could hardly see more than 3 blocks in front of you, I hope that Beijing gets to the point where I can visit one day assured that it is proud of what it really is and where it really came from historically. I also hope that by that time the pollution in Beijing will be completely gone... its just in too much of a hurry to look cool like the other world cities.

We stayed at a youth hostel this night and did a performance for a small crowd in the the hostel's cafe. This was a very fun time and very calming... I started to catch a cold but at this time was not that bad. We played the cafe's guitar and hand drums, and I played my hand harp I received from my friend Asel when I was in Japan (from Kyrgyzstan)... by that time I figured out a couple of tricks about playing it, I wondered if it is hard on your teeth as a big piece of metal vibrates on them.

The next day we got on the train and continued on to our next destination, Mongolia, we had a plan to return to the city (Beijing) to do business take care of visas and meeting with others. The train ride to Mongolia would be intense and exciting...

(Omar and Adnan getting snacks at a convenience store (They look a lot like 7-11 chain stores in Japan but cheaper.)

(The sites of industrial areas after getting on the train, could not escape the smog of the area until we got well into Inner Mongolia.)

Early in the ride we made friends with a young, outgoing Mongolian boy that wondered the halls of the train looking for people to talk to. He could speak a little bit of English, Chinese and Mongolian. He was friendly but also grouchy, he would tell us to "shut up" and "go away" but then he would come back in and greet us in a friendly way... I will show pictures in the next blog.

We also met a very nice Mongolian familly (two sisters) travelling back to Mongolia... one was studying in Turkey and the other was studying in Beijing. It is interesting to see so many people studying in so many
different places around the world. These girls originated from a village out in the middle of the steepeland 300 miles west of Ulaanbatar yet they were studying in other countries. What assets and valueble knowledge will they bring back should they decide to settle in Mongolia or their home village in Mongolia? Certainly an enriched life, galvanized since of identity and a broader understanding of other countries...which brings me to my next conversation...

As we approached the border area near the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia on the Chinese side another interesting thing that we noticed on the way to the border was the frquency of sand storms and blowing sand. One of the Mongolian friends that we met mentioned that it was the affect of global climate change on the area causing desertification. From her point of veiw it was really certain what was causing this phenomena... I got the impression that for young educated Mongolian people, it was only common sense to accept the research findings of climate change experts. As the sun set and we crossed the border we went to sleep for the night and got ready to wake up in the Mongolian grasslands.

The sleeper cars on the train are worth noting, there are four bunks stuck together in one room. This is just enough for the four of us, equipped with a fan and ample storage space for our luggage. At this point on the trip I had a hard time sleeping because there were so many exciting things to do and I ended up getting sick in the respitory, throat and sinus area. A mega cold was coming on,
and I was about to learn the difficulty of travelling while having a cold like that. About midnight, we stopped in the town of Erling, where we went through Chinese and Mongolian customs. That part took a while,
but more than that was the switching of train cars... for whatever reason, the Chinese and Mongolian train car wheels are totally different. (The Mongolian train wheels were switched on with giant jacks, converyors and cranses,
the entire process probably took 2 hours... it was really interesting to see that there was no international standard for train parts... onward to the great Asian steppe!!!