#61: How Some Singaporeans Became Local Stars on the Steppes
2 October 2002
From Karakorum we drove around the surrounding countryside, looking for obscure archaeological sites. The Orkhon Valley was the beloved homeland of the ancient Turks – the place where their horsemen set off westwards across the plains of Eurasia and the Middle East, eventually reaching Anatolia and the Balkans, settling across the lands they passed through. Turks, Azeris, Turkmens, Kazaks, Kyrgyzs, Uzbeks and Ugyurs – these are all descendants of this great migration. Turks are fond of saying that one can speak Turkish from Sarajevo to the Great Wall of China. That might be a slight exaggeration but isn’t too far from the truth. What used to be the Turkic heartland, too has become the spiritual centre of the Mongolian nomads. Today, herdsmen roamed around the wide valley and its plains, tending their horses and sheep as they have done for the past millennium on these plains.
The hospitality of the Mongolian herdsman is legendary. We stopped by several gers and were piled with sweets, yogurt and more than desire quantities of airag (fermented mare’s milk) and arkhi (Mongolian vodka, also made from fermented mare’s milk). The latter two are well-known to travellers as products of acquired taste. Request for short rides on their horses were greeted with great enthusiasm, and we had a few brief moments of joy pretending to be members of the Great Khaan’s cavalry force.
Hearing about wedding at a nearby ger, we invited ourselves there and was welcomed to join the party. We were treated as the most honoured guests and asked to sit together with the bride and bridegroom and their parents. As punishment for our intrusion, we were duly overwhelmed with piles of mutton soup, biscuits, sweets and seemingly endless cups of airag and arkhi. We were treated to an authentic session of Mongolian concert as visiting guests sang traditional songs dedicated to the wedding couple, the herds, the land and all the good things of life. Sweet melodies prevailed the increasingly crowded ger.
At this point, to my horror, I was asked to sing a song dedicated to the wedding couple. I had a sudden mental block. Besides, I have always thought that any exercise of my vocal cord would almost certainly crack any glass window (none in the ger anyway). Guess what ? I decided to sing the nursery rhyme “Mary has a little lamb,” which was over almost as soon as I began.
“Tell them it’s a song about sheep and goats,” I told Aldraa.
That was received with an enthusiastic applause and wide smiles. It’s a subject the nomadic herdsmen can relate to. The guest from faraway Singapore cares about the local sheep and their masters. Welcome! Welcome! Perhaps the only time I came close to becoming a star singer!
We must have been the highlight of the wedding party, for we almost caused a minor riot when we wanted to leave. Everyone wanted to take pictures with us. Many of the guests rushed out of the ger to see us off, not to mention that there were other nearby herdsmen who rode here because of news of strange visitors to the local wedding. Even the bride and bridegroom came out to take a few snaps with us, together with their 2-year-old baby. The nomads move together when they like each other, and have children as and when they want to. Freedom is paramount to the nomad. Marriage certificates are for spineless urbanites oppressed by artificial rules and dubious notions of morality.
The two crazy Singaporeans and their equally mad Mongolian friends decided to conquer a steep hill rising above the plains. They charged up the hill on their battered jeep. What a wonderful view over this timeless land, the plains stretching as far as they could see. Men and horses were but tiny dots as the setting sun turned everything orange like burning flame. What a beautiful scene. I am falling in love with this land, something I didn’t quite expect as my journey enters its ending phrases. I wish the moment could last forever.
Back in Ulaan Baatar (“UB”), I explored the local museums and relics of the ancient nomadic migrations across Eurasia, a topic which has long been my passion. At the local guesthouse, I met many interesting travellers and fellow techno nomads on the road, plus members of the local expat and NGO community whom Kenneth introduced to me. I also met two cool Singapore sisters, Ming Lee and Ming Boon and an intrepid English traveller, Emil. They were veterans of North Korea, Sikkim and other wild places. Between us, we must have completed more than half the world.
UB used to be a drab communist town transplanted from the Soviet planners’ handbook onto the dusty plains of Mongolia. Nick Middleton once wrote a famous book, Last Disco in Outer Mongolia, about his journey in the 1980s when there was only one disco in this strange town, which stuck up like an alien spaceship on the great steppes. Today, there are countless discos, casinos, restaurants (including authentic Singapore and Thai restaurants too!) and bars in town. I visited the exuberant UB Palace, a gigantic complex of disco, where revellers danced away like the world was going to end soon, no different from their counterparts elsewhere in the world.
We did not find the marmot. The dangers of the bubonic plague – commonly known as the Black Death, the one that wiped out a big portion of European population during the Middle Ages – meant that fewer people are catching these creatures.
Never mind the marmot. I love Mongolia all the same. The temperature is fast dropping though, and I’d better set off for the south. Tonight I will be taking a 30-hour train journey to Hohhot (in Chinese – Huhehaote), capital of the Chinese “Autonomous Region” of Inner Mongolia.
4 October 2002
In Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China
I am now in China. I arrived in Hohhot (in Chinese: Huhehaote), capital of Inner Mongolia (Nei Menggu) Autonomous Region, China, last night. Staying at Beiyuan Guesthouse just across the Railway Station, in Room 715. It’s 5 years since I last visited China. I have expected to find a dusty, primitive provincial city since Inner Mongolia is supposed to be one of the poorest provinces in China, and perhaps even a kind of colonial outpost.
Instead, I find a sprawling and modern metropolis of 2 million people, full of skyscrapers and shiny towers, huge shopping malls and department stores everywhere. No city I have been to in the past 2 months – including all the Russian and Mongolian cities I have visited – can match this level of prosperity, modernity and rampant commercialism and capitalism. I am simply amazed with the range of goods and low prices available. If inland Hohhot has gone so far, how about the coastal cities of China ? We are indeed looking at the emergence of a new economic superpower.
Tomorrow I will take a bus to Dongsheng, also within Inner Mongolia, where I will visit the Chinese supposed site of Genghis Khan’s tomb. From there, I will move southwards to Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.