Naadam

This weekend was Naadam, the summer festival, which is the biggest event of the year in Mongolia. The whole country basically shuts down for 3 days, which makes it really frustrating when you're trying to find food. But, it was really sweet.

I had an interesting Naadam weekend. On Friday, we received word that 8 hedge fund managers from Hong Kong were in town for the weekend. One of them went to grad school with my boss, and they're all loaded with money so he wanted us to show them around with the hope that they might invest. Now I really have no idea what a hedge fund manager does, but this weekend I learned that they are basically 40-year-old frat boys. I haven't yet decided if this is funny or pathetic. I also don't know how being a 40-year-old frat boy translates into a career with wealth and prestige but oh well. So Friday night I was driving around UB in a hummer with some hedge fund managers. And that's a cool story, right? And one of them knew Harcourt Place so we bonded over that because the club of people in the world who know Harcourt Place is very very small.

Saturday was the opening ceremony for Naadam, and a little drizzly. I was supposed to go with the Swede but she wasn't feeling well, and I called up two of my coworkers but they were m.i.a. so I wandered down to the stadium by myself, bought a scalped ticket and found a seat squished between two Mongolian mothers and their adorable children. I got there kind of late, so my seat was in the front row of the rear of the stadium, so I couldn't really see too much. But what I did see was pretty cool. They start by marching in these 9 horsetail banners from the parliament house, which are the symbol of the government. So the seat of government is actually transferred to the Naadam stadium for a few days. These banners are white, and they switch to black ones during times of war. I don't think they've pulled those out for like 800 years. And then there was all this singing and orchestra-playing and narration and acrobatics and horse-riding and flag-waving and traditional-clothes-wearing and marching and general patriotism. And my butt got a little soggy but I had some nice greasy khuushur so it was all good. Then they conclude the ceremonies and start with the competitions.

Naadam is a celebration of the "three manly sports:" archery, horse-racing, and wrestling. "Three manly sports" is a little bit of a misnomer, 1. because a good portion of the contestants are women and children, and 2. because there are kind of four sports now that sheep anklebone-flicking has gained popularity (yes, you read that right: sheep anklebone-flicking). But regardless, every one of these sports is hilarious from an outsider's perspective.

Wrestling takes place in the stadium. Mongolian wrestling is awesome for many reasons. Everyone wears these ridiculous costumes and they all do this sort of soaring-eagle swagger ritual before and after the match. And there are no weight classes and they put the highest seeds against the lowest, so the very first matches are these little scrawny dudes getting walloped by these monsters. It's awesome. I have no idea why the little scrawny dudes even enter the competition, because they all get destroyed. It did not look like fun. Here's a video where you can see the banners and the goofy outfits and the soaring eagle dance.

Don't mess with her.

At this point I met up with the Swede who was feeling better, and we wandered out to see the archery competition. The contestants were a mix from young men to old grandmas who were out there whipping off these arrows. So I learned another lesson: do not mess with a Mongolian grandma. They shoot at these little targets on the ground from about 50 meters away, and there all these judges standing right around the targets with arrows whizzing in right at their feet, without looking the slightest bit concerned. And we were like, what? It was bizarre. But they were all incredibly accurate, so it seemed ok, until one arrow misfired and flew way over the judges' heads. Then we left.

The judges. Note the arrow at his feet.

We went next to the anklebone-flicking arena. When we got there we couldn't get in because President Elbegdorj and Prime Minister Bayar were in there observing. Apparently they are avid anklebone-flicking fans. But we got to see them, so that was pretty cool. After they had rolled out in their motorcade, we went into the arena. This has to be one of the most bizarre activities that exists. There's this incessant chanting/humming sort of thing going on in the building. Guys are on teams of four and the sit about 3 meters from the target, which are two little sheep anklebones. Other teams sit on each side of the target and watch and chant. The guys flicking sit there stoically with a little wooden slide

propped on their knee with another bone on it, and they line this thing up and flick the bone at the target. And they're incredibly accurate - I think they made like 10 in a row - flicking this little thing at this little target from 10 feet away. It's crazy.

A fearsome anklebone team.

The only sport I didn't see was horse-racing, which is supposedly the best. Now this is no Kentucky Derby. This is no race where so-and-so's horse with such-and-such an ironically clever name and such-and-such overpaid jockey hurt his poor little ankle so he can't run around in a circle for 30 seconds in front of a bunch of rich ladies in ugly hats. No. This is Mongolian horse racing, a grueling two hour race through the Mongolian steppe. The jockeys are kids from 4 to 10 years old, born and raised on the steppe. Many of the horses drop dead before or after the finish line and these little kids jump off and start kicking them to get them going again. This is real horse racing. Mongolia is PETA's nightmare, by the way.

But I didn't get to see that. After the anklebone-flicking, we wandered around the fairgrounds for a while, trying khuushuur at every place. Khuushuur is the most delicious food on earth. More on that in a future post. I think everyone in the city was at Naadam. It was really crazy. We had a good time, I had a bowl of airag which was ladled out from a dirty plastic barrel, and it was truly invigorating.

The next day we hung out with the U.S. ambassador. One of my friends and co-workers worked at the embassy last summer and the ambassador become somewhat of a friend and mentor to him, so he invited him, the Swede and I out to a cultural fair in the countryside. But we ended up having an even more Mongolian cultural experience by getting diverted to different routes three times trying to get out of the city and ending up stuck in traffic for an hour and a half. So we decided to turn around and head out the city to Terelj, a park outside the city in the other direction. But we were kind of hungry so we headed to the ambassador's house for a quick sandwich. This turned into a few hours and a four-course lunch, so by the time we were finished it was raining and too late to go to Terelj anyway. But it was still a good time, the ambassador is a great guy. very kind and hospitable (who would spend their holiday with three college kids?) and he promised us a trip to Terelj another time. That night we caught the closing ceremonies on TV, in which the winning jockeys are honored with a bowl of airag. They were still riding their winning steeds, who by this point looked envious of their fallen comrades. The wrestling finals were also on, this time with two behemoths. And to close they carried the nine standards back to the Parliament house.

My Mongolia experience has been enjoyable though not at all what I expected. I expect to come here and wrestle sheep and milk camels, but this was my Naadam: riding around in a hummer with hedge fund guys, riding around in an armored SUV and dining with the US ambassador, wandering around the Naadam stadium with a Swedish model. Who knew I had to come to Mongolia of all places to get away from such lowbrow company as I am usually surrounded with? Company like you, dear reader. Company like you.