Friday, November 30, 2012

MWW 40: Хорхог (Боодог)

The REAL Mongolian Barbecue


Cyrillic
хорхог

Transcription
horhog
IPA
ɔrχəq]
Layman’s
Pronunciation
HOR-huck
Translation
a dish of roasted meat - “Mongolian barbecue” 
In Genghis Khan’s time it was qorqaγ.

Also known as боодог, horhog is the real Mongolian barbecue, not the stuff you get at “Mongolian Barbecues” in the States. (Fun Fact: BD’s is the only American chain restaurant to have set up shop in Mongolia, although it’s simply called “BD’s Barbecue.”) It is sometimes also described as being like Irish stew. Хорхог is usually made with goat meat, but it can be made with lots of other kinds of meat, including marmot (тарвага - see Mongolian Word of the Week #65). It is often enjoyed outdoors during summer parties. This is how хорхог is made:

1.      First, find some nice palm-sized rocks.
2.      Make a big fire and drops the rocks in it.
3.      Get a big empty milk or water can. It should be about the size of a goat.
4.      Stuff the dismembered goat in the milk can, along with some potatoes, carrots, and the hot rocks.
5.      Seal the milk can and put it back on the fire.
6.      Wait a long time, then pop open the can and enjoy!

The milkcan
Manly Mongol men making a meaty masterpiece in a milkcan
Once the the meat is dished out, the hot rocks are too. People will take the hot rocks and hold on to them as long as they can, passing them back and forth from hand to hand but never putting them down, trying to keep from dropping them as long as possible. Apparently, your luck increases in proportion to the time you can keep from dropping the rock.

Mmmm!

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

MWW 38: Өрөм

Cyrillic
өрөм

Transcription
öröm
IPA
[ˈөrəm]
Layman’s
Pronunciation
OH-rum
Translation
“Mongolian butter”
In Genghis Khan’s time it was örüme.

Isn't scheduling great? Now I don't even have to be online to post blog entries, nor do I have to post them all at the same time. I can just schedule them to be posted some time in the future and have entries coming out every day long after I'm back in the land of no internet.

Өрөм, sometimes also called Монгол масло (Mongolian butter), is what you get when you boil milk. Americans don’t boil milk at home very often, but when they do they don’t care much for the skin that forms on the top of boiling milk. Mongolians however collect this skin as өрөм. It ends up looking almost like a large omelet. It’s crumblier than butter, and stiffer than margarine. Also, if it gets hot, it sweats milk. And just like butter, Mongolians love to spread it on bread, sometimes with sugar. They also stack dried-out өрөм in candy bowls along with ааруул and бяслаг.


öröm
BONUS POINT: What language did Mongolian take the word масло "butter" from?

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

MWW 36-37: Өдөр / Хоног

Cyrillic
өдөр

Transcription
ödör
IPA
[өtər]
Layman’s
Pronunciation
OH-der
Translation
day
In Genghis Khan’s time it was edür.
Cyrillic
хоног

Transcription
honog
IPA
ɔnəq]
Layman’s
Pronunciation
HAW-nuck
Translation
day (24 hours)
In Genghis Khan’s time it was qonuγ.

Is it cheating to have the word of the day be two words? If not, then today’s word is actually two words, which are one word in English. Both өдөр and хоног mean “day,” but in different contexts. It’s the English word “day” which is ambiguous here. Mongolian distinguishes between day as a point in time and a period of time. Өдөр is the point-in-time word, while хоног is the period-of-time word. Өдөр refers to the time when the sun is out and shining. It contrasts with шөнө, “night.” Хоног means a period of 24 hours. I believe хоног is related to the verb хонох, “to spend a night.” When you also want to refer to a particular day, you use өдөр, but when you want to talk about a number of days, you say хоног. Some examples.

Incidentally, even though Mongolian has names for days of the week, it doesn’t have one for “week” itself. Mongolians say долоон хоног, literally “seven days.” Expectedly it does not have convenient phrases like “last week” or “next week.” In a way, долоон хоног has taken on a life of its own as a single vocabulary item. Once I heard someone say хоёр долоон хоног, “two seven-days.”

Speaking of weeks, let’s look at the Mongolian words for the days of the week. There are actually 3.28 sets of words for the days of the week.

English Name
Boring Soviet-era name
Cooler
Soviet-era name
Tibetan-
derived astrological name
Sanskrit-derived astrological
name
Monday
нэгдэх өдөр
“first day”

Даваа
Davaa
“moon”
Сумъяа
 “moon”
Tuesday
хоёрдохь өдөр
“second day”

Мягмар
Myagmar
“Mars”
Ангараг
“Mars”
Wednesday
гуравдахь өдөр
“third day”

Лхагва
Lhagva
“Mercury”
Буд
“Mercury”
Thursday
дөрөвдөх өдөр
“fourth day”

Пүрэв
Pürev
“Jupiter”
Бархасвадь
“Jupiter”
Friday
тавдахь өдөр
“fifth day”

Баасан
Baasan
“Venus”
Сугар
“Venus”
Saturday
зургаадахь өдөр
“sixth day”
half-good day
Бямба
Byamba
“Saturn”
Санчир
“Saturn”
Sunday
долоодохь өдөр
“seventh day”
full good day
Ням
Nyam
“sun”
Адъяа
“sun”

The words “half-good day” and “completely good day” apparently come from the Soviet-era practice of making people working half a day on Saturday and giving them the whole day off on Sunday.

The names in the first row are the most common, with the second column names sometimes showing up in conversation (or text messages). The Tibetan names are used in more formal situations, while the alternate Sanskrit names seem to appear only in Buddhist horoscope books. The Tibetan words are also extremely common elements in personal names. (The alternate names also appear in personal names, but much less commonly.) You’ve already met Баасан in the previous MWW аргал.

Considering how neatly the astrological names coincide with the Germanic and Romance names for the weekdays, and considering that Mongolia probably got its astrology from India via Tibet along with Buddhism, I wonder, does this trace back to some sort of Proto-Indo-European religious thingy?

EDIT: The alternate astrological names (in the last column) are of Indian origin, NOT native words as originally posted. Sorry!

Monday, November 26, 2012

China, Part V: The Trip Back

...but I never got to do them.

The morning of my third day in Beijing, I was alerted to a small problem by the desk of my hostel: my visa was due to expire earlier than the period of time I had booked for that hostel. Oh, really, how did that happen? Well...

I had always planned to take the train into China, since it's cheaper than flying, and at least to me, more interesting. However, train tickets aren't sold in advance, so they're nearly useless for acquiring a visa, because the Chinese visa process requires all the details of your trip in advance. However, the visa doesn't require that you follow those plans, or prohibit you from changing plans, once the visa has been acquired. So taking some other people's advice, I got a plane ticket for the purpose of submitting a complete visa application, then cancelled it and bought a train ticket before I left for China. This is where the problems started.

I was issued a visa for a term of 10 days, based on the tentative itinerary I submitted. That was in fact an accurate estimation of the time I was actually going to stay IN Shanghai and Beijing, walking around and doing touristy stuff. But that's not what counted. Trains and buses move much slower than planes, and when I substituted them for planes, my total transportation time expanded from less than a day to five days (two of them inside Mongolia). Of course, your duration of stay actually starts counting from the time you reach the border, not when you arrive at your destination, and stops when you go back over the border, not when you  get on the bus from your destination. I had failed to factor in the time difference when I made my original plans. So I arrived in Shanghai fully intending to enjoy 10 days of tourism there and in the capital, when in fact getting there had already eaten up 2 of those days.

So, what do I do? I was directed to the police bureau to get my visa extended. The lady I spoke to explained that I could get my visa extended - for the same price as a new visa ($170). She justified this price as the price that the US charges for PRC citizens to get visas. I couldn't get it extended for just three days either. Surprisingly, given that they had individually tailored my original visa time limit to the exact number of days I was expecting to spend sightseeing in China, my visa could only be extended by standard blocks, of 10 days or 30 days. This was because there was a minimum processing time of 7 days. And oh, by the way, the PRC would have to hold my passport during that processing time. That means I couldn't leave the country; in fact, by Chinese law, I couldn't even board the train, or change my lodging, without my passport. I would be held captive in Beijing for 7 days. Considering the visa charge together with my projected lodging and food costs for those days, and assuming I didn't buy any souvenirs or join any tours, I calculated I would be left with $26 USD at the end of my trip.

Or I could leave. I chose that option. And in order to be sure I made it to the border in enough time, I had to leave that day.

I hurried to Beijing Station to try to figure out how to get the bus back to Ereenhot, but NOBODY, not the people selling tickets, knew where the bus station was (because they only dealt with the train, sorry). I was lucky that I attracted the attention of a middle-aged lady who knew some English, and then she asked around and found an old lady who knew the bus to Ereenhot. She offered to take me right there for $20 bucks, but I declined and ran with her information back to the hostel, where they told me where to catch the city bus that connected to the long-distance bus. They were even nice enough not to charge me anything for the extra nights I cancelled. And within 4 hours of realizing I was doomed, I was on my way out of the country.

No Temple of Heaven, no Summer Palace, no Great Wall, no opera, no lakes, no pandas. And I had already been thinking about how I would go back and brag about having taken a complete tour for less than $1000 - which would have been possible, except for stupidly overlooking one detail that nearly made me a fugitive from the Chinese law.

I did receive a consolation prize. My tour bus passed by the Great Wall for about 1/2 hour, and I was able to take pictures from the window.

The Great Wall, as seen from a bus
The Great Wall, as seen from a bus
Like the bus from Ereenhot to Beijing, the travel time was overestimated, and I arrived in Ereenhot in the wee hours of the morning. There were no cars across the border (I didn't even know where the cars picked people up) but a Mongolian family found me a hotel room and got me a car the next morning.

This car broke down at the last checkpoint, so again I had to catch another one to make it all the way to Zamyn Uud. The train station was out of tickets for that day, so I was stuck in Zamyn Uud for at least another day. There is a hotel affiliated with the train station, and fortunately not only did it have rooms but it could also arrange return train tickets for me. Unfortunately, they had no single rooms and I had to share a room with a traveling Mongolian businessman. He fell asleep, snoring, watching dubbed movies in our room, which ended and turned into grainy Mongolian porn. What bothered me more was that he wanted to sleep with the room's door open, because it was too hot (it's true, it was very hot and muggy, but c'mon), so I argued about that and left the movie issue alone.

This time I got a sleeper seat, so the next afternoon I could zone out in comfort the rest of the way back to UB. Once I was back safe, I wasn't upset anymore about having my trip cut short, because it made for a rather amusing story. And thus ends my trip to China.

MWW 35: Даахь

Cyrillic
даахь

Transcription
daahi
IPA
[tæ:xj]
Layman’s
Pronunciation
DAAKH
Translation
a baby’s hair before it is cut for the first time
In Genghis Khan’s time it was daγaki.

Haircuts for kids are a big deal in Mongolia. This has led to the curious fact that Mongolian has a word for the hair of a baby that has never had a haircut before. That word is даахь. Даахь is also sometimes called унаган үс (unagan üs) or “foal hair” (унага is a baby horse, -н is an adjective marker, and үс is hair (in general, including fur)).

Generally, Mongolians don’t cut their childrens’ hair at all for the first few years of life, and then when they’re about three years old, they throw a party and give the kid a haircut for everyone to see. Boys, and apparently sometimes girls, go through this, because I sometimes see little girls with shaved heads. As a side note, I also see young women with shaved heads far more often here than in America.

In early October, about a month ago, I got to see a hair-cutting ceremony for the first time. In fact, I got to participate in it. Everybody gave the boy, Ganbaa, a little gift (боов or small change). The majority of hair was shaved off in one go with electric clippers. But the last little piece at the back of the head was twisted up into a queue. The dad wrapped a pair of scissors up in a хадаг and gave it to me to trim the queue to a couple of inches.

Mommy's here!
They save the hair, instead of throwing it away.
Braiding the hair
Wrapping the scissors in a хадаг
Cutting the queue
After all the hair was gone, then all the adults drank airag and sang. Like any other Mongolian party.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

China, Part IV: Beijing

On August 3 I went to Beijing. The train rode overnight, for almost a complete day. On the way I met a couple of Chinese university students. One of them was a girl who was studying in Kansas and played on a baseball team. The other one was a guy who said he was going up to Beijing to break up with his girlfriend. Both of them spoke decent English and talked to me for a long time, and helped me out a little about what to do when I got to Beijing.

The first day in Beijing, there wasn't much time, so I stayed around the hostel, and looked up things about China and planned my next moves. Some of the other people in the room invited me out to eat that night. At the restaurant we also met a girl who had visited North Korea.

Beijing Railway Station

Tiananmen Square

The second day was dedicated to the center of the city. Tiananmen Square, the main public space in Beijing, sits right in front of the old imperial palace, the Forbidden City (also known as the Palace Museum). As a matter of fact, the Forbidden City is only accessible through Tiananmen Square. The place is full of people, including people trying to sell you stuff at inflated prices, with some attractions here and there.

Building across the street and south of Tiananmen Square
Approaching the Square

Entering the Square


Chinese workers

Chinese workers

Mao Zedong's Mausoleum
Perhaps because Communists are materialists, they seem to have an almost Egyptian obsession with preserving the physical remains of their leaders. Chairman Mao's body is enshrined here, where the public is free to gaze at him. But only for a couple of hours in the morning. Then it's closed. I got there just too late, and never got to see the corpse.

The Forbidden City

Tiananmen Square was huge, making the approach to the Forbidden City very drawn out and confusing. Every time I passed through a gate or wall I'd think I was about to enter the Forbidden City, only to find myself in another square, empty except for other people, and realize I had to walk all the way to another wall, where, hopefully, it would be the Forbidden City. Of course, I did eventually get there, and when I did I knew it. It confirms the old wisdom, "You're not really there until there's a ticket counter with a line of people."

Approaching the Forbidden City

The Forbidden City's Nameplate












Eaves of the Forbidden City


Quadrilingual inscription in Tibetan, Mongolian, Manchurian, and Chinese
Grass on an imperial roof
The Emperor's Garden
Exit of the Forbidden City
Moat of the Forbidden City

Jingshan Park

When I left the Forbidden City, I felt it was still too early to call it a day, but I wasn't sure what I should see next. There was a sign with a list of other sites of interest, including their directions and distances from the Forbidden City. Most of them were fairly far away, or large, or something else. One of them, though, was Jingshan Park (景山). I'd never heard of it before, but it was directly behind the Forbidden City across the street, far closer than any of the other sites, so I decided to go there. It was fortuitous, because the place turned out to be very interesting, and borderline surreal.

Following a winding path, I made a large semicircle around to the back, and encountered many large dinosaur sculptures.


Raptors rush in for the kill, as children and old people stroll by
The park was alive with many active and sometimes eccentric characters, alone or in groups, playing instruments, singing, dancing, or practicing martial arts (perhaps).


Dancing Couple, and some random gawking tourists
Singers
After I followed my ears to choir above, I noticed I was at the foot of a large hill with a pagoda-like structure at the top, so I climbed it.

View from below
Up there were some people selling various items. I bought some fans for my Mongolian friends. I admired, but did not buy, the canvas purses and wallets shown below.







Peace Corps volunteers can relate
Ironically, this was the only perfectly acceptable English sentence
Once ascended, the hilltop pavilion turned out to possess an incredible panoramic view of Beijing, due to its height, and its location at the geographical center of the city.
Looking back at the Forbidden City from above

The Forbidden City



Self-explanatory

Beijing, to the East


To the northeast, the imperial lakes
The pavilion itself


One group of businesswomen had sets of traditional costumes, and for a few bucks, I got my picture taken on a throne, posing as an emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

Andrew Huangdi
By the time I left, it was getting dark. On the way back, I saw this radiant white blobular globe, which I believe is a theatre. It was a long walk back to the hostel.


I fell asleep easily and made ready for the next few days of temples, palaces, pandas, and assorted ancient Chinese cultural experiences...