Tsagaan Sar L.A. 2016

Celebrating Mongolian New Year during Superbowl 50

Two days ago, we had the Superbowl here in America, and the Broncos beat the Panthers. I didn’t see the kickoff though, because I was celebrating Lunar New Year the Mongolian Way.

Elders of the L.A. Mongolian community gathered at Golden Mongolia restaurant

On February 7 at noon there was a Tsagaan Sar celebration at Golden Mongolia restaurant, located in L.A.’s Koreatown near the Wilshire-Vermont Metro station. More properly, it wasn’t an actual Tsagaan Sar celebration. It was a celebration for Bitüün (Битүүн), the name of the day before Tsagaan Sar. Tsagaan Sar started yesterday, Monday February 8 and is continuing until tomorrow, Wednesday February 10. (That's three days long - and in the countryside where I was, the festivities often went on a whole week.)

In Asian culture, each new year is associated with one of twelve animals. What most Americans don’t know is that each year is also associated with one of five elements - earth, water, fire, wood, metal. 12 animals x 5 elements = 60 combinations, which makes for a traditional “century” of 60 years. This year is the year of the Fire Monkey, or Gal Bich Jil (Гал бич жил).

The Los Angeles Mongolian Association holds a celebration for the ахмад (ahmad), or elders of the community, every year around Tsagaan Sar. I got to speak to some of these elders, some of whom were visiting from Mongolia. (I can only imagine their surprise when they arrived here and it was 75° F (° C)!) I went to the celebration last year, and knew they would have one again this year, so I made sure to check the time. Unfortunately, the Mongolian community and its activities aren’t always well-publicized around L.A.

Yes, we also had huushuur, and they even put the plate right in front of me!

This little girl guards the gifts that have been prepared for the older Mongolian guests.

Lunch contained plenty of Mongolian holiday staples, such as buuz and even airag, and was followed by singing and dancing (mostly waltzing, naturally). I sang "Би Монгол эр хүн" ("I am a Mongolian Man") with the help of the karaoke machine. They also made me make a brief speech.

White guys

More to my surprise, I also met two other white guys at the celebration. In fact one of them was wearing a deel - a very old-fashioned deel, as you can tell by the cut of the chest flap. His deel had a straight diagonal slash across the front, instead of the right-angle corner on more modern styles. As it turns out, they play Mongols in historical reenactments, so they knew quite a bit about Mongolian history already. They’re planning their first visit to Mongolia later this year, so wish them luck!

Group photo

Children's Day / Хүүхдийн Баяр

Children's Day makes a fitting end to the school year

June 1 is recognized worldwide as "International Day for Protection of Children" and consequently is the most popular day in many countries for celebrating children. In Mongolia it is called "Children's Day," or Хүүхдийн баяр (Hüühdiin bayar). As you may recall, баяр refers to a celebration or holiday. Officially, the day is known as Эх үрсийн баяр (Eh ürsiin bayar), which means "Mother and Children's Celebration" in rather formal Mongolian.

The biggest party, of course, is in Ulaanbaatar. Thousands of parents and children from around the country gather for a ceremony in Sühbaatar Square, and other activities. However, smaller parties happen in сум's and аймаг's. Naturally, they are usually hosted at schools.

The Mongolian school year conveniently runs from September through May, so Children's Day makes a fitting unofficial end for the school year. In honor of Children's Day 2015, please enjoy some pictures from Children's Day 2014.

Children line up by the school to watch the ceremony

A little Mongolian boy checks his trading cards

Children's Day parties at schools provide a chance for students to show off their talents. Unlike most student competitions, which are dominated by high school students, on Children's Day the participants are mostly kindergarten or elementary school children.

Girls get ready to dance

Typical displays of skill include dancing and singing performances. Talented young artists get their drawings displayed on school walls. One year when I visited UB on that day, even the State Department Store (Mongolia's biggest mall) displayed children's drawings in the store window.

Singing is popular at many holidays, including Children's Day

On Children's Day, small children can sing too.

Opportunities for play include games like darts and шагай, and drawing on the ground with chalk.

Playing with sheep anklebones

Playing with sheep anklebones

Older children playing darts

Children drawing with chalk

Of course, winners get certificates.

At the end, everyone gets their picture taken.

Say Hi.

More photos

Take some photos from the other direction

Adults also find time to celebrate themselves too. Here teachers pose for a photo op in front of the school.

The Twelve Animals of the Zodiac

Or, Camel vs. Mouse

It's almost time for the Цагаан Сар (Tsagaan Sar), the old Mongolian New Year, so it's soon going to become the Модон Хонины Жил (Modon Honiny Jil), or the Year of the Wooden Sheep. In America the twelve-year cycle of animals is often called the Chinese Zodiac or Chinese Horoscope, but it is found far beyond China. The practice of twelve-year cycles with animals presiding over each of the years is found not only in Sinosphere nations like Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, but also among the Thai, Tibetans, Kazakhs, ancient Persians, and even the ancient Bulgars.

These far-spread cultures use much the same assemblage of beasts, but here and there they swap one animal for another. Instead of the rabbit, the Vietnamese have the cat,¹ and instead of the tiger, the Kazakhs have the snow leopard. More bizarrely, the Kazakhs also replaced the dragon with the snail.²

Of course, this system is used in Mongolia too. The cycle for the Mongolians is:

1. хулгана (hulgana) - mouse
2. үхэр (üher) - cattle
3. бар (bar) - tiger
4. туулай (tuulai) - rabbit
5. луу (luu) - dragon
6. могой (mogoi) - snake
7. морь (mori) - horse
8. хонь (honi) - sheep
9. бич (bich) - ape
10. тахиа (tahia) - chicken
11. нохой (nohoi) - dog
12. гахай (gahai) - pig

The practice of naming years after animals predates history. Throughout Chinese history, Chinese scholars have not even been sure that the practice is Chinese. In fact, some suggested that the practice was borrowed from the nomads to the north!³ While the actual origin of the practice is a mystery, it has not stopped people from coming up with their own stories about it - usually involving a god or Buddha judging animals. The Mongolians are no exception. The following little story is the explanation I heard in Mongolia.

The Mouse, the Camel, and the Twelve-Year Cycle

Once upon a time the Buddha decided to assign names to the years of the 12-year cycle and called a conference of animals. Thirteen species applied for the twelve positions available. After assigning animals to eleven years, it came down to the camel and the mouse. The Buddha couldn't decide between them, so he proposed a tie-breaker: Whoever saw the morning sunlight first would get a year named after him. The next day, the camel faced east and stretched his neck to see as far to the horizon as he could. The mouse, however, climbed on the camel's back and faced west. While the camel was still waiting for the sun, the mouse saw the sunlight strike the peaks of the western mountains and cried out.⁴ Thus the mouse won, and he got a place in the zodiac instead of the camel. However the Buddha decided to give the camel a consolation prize. He declared that the camel would have:

1. a mouse's ears
2. a cow's stomach
3. a tiger's paws
4. a rabbit's nose
5. a dragon's body
6. a snakes eyes
7. a horse's mane (albeit underneath his neck)
8. a sheep's wool
9. an ape's hump
10. a rooster's crest
11. a dog's legs
12. and a pig's tail

I don't personally see the resemblances, but who am I to question the Buddha? Anyway, the camel, so gifted with the attributes of all twelve of the other animals, thus represents the whole twelve-year cycle.

Happy Tsagaan Sar! Сайхан шинэлээрэй!

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1. “Year of the Cat,” http://www.viethoroscope.com/year-of-the-cat/. Accessed Feb 16, 2015.
2. Kazakh zodiac: “Architect tells story behind Almaty’s renowned fountain,” (Foster, Hal - http://www.universalnewswires.com/centralasia/viewstory.aspx?id=2278. Accessed Feb 16, 2015) and "The historical information of the architectural complex" (http://www.library.kz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=214&Itemid=49. Accessed Feb 16, 2015). Interestingly, the words for dragon or snail in several languages sound similar. Kazakh ұлу (ulw) and Kyrgyz  үлүл (ülül) mean "snail," while Chinese (Mandarin) lóng, Kyrgyz улу (ulu), and Mongolian луу (luu) mean "dragon." Mongolian has water spirits named лус (lus), and Tibetan has water spirits named klu which are snake-like (more info at James Alvarez's "The Klu: Their Roles Within the Shamanic and Buddhist Contexts," https://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/relb2054_jea6c/2010/11/06/the-klu-their-roles-within-the-shamanic-and-buddhist-contexts/). Note that Mongolian луу and лус must be borrowed because native words almost never begin with L. So there may be some secret connection between snails and dragons. Or maybe the snail took advantage of phonetic confusion to usurp the dragon. Those clever snails! (For your curiosity, the Mongolian word for snail is эмгэн хумс, "old woman fingernail.")
   
3. I have read around the nets that Zhao Yi 赵翼 ascribed a nomadic origin to the zodiac, but I have not found anything that Mr. Zhao himself wrote.
   
4. This, by the way, is true. If the sun rises over a plain, mountains to the west will light up before the sun itself appears, and conversely, at dusk mountains to the east will stay lit up after the sun itself is no longer visible.
   

School Vacation / Fourth of July

As most of the world knows now, it's July, and thus well into summer. The Mongolian school year ends at the beginning of June / end of May, much like the American school year. And also much like the American school year, this originated for agricultural reasons. Summer is the busiest time of year not only for farmers (originally the majority of the US population), whose crops are growing, but also for herders, who have lots of young animals running around. In both cases, it was assumed that kids should help their parents, and so everything else was planned around it.

Horses, young and old

A lot of Peace Corps volunteers have therefore gone home for vacation or migrated to UB to enjoy its many luxuries. I didn't and had no fixed plans, so I was talked into running a summer English club back in my village. Not about to miss out on Fourth of July for that reason, I then talked my students into having a 4th of July party (it didn't take much talking). They raised the funds and bought the supplies. The original grand vision included fireworks and baseball - both of which are obscure out here - but at least we had marshmallows! So we started a fire and roasted sausages and marshmallows on pieces of abandoned wire.

Mongolian kids' weenie roast

That this took place is a small success and a bit of a miracle. The Fourth was very stormy, to the point that the wind began peeling the canvas cover off some gers, sending me running to my counterpart's house in anxiety that my home was falling apart. Actually, nothing structural was affected, and my stuff didn't even get wet. And by about 8:00 the weather cleared, allowing our party to take place anyway.

My ger on July 4

The rest of the country, meanwhile is gearing up for Naadam, the biggest sporting event of the year, and now I'm in UB running through hoops to get a Chinese visa, which promises to provide more material for blogging eventually.

Women's Day

Last Thursday, March 8, was Women’s Day (Эмэгтэйчүүдийн Баярын Өдөр) in Mongolia. As could be expected it was celebrated with lots of food and vodka and dancing teachers. Dancing teachers in themselves are worthy of a blog post. Never since I came here have I wished I had a video camera as much as when I saw a bunch of middle-aged Mongolians in suits raving to a techno version of the Für Elise. However I’d like to take this opportunity though to point out why we should celebrate Mongolian women, because it is women who run the country. Women here are teachers, governors, doctors, lawyers, business owners - in fact, they are overrepresented in nearly every profession. Why is this?

Part of the reason has to do with Mongolia’s traditional economy. Until recently in history, almost everyone in the country herded animals or was a Buddhist monk. Both boys and girls do work in herding families, but the boys’ role is greater. When the Socialists dumped a national education system on Mongolia, most families figured that if there were going to educate one of their kids, they would send the daughter, and keep the son home to do manly ranch work. So more women finished school, more women went to college, and more women got jobs. When the professional sector appeared, it was filled with women. A substantial part of the population is still involved in herding, so the trend continues.

The gap begins early. In  my upper grade classes, there are always more girls than boys. One class has 6 boys and 19 girls. Mongolians aren’t giving birth to girls at a 4:1 ratio over boys. The boys are dropping out of school.

My school has 36 faculty (at least on the contact info sheet). 8 of them (including me) are men. The other 28 are women. That means they outnumber us almost 4 to 1. Moreover, the really powerful positions are all women. The school director (principal / superintendent) is a woman, as are both of the training managers (the teachers’ immediate bosses, who oversee them and approve all lesson plans). Our past few directors and training managers were also women. Of 4 doctors I’ve met, 3 are women. Our soum governor is a woman. Men are shepherds, drivers, handymen, watchmen, miners, welders, stokers, etc. - mostly shepherds. Or they’re unemployed. Only when you get to the very top (parliamentary representatives, for example) do men dominate again.

One consequence of this is relationships in Mongolia are very mismatched status-wise. In most countries people marry people of equivalent education and income. If they don’t, it’s usually the man who’s higher status. In Mongolia it’s very much the opposite. Women are usually better-educated and make more money than their husbands. Of the male teachers I mentioned above, 4 are married to other teachers, 1 is dating another teacher, 1 is dating a student (a UNIVERSITY student, if you were wondering), and 1 is married to the governor (even the governor can’t resist a sexy teacher). Obviously 23 of the women are going to be unable to marry another teacher. One is married to a bank clerk and the rest that I know about are married to herders, drivers, and school workers (not teachers). One of our teachers, who went to the National University of Mongolia (the top school in the country), is married to one of the men who, if I recall correctly, maintains the furnace at school, and who presumably never went to college. In the US it would be really bizarre for an Ivy League graduate to marry a guy without any college education. But it happens in Mongolia.

Nevertheless, everybody is married. Why aren’t there instead a bunch of lonely old teachers dreaming of an equitable match? Because in Mongolia everyone wants you to get married, now. People here (in the countryside) tend to marry by their early twenties, marry the first person they date, and marry quickly (i.e., we’ve been dating for 4 months, let’s get married). Ironically, this is fueled by the lack of educated men, because everyone is in a hurry to put a lock on the first decent man they meet. It’s like an arms race, except instead of being the first person to detonate a nuclear weapon, you must be the first person to marry that guy who just came back from the city with a degree. If you can’t, you find a nice guy among the herdsmen, lest you end up with an unemployed alcoholic (which are unfortunately common in many places).

Of all those 36 teachers, only 2 are neither married nor engaged: myself and one 26-year-old woman. Unsurprisingly, a few teachers have begun to ask if I would marry her. They could be joking, but I’m not sure. What sane woman, already past her early twenties, would not jump at the golden opportunity of a man with a degree and job being dumped right next to her? (In any case, she herself has shown no interest in me.)

So let’s celebrate women and all the hard work they do, and hope more men get their act together!

Tsagaan Sar

Tsagaan Sar, the biggest holiday of the Mongolian year, is the Mongolian version of Lunar New Year familiar from other East Asian cultures. As such its date varies from year to year according to the moon. This year it was scheduled for February 22-24. This is later than Chinese New Year, so they must be looking at different moons, I guess. That date is approximate though, as it really starts the night of Feb. 21 and then fades out through March. Like Christmas in America, the "Tsagaan Sar season" actually begins even earlier when you take into account all the preparation that goes into play. Over a week before it began, I helped my hashaa family make 1600 buuz. The primary mode of celebration is by visiting people's houses and gorging oneself in a way that would embarrass Thanksgiving. For example, I visited 26 or 27 households (I've forgotten) and probably ate over 100 buuz over the 6 days beginning on Feb. 21. I was actually a bit overenthusiastic, because I later found out most people only visited a half dozen houses or so, but in my ignorance I ambitiously attempted to visit every teacher. Not that anyone is complaining.

A Tsagaan Sar table arrangement: boov, sheep's back, vodka, juice, fruit,  kimchi (replacing traditional pickled vegetables), potato salad, and buuz

Another setup. Notice on the back wall, the horsehead fiddle and the Chinggis Khaan tapestry. Half the homes I've been to have one of these tapestries.

L-R: a boov pyramid, sheep's back, and bottle of vodka - perhaps the 3 most important items

An urn of airag

An ornamental snuff bottle and purse/wallet

People at a Tsagaan Sar feast

One of the highlights was receiving a new deel from my hashaa family, on which people proceeded to spill tea, airag, and vodka. Another one was when my counterpart took me to visit her inlaws, who are camel ranchers. So, I got to ride a camel named "Lik."

Me, wearing a deel and riding a camel

Blue Christmas

You know, now three weeks without using the internet doesn’t seem like such a long time.

I was excited to get a nifty thermometer for Christmas and installed it in my ger. If I make a fire, the thermomemeter will spring up as high as 37°C (98.6°F). If I don’t make a fire, during the middle of the day the temperature in my ger stays fairly consistently just below 0°C (32°F). Unfortunately, it only goes down to -10°C (14°F), and every morning when I wake up it’s at the lowest reading, so I’m never sure if it’s really -10°C or if it actually got colder and my thermometer was just unable to register it.

Speaking of Christmas, I spent Christmas in the аймгын төв (aimgiin töv, provincial center) with five other regional PCVs, two Korean KOICA volunteers and some of their Mongolian friends. Mongolians don’t get Christmas off, but luckily it was on a Sunday this year. Next year I may have to file for time off to celebrate.

When I got back, some of my possessions were frozen, and some weren’t. The peanut butter, 5% vinegar, soybean oil, and milk (4%!), as well as all water, froze. The jelly, 70% vinegar, bleach, and dish soap did not.

My village had a Christmas-themed New Year’s party with a blue Santa Claus. Mongolians don’t know much about American holidays and most of them think Christmas is the American New Year. I told some people that it’s a different holiday, but I think what they got out of it was, “Americans celebrate New Year’s on December 25.”

Santa Claus

Left to right: School director, Santa, student, soum governor, two students, school social worker. The students won an art contest.

Santa and the snow fairies

In the Temple of the Nose

In the interest of reporting events that are long overdue, in late September I went to Хамарын Хийд (Hamariin Hiid) with the teachers from my school. Hamariid Hiid, which means "The Temple of the Nose," is a religious complex located in the sands of Дорноговь аймаг (Dornogovi aimag), which means "Eastern Gobi (desert) province." Apparently it's a tradition of our school to visit this place. When the subject was broached to me, I was initially hesitant because I needed Peace Corps approval to travel, and I was sick. But the teachers convinced me that everyone else was going, and I would be alone in my village for several days, and starve to death. And then Peace Corps approved the trip because it was "work-related," so I went.

To get there we had to drive to the capital, Ulaanbaatar, then take a 10-hour train ride southeast into the Gobi Desert. Almost all of the traveling occurred at night, which meant that I was poorly rested the whole time. From the train station we hired some vans out to a ger camp. I only slept for a couple of hours before we were awoken and driven to a hilltop where we watched the sun rise.

Hamariin Hiid sunrise

Another part of the temple viewed from a distance from the hilltop

Once the sun rose, the pilgrims began walking around two stone mounds on the hilltop, splashing milk on them.

Then we got into the vans and left. For a second I was deeply disappointed, believing that this was the entire site, and that I had paid all that travel fare and lost all that sleep simply in order to watch the sun rise from a different hill. But we disembarked not at the ger camp, but by a large bronze bell. This bell has many inscriptions on it, in Cyrillic...

...in traditional Mongolian script...

...in non-linguistic imagery...

...and in Tibetan. Because Mongolians follow Lamaist Buddhism, which was imported from Tibet, almost all religious literature is in Tibetan. Tibetan inscriptions are found all over icons and temples, and monastic education - which was the only form of higher education prior to the 20th century - was conducted in Tibetan. I've barely learned Mongolian, and now I want to be able to read the Tibetan inscriptions too!

The First Temple

After the bell we went to an open-air temple further away. It consisted of a large open square framed by some sort of small minaret (ubiquitous on Mongolian temples), with a mysterious-looking building in front, an ovoo in the back, and two large gravel circles in the center.

Approaching the temple

A minaret-like thing that I see at every temple



The temple in front, looking vaguely Masonic or something


I began to question why the most salient feature of a temple named "The Temple of the Nose" was an image of a face with no nose. If I understand the explanation, it may be named not after a literal nose, but after the middle level of a mountain, which is also called a nose, and upon which some of this complex is located.

After this, my camera ran out of batteries and all the remaining pictures are on my phone. So there aren't any more pictures in this post.

In the center of the open space are two large circles made of gravel. After taking the guided tour and performing ritual gestures, and praying at the ovoo, everybody lay down on the gravel to absorb "energy" (энерги). Due to the use of a recent Russian loanword instead of, say a native or Tibetan word, I'm wondering if the "energy absorption" is a modern notion. Then we went back to the ovoo, where people sang a song.

The Caves

Nearby are some small cliffs into which caves have been carved by generations of hermit monks. They exist now as objects of veneration by the Buddhist faithful, who crawl into the small rocky holes to bow and and make offerings. 100 or 200 төгрөг / tögrög ($0.07-0.15) is a standard amount. Atop one of the cliffs is another ovoo, and behind that is a slope back down into another ravine. This passes under a natural stone arch. We all walked down the slope through the arch in a long line holding hands. When you pass through the arch you are supposed to become a new person. At the bottom you're supposed to rub your exposed skin (like, on your back) against the rock surface to absorb energy from it. At that point one of the school cooks saw a snake in a bush, and everybody gathered to watch it. Some of them tried to get it to slither in our direction while the original woman knelt, chanted, and moved her outstretched palms in a circular motion that looked like praying. I was told snakes are good luck and Mongolians love them.

Petrified Trees

Then there was a spot further off where some petrified logs lie on the ground.

The Theatre

In another empty spot was a stone commemorating the establishment of the first theatre company in Mongolia.

The Other Big Temple

There was one more large temple (separate from the first one). This one featured a long walkway up to a walled, roofed, enclosed temple. All of the walls inside were decorated with very intricate bas-reliefs of Buddhist deities. Just as in Japan, the entrance had prayer wheels that you spin as you go in.

The Wishing Mountain

Our final stop was a mountain halfway back to the aimag center. Known as the "Wishing Mountain" (no, I don't remember the Mongolian word, it was explained to me in English), this protuberance of the earth's crust is famous for appeasing the desires of men. Men is the key word, because women are not allowed all the way up the mountain. Men can climb the mountain and when they reach the ovoo at the top, after observing the necessary ceremony, think of a wish and shout off the top of the mountain. So the men in our group, leaving the women (who comprised over 2/3 of our party) behind, followed tradition up the mountain. And proceeded to drink vodka. Even though I only sipped, the sheer number of people offering me vodka was enough to make me tipsy. And being tipsy on the top off the mountain is not good. Fortunately I didn't roll off and die. I did get a fantastic aerial view of the Gobi, which you can't see, because my camera had no batteries.

Conclusion

After that we took the train back to UB and a car back to site.