Okay, as promised a little bit on my view on the Mongolian stage of my vacation. Mongolia’s biggest asset is its wide open spaces of natural beauty. Only reason I can figure Genghis Khan  even thought about leaving is because winters get down to -40 degrees (it is same on Celsius and Fahrenheit).  My friends and I had the pleasure of sleeping in ger (yurts) and had a great time.

Mongolians take great pride in the accomplishments of Genghis Khan and his progeny. The Khan’s figure appears in many places. The statue below just appeared out of nowhere about an hour or so from the capital, Ulan Bator. Apparently it was the site of one of his great camps.

In the plaza across from our hotel was a government building with three different statues of the seated Khan. Below is the largest.

We were somewhat fortunate to be in Ulan Bator during the national holidays for the Nadaam Festival, the athletic event showcasing the three great Mongolian pursuits-wrestling, archery and horse back riding. I say somewhat because traffic in the captial increases greatly during this time and many shops were closed for the week. We didn’t go to the stadium, but everywhere you went a television was tuned into the festival.

While I am not really into sports, I have come to recognize the importance of communal bonding around cultural events. We left Mongolia the day after the athletic competitions concluded, but the festival continued with a huge gathering of people in traditional costume in the square across from our hotel. From what we understood, it was something of a fashion show/contest.

Finally, since a country’s money often provides insight into the things the country values, I thought I would show off some of the pocket change I had left over. As you might imagine, Genghis Kahn appears on many of the higher value tugriks.  Many others have portraits of Damdin Sükhbaatar who was instrumental in gaining Mongolian independence from China in the 1920s. The backs have images of ger/yurts being moved or pictures of horses with various backgrounds.

Because of its close association with the Soviet Union after their independence, Mongolia has its own version of Cyrillic as well as an older script related to Uighur. Both types of text appear on the money.

While I am on the subject, the current series of the Chinese currency (ren min bi) almost exclusively features Mao Zedong. There is still some older currency  in circulation like the half yuan notes below which feature pictures of the Miao and Zhuang ethnic minorities.  Other notes had other minorities or the classic communist figures of an intellectual, a worker and a farmer.

In addition to Chinese characters and pinyin, since 1955 in something of an acknowledgement to the 50+ ethnic minorities in China each note includes the denomination written  in Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang on the back. Newer notes (circa 1987) also have this information in Chinese Braille. Even though English isn’t the national language, just imagine trying to get addition languages written on currency in the United States.