Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0244/02446.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 29KB | 481 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02446}
$Pretitle{276}
$Title{Mongolia
Chapter 6B.   Patterns of Living and Leisure}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Trevor N. Dupuy, Wendell Blanchard}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{mongolian
medical
country
years
health
hospitals
even
first
bator
mongolia}
$Date{1973}
$Log{Praying Ceremony*0244601.scf
}
Country:     Mongolia
Book:        Mongolia, A Country Study
Author:      Trevor N. Dupuy, Wendell Blanchard
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 6B.   Patterns of Living and Leisure

[See Praying Ceremony: In a temple. Courtesy Embassy of Mongolia, Washington
DC.]

     Yesterday's nomadic Mongolian was, on the whole, a hard worker. He had to
be, in order to support his family, even to survive personally, in the frigid
winters of the Mongolian steppes. The herdsman's life, moreover, is almost by
definition an arduous one with much movement and horseback riding. In the
Mongolian's case, the very task of uprooting his ger and goods, moving them
sometimes great distances, and then settling again was no easy effort.

     There have been repeated accusations that the Mongolian is lazy. The
answer is to be found in the great differences between the free life of the
herdsman's open steppes and the disciplined regime of the factory or office
worker in today's changing Ulan Bator. Freedom of movement and work, habits
geared to the season rather than to the hours of the day, were both cherished
values and the actual way of life among the nomadic Mongolians of yesterday
(as it still is for some of the steppes today). The Mongolian with whom
foreigners have recently had contact has been a Mongolian in transition from
the nomadic to a more settled and routinized life of communism.

     The Mongolian's dislike of work-discipline and especially set hours,
characteristics of work in the modern environment, has only too frequently
been interpreted as a dislike of work per se. What the emergent modern
Mongolian has disliked is not work as such but rather work in a factory where
he must do a specified task for a pre-determined period of time, literally day
after day. This is not natural for him; that is, it is not consistent with his
upbringing and the life for which he was conditioned for generations.

     Today's Mongolian, however, is undergoing change in this respect, among
others. Today's children, much more than their parents, are likely to have
spent long hours in school, doing things specified by others more or less on
schedule (as factory, office, and other workers do). And the evidence suggests
that these younger Mongolians are differing increasingly from their elders in
terms of their reaction to the routinized labor characteristics of the kind of
modern country the Party is trying to create.

     At least two attitudes towards work, however, characterize the Mongolian
today. The worker on a state farm is seemingly motivated mainly by the
incentive of income. He works because he must have money to support himself
and his family. And, if he works unusually hard and well, he may be given a
better job at a higher rate of pay.

     Given comparable tools and a seemingly sufficient education, it still
takes three to four times as many Mongolian workers to do what a single
Western-trained worker can accomplish. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest
that the Mongolian worker may often do his job wholly out of fear of reprisal
for failing to do it. The incentive to work is thus often more negative or
punitive than positive or rewarding.

     An explanation of such attitudes and behavior is to be found in the
culture of a country still very much in transition from a nomadic life to the
very different kind of existence represented by the more confining and
disciplined demands of a modernizing society. The country is still far from
modernized, and it should come as no surprise that the individual men and
women who make up the society also still have a long way to go along the
complex road to modernization.

Holidays

     Mongolia's holidays, like its life-ways, have undergone great change
since the Communist revolution. Before the revolution, most of Mongolia's
holidays were religious ones, and all had religious aspects. The frequently
bloody effort to uproot the traditional faith of the land (especially in the
1930s) could not help but take its toll among the religiously inspired
feast-days of the country. At the same time, however, the activities which
today occupy the Mongolian on his holidays are surprisingly similar to some
of the ways in which he passed his religious festivals in pre-Communist times.
Archery, wrestling, and horse-racing contests are particular cases in point.
There is both old and new in the ways Mongolians celebrate their holidays
today.

     The official holidays of the MPR include V.I. Lenin Day (January 22),
International Solidarity of Workers Day(s) (May 1-2), Constitution Day
(June 30), Independence or Revolution Day (July 11), and Great October
Socialist (or Bolshevik) Revolution Day(s) (November 7-8). Mongolian New
Year's Day, known as "Tsagan Sar" (or "White Moon"), varies in its precise
date from year to year; it is the same as the "lunar new year" observed by
many other Asian peoples. August 29, the anniversary of the victory of the
Mongolian and Red Armies over the Japanese on the Manchurian border in 1939
is observed as a military holiday, although it is not clear whether it is a
national one.

     The most widely celebrated holiday of the year is the National
Nadam-which has been designated a "national and state holiday" and is observed
in Ulan Bator during the 4-day period June 12-15 both by the country's most
important sports activities (a holdover from ancient times) and by military
parades, drills and maneuvers, as well as track and field sports (innovations
of the Communist period). The old is thus retained by the "new order" and used
by it for political and other purposes. Besides the National Nadam, there are
also preliminary nadams for the various aimak centers (of 3 days), and the
somon centers (of 2 days). The dates for these local nadams are set annually
by the Council of Ministers.

     Only the Mongolian New Year's Day and the National Nadam were nationally
observed holidays before the Communist revolution, though there were many
religious festivals now suppressed. These traditional holidays, however, like
the newer ones, are used by the government to encourage support for various
objectives of the regime.

Leisure Activities

     The most traditional and still the most popular recreational activities
of the Mongolian people as a whole are the great sporting events associated
with both their former and present holidays: Archery, wrestling, and
horse-racing. Motion pictures, among other activities, are increasingly
popular among young people, and the radio occupies countless hours during the
long winter nights, but the crowds and their excitement (at Nadam as well as
on other occasions) testify to the continuing attraction of the historic
athletic competitions.

     Rules in the various Nadam competitions were laid down hundreds of years
ago-and outstanding performances of 20, 30, and even 50 years ago are fondly
recalled by oldtimers. The archery competition goes back more than 1,000
years, and skillful indeed are Mongolians at archery. The bow is made of wood
laminated with horn with a double curve, and is strong enough to shoot an
arrow as great a distance as can be done with the English long-bow. The arrow
is a meter in length, and feathered to rotate in flight. The archer shoots, in
one of the competitions, at a sandbag tossed on the ground 100 meters away; in
another, he aims at a low line of colored blocks. His arrow first rises and
then descends toward its target - with the crowd on its feet and excitedly
predicting the outcome of the shot.

     Horse-racing also differs from its counterpart in the West. The distance
travelled is usually either 19 miles (25 kilometers) or 37 miles (50