When we arrived in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar it was in a state of excitement because the state museum was displaying the ashes of the Buddha (something that would never have been permitted under Communism). People--including the Regzens--waited in line all day to see them.
Photographer Leong Ka Tai and I approached this family with what might be called statistical trepidation. Mongolia is evenly split between city dwellers and the nomadic herds-people in the steppes. Their lives are very different--which to choose? With help from the U.N., we decided to split the difference. We looked in the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, where families still live in a ger (like country dwellers) but commute to city jobs in Mongolia's super-crowded buses.
Because the ger was designed to be portable, dismantling one for the Big Picture turned out to be a breeze. We were nervous when there were only a few hours of good light remaining and the family had done nothing. Then, an hour before the picture, they jumped up, peeled back the side of the ger, and were ready to go.
For the festivities afterward, Batsuury slaughtered a sheep by slitting its stomach, reaching inside almost elbow-deep, and pinching the artery between its heart and its brain. The sheep closed its eyes peacefully. It was on the fire in an hour. The treat of the meal was the bladder, which they filled with blood, tied off, and boiled--something I'd never had before.
On the way back to Beijing our airplane was delayed for half an hour on the runway. There were a lot of armed guards, a brass band, and a big red carpet. Eventually the door opened, and in came a monk with an entourage. He sat down and placed a silk pillow on his lap. On it rested the container with the ashes of the Buddha.
