Road traffic

Hi all

Sorry for the decreasing rhythm these last weeks, but I begin to be relatively busy at work with a big project beginning soon.

I already announce, next time I will tell you about the coming government which is on the point to emerge after conclusion of the post-electoral negotiations.

But today, I just want to complain about roads in UlaanBaatar.

Just to start with this pictures of a typical road. 

So you understand that to preserve your dampers you have to slalom a little bit. What can be OK when it is a one way street, but problematic if it is a 2 or more ways street. 

Add to that a natural tendency to go and see afterwards if it was OK to go (if you want to cross a street you can’t wait for the street to be clear, otherwise you never move, you have to go and then see how you can survive and reach the other side of the street), cars with steering wheel either on the right or on the left (while driving on the right), and a crucial lack of traffic lights and you get UlaanBaatar traffic: a real mess.

Actually it is preferable not to have too many traffic lights since people have a tendency not to respect them, it does not create false expectations.

I am really surprised, I have not seen any accident yet. Actually, and I guess it is how local drivers save their life, they kind of abuse of their klaxon. Tuuuuuuuut “I am behind you” Tuuuut tuuuut “I am on your side” Tut tut tut tut tut “Are you going to move?”. 

Fortunately all cars are automatic so you don’t need to listen to your engine and can pay attention to all the indications other drivers around you give. It is almost like the “Google car”, which combines visual and “sonar” information to guide itself.

Funny detail: It is not rare to came across cars with a kind of klaxon extinction, after having honked too much.

But of course for pedestrians or just random people who like to keep their windows open, it is a real nuisance. But it also save you sometimes so you cannot forget it.

 

Also another major problem of UlaanBaatar loopholes and more generally the condition of the streets, are the consequences of our weekly storm, which transform a simple ride in the city in a kind of rally-raid. 

It is the same for pedestrian and you are obliged to calculate more and more complex strategies to make your way dry feet among all the huge puddles

 Ok sorry for this post which was just about complaining. I start again to be positive next time :)

Inequalities

Hi everyone

Let’s speak today about something which will a little bit constitute a thread of this blog for the coming weeks.

I would like to tell you about inequalities and poverty here.

As you might know and recall Mongolia is very rich in raw material. Given its great size and low number of inhabitants, this constitute a tremendous wealth source, which could (just with mining) guaranty Mongolia to have a development level comparable to Southern Europe for the next 50 years.

But as it usually works in this kind of situation, a few are ending up with Ferraris and many fall into deep poverty.

In UlaanBaatar, an important luxury industry has developed. Louis Vuitton, Mont-Blanc, Hugo Boss or Ulysse Nardyn have opened shop in the last 2 years. On the other hand 70% of the population in the capital city are leaving in the Ger-district, without electricity or running water, in what can be call a slum.

So there are many reasons for that. First climate change. Most of the rural exodus is due to people who have lost their crops because of very harsh winters. Left with nothing they have to move to the city, where they can claim a piece of land, as Mongolian law guaranties it. Of course this land will be far from the city, and they will settle their yurt, without being connected to water, electricity, and having to walk sometimes kilometers to find a public transportation (if they can afford it).

So how can they survive? Well not a lot of opportunity. These people are herders, they have no particular training for a specific job, and the concurrency for low-level job is rude.

The government gives around 15$/people every month as an aid (it is not a redistribution it is a pre-"investment" of future mining revenues). This enable to survive (there is no rent to pay, and for a 5 people family 75$ can be enough for food). But of course Marx rules are there and this is part of the 2 digits inflation which has quadrupled prices in 6 years.

Besides burning coal for warming the place during the winter cost around 1.5$/day far more that what would cost central heating and this cause the city to be way over-polluted.

So what is happening to change the situation? Several initiatives are taking place and this will be the subject of a future post.

More important is that as in any developing country, rich people don’t care about poverty, and poor people hate rich people. That is not a good start for solving the problem!

Nadaam

Hi everyone

These last 3 days were Nadaam festival. Nadaam means “game” in Mongol. It is a very old tradition of a national competition for the 3 national sports which are wrestling, archery and horse racing. The different tribes of the empire would compete to show their strength. 

More recently, the festival was annualized and the dates were adapted to commemorate the victorious events of 1921 when Mongolia got out of China’s ruling.

So this is now national days. Competitions happen everywhere in the country but the most symbolic events are held in UlaanBaatar stadium, and I was lucky enough to attend.

There are maybe 5000 seats in the stadium, and Mongolian would put their traditionnal clothes to attend

The ceremony starts with the national pride related events. The 9 symbols of the 9 Mongolian tribes (which were unified by Gengis Khaan) are carried by horse into the stadium.

The president pronounces a speech and the national hymn is sung.

Then several animations in traditional costumes take place.

Of course Coca Cola is there

And it is afterwards time for naked man festival: wrestling competition. Usually the stadium emptied because wrestling schemes are difficult to catch for tourists, and so many fights are held at the same time, that watching it on TV is more pleasant for Mongolian.

Behind the stadium are held the archery competition. Opposite from wrestling, these one is open to women (a lengend explain that the reason why wrestlers are naked is to prevent women from participate)

And much further in the countryside happen horse races. Hundreds of horses ridden by kids as young as 5 years old race for around 30 km.

But Nadaam is before all a family holiday. People will spend time in the countryside with their family and rest, watching sport on TV.

Animations in town are more for tourists.

UlaanBaatar Ballet

Hi all

A message today to tell you about my experience last week when I was able to play with the orchestra of the Opera house of Mongolia for the Ballet “Giselle”. 

Giselle and Albrect during rehearsal

It is one of the only 2 professional orchestras of Mongolia. Jindong Cai from Stanford was coming to conduct, and he proposed me to play. Many thanks Jindong for that.

The orchestra which will celebrate its 50 years next season is playing usually twice a week, Opera on Saturdays (in Mongolian) and ballet on Sunday. 

This musical heritage comes from the soviet times. We are now one full generation after, but in the old times, all musicians and dancers would have studied in Russia.

I would say that all what I have seen looks like the orchestra pictured in the recent movie “Le Concert”, it was a Russian Orchestra.

The performance is held in an old Opera house,

and is attended by around 400, locals and tourists for a pretty decent price (between 4 and 10 euros). The outside, the room, and the decors are quite good looking,

but the back-stage has been abandoned for a long time.

The orchestra is professional but paid at the average wage: not enough to leave in the city center. Their instruments are mostly locally made but in very bad shape. You can hear it at the global sound. However the dancers are really good. I am not really a ballet specialist, but their figures were really impressive.

More generally you can feel that money is missing, but they really do their best to guaranty the performance. The scores are written by hand and dated back 50 years ago; some instruments are replaced by others. But you have still a performance at the end, and that is the principal.

It is still very prestigious in Mongolia to have your children playing music. But it is also very competitive to get in the school of Music, difficult to go studying abroad, and then difficult to have high career perspectives. Culture is not really a current priority for the government, so the number of professional musicians is decreasing. Let’s hope that this long heritage will not disappear soon.

This week is Nadaam festival, a kind of national week, where several customs and traditions happen. I will for sure tell you about that next time

Eypo 2012

Hi all

A new post after the victory of Spain in the European championship last Sunday, to tell you that as strange as it appears, Mongolian are really crazy about soccer.

Strange, because it is certainly not even close from one of their traditional sport. But there is now an amateur national championship, and a national team active since 1998. There level is relatively low (only 9 victories in the history), but players can only train during non-freezong months (4 months a year). A new indoor stadium in Ulaanbaatar could make things better.

Strange also because at traditional soccer match time in Europe (9 p.m) it is 3 a.m in Ulaanbaatar. American sports (including NBA play-offs) are not very popular in Europe because of this jetlag, but it does not discourage Mongolian with soccer.

Everywhere in town where settled some outdoor terrace to watch the match. The usual closing time for bars (12 am) was extended specially for the Euro, and you could see many people with jerseys supporting strongly a team (well, mostly Cristiano Ronaldo actually).

But these fans were not lucky, as the 2 last games Germany-Italy and Spain-Italy were held on “election day”, and on the 1^st of the month, 2 days when alcohol sell was forbidden.

Most of the places close for the “election day” match…or rather not completely. We arrived with 2 German friends to a place which was completely closed. A guy was waiting nearby and ask us what we wanted. After explaining we were coming for soccer, he called his friends through talkie and made us get in through the rear door. Inside, almost 100 people were watching the match, and drinking beers despite the interdiction.

For the final, the city placed a giant screen where several hundreds of people (at 3 in the morning) meet up to watch the last match.

The Tour de France is the 3rd most broadcasted event after the Olympics and the Football world-cup, but this I could not find on Mongol TV. Let’s not ask too much!

Election day

Hi all

As promised, let’s speak this time about the elections, which were held last Thursday.

So first a little bit of background. There are 2 main political parties in Mongolia, the “MPP” (Mongolian's People Party) who used to be the Communist party at the time of the USSR, 

and the Democratic party which represents more the “new Mongolia”.

A third contestant, Mongolian People Revolutionary Party (MPRP) which is very nationalist and very communist joined also the election after separating from MPP, 

and also last but not least, a (without any chance) Ecological party.


Last legislative elections in 2008 were a little bit of a drama. The Republican Party won, but there were a lot of contestation about irregularities. This lead to riots which were violently repressed, with 4 young killed by the police. In the fight, the building of the party burnt down in a huge fire which also destroyed half of the art museum (still not rebuilt since then).

Since then a new electoral law came into place, forbidding parties to promise cash handouts (every Mongolian received during these 4 years around 760 USD what corresponded to more than 50% of that time GDP/capita), and installing votes machines to count automatically.

The electoral campaign was intense. Everywhere in town were huge advertisement boards

for the candidates. On TV there were permanently campaign advertisements. Campaign teams were also very active, almost everywhere, distributing flyers several times to every single home, sending text messages to every cell phone…
The ex-president, and now head of MPRP was also arrested for corruption, what prevented him from being a candidate. He went on hunger-strike and almost died before being released before the elections.

The main subject was the management of these huge revenues which are going to flown soon. How to redistribute it? This is a little bit of a problem, because being wise will be to invest these revenues back. But you can’t forget that 30% of the population is poor and need help right now. 

Elections were also the occasion of an uprising of Nationalism on the theme “Foreign companies still wealth of Mongolia. We can’t forget that racism is a reality here. I would tell you about that another time.

The day of elections was off. It was forbidden to sell alcohol, and police was everywhere to prevent riots. The official results are not known right now. Democratic Party claim victory. But will it have absolute or only relative majority? What is sure is that most UlaanBataar inhabitants voted for them but the electoral committee invalidates some results of the countryside. So there will be either recounting or even re-voting.

We are not close to have a new government, let’s hope that everything will be peacefull