@ Impressions from Southern Mongolia by Oliver Corff Now I have already returned from my voyage to _Owor Mongol _Oortoon Zasax Oron, and I must confess it was a joyful and sad journey. It was joyful because despite a lack of any formal introduction I was received and treated like a noble guest, and though my Mongolian is far from being acceptable, people were happy that I made these efforts. The treatment I got deepened my respect for the Mongolian people in the sen- se that there was no sermon in it as you may encounter in Japan or China when it comes to being "polite", but you will certainly have your own experiences and views. My journey was a sad one, because global warming did not spare the semi desert of Ordos with winter temperatures now between -10 C and -5 C, and I saw a continuing process of desert in pro- gress against (and with) man's efforts. I saw the complete incompatibility of Mongolian and Chinese lifestyles which led to a ruinous struggle for natural resources; I saw their respective economic models collide (and as such, collide with all their ecological implications). I watched how a na- tionality is de facto deprived of a number of basic rights while at the same time holding the formal guarantees of tho- se rights in their hands; and I saw how men, women and children, Mongolian and Chinese alike, suffer from the envi- ronmental pollution that a merciful and progressive govern- ment seeking advances in the life of the citizens it is en- trusted with did not spare so far. After these highly emotional words I should go into detail. The main point of friction(s) is that the Central Government in Beijing seems to regard Inner Mongolia pretty much as its backyard with little respect for the people who live there and the form of administration these people are entitled to (Autonomous Region). The Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region has been inundated with Han-Chinese settlers in two ways. The first is technical personnel which came with the big steel plants and other industrial projects. There is little objection or hostility among the Mongolians against those persons as it is widely accepted that a) their jobs are use- ful und b) there is not enough qualified Mongolian personnel to fill the same positions while c) their number being fair- ly low in comparison to the group which poses the main threat, partly planned, partly wild peasant settlers who do not respect a single of the laws of nature in the carefully balanced and sensitive ecosystem of the steppe and desert areas. The settlers come to the steppe and open the ground for grain fields. In the first year, the yield is respec- table, in the second year, it is acceptable, in the third year, it becomes even less, and after four or five years of continous exploitation the field must be abandoned becaus fertility stops completely. As the nature (familiar to you, I think) of the ground does not permit ploughing without destruction of the soil, the place, once green steppe, then a fertile field for a few years, will finally and inevitably turn into a desert. This in turn accelerates the natural process of desertation having being active for a number of years. Steppe, due to its plant cover, can at least hold some of the sparse water of rains and rivers, while a desert lacks this capacity which should be a common fact. As the ground does not hold water any more, other plants have dif- ficulties to survive, and in dying, the ground loses its in- tegrity while more water is lost. The Han settlers care little for this. Driven by immense overpopulation in his homelands, he abandons his piece of earth and proceeds to the next one, making path for more deserts to follow. The Mongolian herdsmen in turn see the areas for their livestock shrink, and what worked for hundreds of years, the change of meat from livestock in the North against grain from fields in the South, has been toppled by the Chinese settlement policy, thus ruining natural resources and eventually risk- ing the survival of huge populations. So far, of course, there is no direct threat, as China as a whole manages to survive, but population is now at 1.1 billion with no limit in sight. I even dare to think that a huge and sudden cut in population in consequence of a natural disaster is the only way to make people REALLY think of their environment, but I have serious doubts that the ecological pendulum while swing back in a time that man still experiences. In addition, there is a number of ores, precious stones, rare earths, metals and other resources that are valuable to the Central Government. So, the construction of infra- structure is a natural consequence of the Government's ef- fort to ensure the access to the resources, but Mongolians who have to acknowledge that nothing of this existed before 1949 say these efforts were not made for them but despite them, as they do not enjoy any progress in life that could be linked to the exploitation of the resources. They have the deep feeling that all the efforts were and are made for the government's sake, and not for the communities living there. Furthermore, as some other properties of the area (low population density, far distance away off any big cen- ter, out of the reach of world opinion) are extremely useful say for nuclear tests, an alarming number of cancer (leucae- mia) cases is reported from some of the western parts (Ala- shan Aimag) of Inner Mongolia. This has to be studied more deeply. Another very sad fact is worth investigating is that the mortality rate linked to certain forms of cancer is much higher in the supposedly healthy grasslands then in the hea- vily polluted industrial centers, and again, the mortality rate of Mongolians linked to cancer is much higher than that of the Han population. The latter two facts, though, are mainly due to a very unbalanced diet which consists of a big intake of animal fat, red meat, strong alcohol, and absence of green vegetables and vitamin C on the side of the Mongo- lian population in the countryside. Unfortunately, in winter the air pollution in Huhhot is extremely severe, something mainly due to widespread use of coal for heating, and defi- nitely also due to the use of very primitive burning devices where coal burns at low temperature. Sometimes in the eve- nings, one can see the sky, but there is a thick fog that impedes sight within less then 50 or 100 meters. Also, due to its space and sources of coal and ore, part of the central region of Inner Mongolia around Huhhot and Bao- tou has been transformed into a huge industrial base with steel and aluminium production, the environment protection lagging far behind the development of the production faci- lities. In addition there are the sensitive climatic and ecological conditions which make all the pollution even less digestible to nature. At least partially, the allegations made here are substan- tiated by what I was told in a conversation with two govern- ment officials unidentified here when we discussed the use- fulness of the Qinghai-Tibet railway being under construc- tion now. They said that there is nothing to go after in Tibet (m. tend, yum baixgui; ch. neibian meiyou shenme dong- xi) so that it were ultimately useless to construct this railway, while Xinjiang Uighur Region and Mongolia were SO RICH (m. tend ix olon yum baina; ch. neibian, dongxi duo), according to their words), being well worth the enormous ef- forts of constructing transport links. Away from ecological and environmental problems there is an- other serious issue which is felt by the Mongolians as a grave burden on their lives. It is the language problem. Even in the remotest village (sum; cun) with a population of say 5000 persons, Mongolians are outnumbered by Han Chinese so that they form a minority within their own Autonomous Re- gion. This alone, if it were in an acceptable scale, could be got along with, but in Huhhot, maybe 80% or 90% of the population are now Han (no exact figures available). One re- sult of this distribution is that Mongolian as a language proves to be of little use as the majority does not master it. Shops and other commercial facilities have their boards written in Chinese and Mongolian (the latter not always cor- rectly worded or spelled), but as soon as one enters the establishment and looks - for instance in a restaurant - for a menu written in Mongolian one can be sure that there is no such. An overwhelming majority of bookshops and newspaper stalls carries only publications in Chinese; one has to go to the one and single (official) Mongolian language bookshop in town, plus the (official) sales department of the Inner Mongolian Publishing House, plus one privately operated small bookshop that specializes in Mongolian publications (both as a language and as a topic), plus the single-shelf wide sections of some other bookshops in order to find some- thing written in Mongolian. Equally little promising are the printing quantities of most Mongolian books which according to contents vary between several hundred and significantly less than 10000 volumes per publication. A similar situation can be observed with the wireless mass media. Both televi- sion and radio carry daily broadcasts in Mongolian, but the accumulated time of Chinese language broadcasts outweighs the time of Mongolian language broadcasts several times. Also, though the national TV newsreel broadcast in Chinese every day has a international news unit in it, there is no segment covering international news in the Mongolian lan- guage newsreel. The daily broadcasts of Mongolian language programs are said to be a big improvement over the recent years when Mongolian language programs used to be broadcast only every second day. Mongolian language textbooks, so far, are full of either in- doctrinatory or discriminatory texts, such as: Inner Mongo- lian Autonomous Region is an inseparable part of our great motherland China (which is a very similar diction to that concerning Taiwan). There is absolutely no direct threat to that one may doubt this case, but still these phrases are numerous. In one textbook there are a number of situational dialogues with typical settings in which a herdsman who tra- vels to Huhhot and is refused acceptance to a hotel because he has no letter of introduction, or he cannot buy grain products because he has no special purchase document for ra- tioned products. Of course, there is the objective situation that all over China in cities these documents were or are required in order to obtain certain services or products, but it happens in nearly any of those situations that it is the Mongolian citizen who lacks these documents because (and that is the message of those stories) he refuses to integra- te into the Han Chinese society. In Huhhot, many Mongolians and their children cannot speak their mothertongue anymore, or speak it only in very limited way. The main language is Chinese, and at least during the 60's, Mongolian was burdened with a huge number of Chinese loans and loan translations. This is now reduced, and many awkward words are now being replaced by their proper Mongo- lian counterparts - nonetheless, pronouncation differences aside, there is now a visible gap in the lexicon of "Inner" and "Outer" Mongolia (Or Southern and Northern Mongolia, using Mongolian instead of Chinese terms) which makes com- munication on the simpliest topics of everyday life someti- mes pretty complicated. Only a few Han Chinese attempt to learn the Mongolian language. One Han official who heard that I try to learn Mongolian asked bluntly what use it had (xue Mengguyu you shenme yong? - yaagaad Mongol xel surj baina uu?). A standard Mongolian primer for the introduction to the written Mongolian language has been printed in 2,000 volumes only. The loss of language contributes to a loss of identity and - in this case - is of a particular significan- ce, as according to Chinese legislation, the right to make use of the "minority" language in the Autonomous Regions is legally protected and any Mongolian has the freedom to use Mongolian in any situation of life. Daily life questions of minor importance can turn into "na- tionality questions" in Huhhot. As one professor told me, if a Mongolian buys something in a Han operated shop (most com- mercial establishments are run by Han Chinese), and has to find out that the ware he buys does not meet its quality standards, then any complaint about it inevitably carries undertones of nationality frictions, and situations like that can be encountered daily and everywhere. On behalf of the Han Chinese, there is little concern or af- fection for the Mongolians (and other nationalities) who are traditionally considered to be barbarian, of primitive cul- ture and virtually lacking any civilization. So far, the de- spise continues, and, very interesting, many Chinese (who I talked to) who are interested in foreign affairs and filled with national pride when it comes to the place of their country in the world, react with horror and disgust when any topic concerning Mongolians is touched. This is all the more incomprehensible as the Mongolian population comprises some millions in comparison to the 1,100 millions of Han Chinese. Especially when it comes to issues as independency movements or nationality uprises (both are no topic in Inner Mongo- lia), Han Chinese are extremely afraid and overreact in a manner which is by no means supported by the actual amount of "danger". As a result of this irrational fear, any social grouping of Mongolians is considered with great suspicion, and in a spe- cial case to be mentioned here, a choir conductor of a Mon- golian folk music ensemble seeking official recognition for his group (guaranteeing the right to perform, etc.) faces the choice of either admitting Han nationality singers to his group and/or performing Mongolian folk songs singing in Chinese or being refused official recognition. If he conti- nues to keep a purely Mongolian ensemble performing only Mongolian songs, he will be denied recognition and must con- tinue his activities on a leisure time basis. Any other ac- tivities, even New Year gatherings, although being legal, have to be kept on a very low profile in order not to be re- garded as some kind of "anti" activity. Another significant issue is the official historiography on Mongolian topics and Chingis Khan. In many Chinese publica- tions he is made Chinese ("Zhonghua minzu de weida de erzi" - great son of the Chinese people) and the Mongolians and other nationalities are turned into Chinese nationalities even at times when they were definitely seperate political entities ("Wo guo gudai shaoshu minzu zhi yi" - one of the old national minorities of our country). In a similar con- text has to be seen that a so-called Chingis Khan Mausoleum was erected in the Ordos region in 1957. Speaking in tech- nical terms, this is already a mistake, as his grave is (due to Mongolian rites) unknown. The place actually is a wor- shipping place for his soul and NOT a mausoleum. The Mongo- lian term ONGON means exactly a place for worshipping souls, has a number of shamanist connotations and refers only in third or forth meaning to the mausoleum of an eminent person - nonetheless this was translated into Chinese as "ling", meaning mausoleum. In a second distortion, this Chinese "ling" is then translated into the Mongolian BUNXAN (mauso- leum) when it comes to Mongolian texts written in Cyrillic letters and apparently destined for readers in the Mongolian People's Republic. Even a number of Mongolians resident in the neighbourhood of the worshipping place believe in it be- ing the mausoleum of Chingis Khan. As far as the building of this mausoleum is concerned, it consists of a strange mixture of Han Chinese architecture blended with domes being said to be shaped like yurts and of "typical Mongolian style". A Mongolian cap does not turn a Chinese into a Mongolian, and strictly speaking, there is no such thing as "Mongolian architecture", as most of solid buildings used by Mongolians in history, mainly monasteries and residences of the aristocracy, were modelled after Tibe- tan or Han Chinese patterns. Nonetheless, this "mausoleum" has been made a 'Focus Cultural Relic under State Protec- tion', certainly not for its age or historical value as a masterpiece of architecture, and obviously serves Chinese, not Mongolian purposes. This impression is further reinfor- ced by a special object on display there. One of the copper torches to carry the 'Holy Fire' of the XI Asian Games through China was donated by the General Secretary Jiang Zemin, including his calligraphy. To continue the talk on architecture, a number of public buildings constructed after 1949 are made of standardized modern average concrete buil- dings, adding a round cap with glazed tiles, the whole thing then being dubbed as 'typical nationality style' ("ju you minzu tese de jianzhu fengge"), a style certainly not inven- ted and baptized as such by a Mongolian, with no building in this style existing in the Mongolian People's Republic. Re- turning to the Chingis Khan Ongon, it should be mentioned that the place and the tribe residing here have a long hi- story in worshipping Chingis Khan. There is a simple, small stupa two miles away of the present building which used to serve as a worshipping place in former times, but according to the director of the Chingis Khan Mausoleum Research In- stitute, the old place was regarded to be of bad fengshui (geomantic qualities) and buddhists, taoists and shamans all recommended the choice of a new site, the place where the present building is located. So far, I have not really been able to draw the picture of the "happy minority" dancing and singing as it is frequently used in the Chinese media, and I feel that there are not ma- ny Mongolians in the region who feel like singing and dan- cing at any given time. While admitting that part of my de- scriptions may be biased, I am aware that at least for the Mongolians, living as a "national minority" in an "Autono- mous Region" is not really helpful when it comes to the point of personal identity and national pride. This may be one reason why I found such a wide-spread admiration of Chingis Khan (besides religious reasons) and was congratu- lated many times on behalf of the unification of Germany. ============================================================ This highly personal and subjective text (originally a part of a letter) was written in February 1991 after a longer visit to Southern Mongolia. It was first circulated in- formally in its present form and only later edited and translated into German. In German it was published in 1993 by the "Mongolische Notizen - Mitteilungen der Deutsch- Mongolischen Gesellschaft", Bonn. OC.