Today, after breakfast, we left Mongol Nomadic to return the 200 km to Ulaanbaatar. More animated conversation along the way!
Nearing UB, Uni remembered that we had been talking about visiting a market to get some moisturizer — Warren's arms were getting dramatically dry, and Uni had already offered some of her own moisturizer to help out. She took us to the Indoor Traders' Market on the way as we got into UB, where we were able to get some Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion — just the thing! Like many markets in Mongolia, this is a conglomeration of little shops that live in the same building and trade under the one overall banner.
We got back in to our hotel at 10.45am and found that our room on the 8th floor had gone, so we were now on the 12th floor, with an even better view! Ganbold left, but Uni accepted our invitation to come up and have a look at a couple of pages of our blog that we had been talking about over the past few days.
We would have bade a sad farewell to these two lovely people at this point, but for the fact that they had offered to stand in for a taxi tomorrow, to get us to the bus station in time to catch our bus to Ulan Ude. This was way beyond their job description, but they were so keen to help out that we accepted gladly.
We went up to our room, had a bite to eat and Suzie wrote a few postcards. Warren had found that the main Post Office was open until later that day, so the Hams went for a stroll back along Chinggis Avenue to the Post Office, where we were able to sent off the postcards and to buy a good little book on Mongolian history. Then we went on to savour the delights of Ulaanbaatar (and an ice cream!). There's a lot of garden planting going on in the streets — possibly in preparation for the Russian National Day coming up on June 12, or is it just that it's the beginning of summer?
Near the hotel is the home of the Tumen Ekh (Түмэн эх) National Song and Dance Ensemble. Ganbold had recommended, via Uni's translation, that we get to a performance, and there was to be one at 4pm today. We got there at about 1:45, only to find that tickets did not go on sale until 3:30, so we went back to our room (just across the road!) till then.
The Tumen Ekh building is tucked into a side street, with absolutely no advertising. We were wondering how they could attract an audience, but when we returned at 3:30 we found tour bus after tour bus pulling into the place. We got our tickets and went in. The hall was already nearly full, but we got a good vantage point right at the front. The crowds were still pouring in, and finally they had to bring out cushions to seat people on the steps!
Ganbold and Uni, you are wonders. The show you recommended was amazing. The instrumentalists and singers were fabulous, the dancers spectacular, and there was even a pair of stunning contortionists!
We had been learning about the native instrument, the morin khuur (морин хуур) or horsehead fiddle, and here were people expert in its playing. The legend of the morin khuur says that a nomad once made a violin right after his favourite horse had died. In memory of his dear animal, he put a small bone of the horse into the fiddle and made the bow out of its tail. He started playing sad songs, which can still be heard today.
And the singing included exponents of the Mongolian art of throat singing, or overtone chanting, where the singer selectively amplifies the partials (or formants) of a sound wave by changing the shape of the resonant cavities of the mouth, larynx and pharynx. Thus the voice splits up in different overtones to be heard as "different voices".
But the instrument that most took Warren's interest was the Yatug-a (ятга), a plucked zither related to the Chinese guzheng. There is a smaller form, the Gariin Yautg-a (Hand Yatug-a), with 11 to 15 strings, and (in this case) a larger concert instrument, the Master Yatug-a, with 21, or sometimes 23, strings. The woman playing this instrument was a virtuoso!! During one ensemble piece, where they were playing some more popular pieces, at one point the whole audience broke out into a sing-along — and then they went on to play Scott Joplin ('The Entertainer') and Offenbach ('Can-Can').
The performance ended with a 'Cham dance', in which masked figures represent various Buddhist gods, including Tsagaan Ubgen (Цагаан Өвгөн, a kindly bald old man with a white beard who, before the introduction of Buddhism to Mongolia, was the shaman deity of longevity, wealth, and fertility, and has been incorporated in the Buddhist pantheon). In this 'Tiger Dance', representing the passing of the old year into the new, Tsagaan Ubgen enters weak and staggering. He symbolically kills a tiger by striking a tiger skin with his stick, and his strength is renewed. Then, in this performance, the other characters take over the stage until, at the end, Tsagaan Ubgen returns, begins to drink alcohol and continue dancing until he is too drunk to dance. A fascinating and colourful postscript to the whole performance.
As we left after the show, we saw more audience rolling up for the 6pm performance — and there were a lot more arriving than had been at our packed show. We were wondering how they might squeeze them in! After our exhilarating experience with the Tumen Ekh Ensemble, we went home to have a meal and some sleep before an early start in the morning.
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