A very manly festival

Mercedes and I have spent the past week exploring Ulaan Baatar (UB) and enjoying the celebrations surrounding the Naadam Festival. This is a festival that occurs each year in all cities across Mongolia. The largest version of the festival is held in UB. This festival celebrates the "three manly sports" of Mongolia - wrestling, horseback riding and archery. It is pretty much the best (and most random) festival ever.

Leading up to the festival, performances of traditional Mongolian singing, dancing, and horsehead fiddle playing were held in the city's main square. As a tourist it was a great way to learn a bit about the country's folk art. Traditional singing involves either throat singing or a "long version" of traditional song that is so called because of the long trills it involves. Throat singing came about because it is said to sound like the wind in the open wilderness. I beg to differ. It sounds awful. The dancing though was quite spectacular and seemed to share some elements with traditional Russian dancing, but also involved a lot of shoulder shaking that I failed miserably at recreating. The horsehead fiddle came about when a man's beloved horse died. He used the horse's hair and skin to construct a fiddle that he then used to play mournful songs about his horse.

 

The opening ceremonies were held on Monday. One of the focal points of the ceremonies (and the festival itself) is the celebration of the nine honoured horses and the nine white banners. I'm not entirely clear about what the flags represent but it seemed that national hero Chinggis (Ghengis) Khan received nine white flags 800 some years ago and they spurred him on to victory. Or something like that.

The banners are carried by men on the nine honoured horses (apparently these are chosen at random for no particular reason. I find that hard to believe as they are called the honoured horses, but that may just be part of the randomness of it all) from the main city square to the stadium in which the opening ceremonies take place. There, the banners are placed on the stadium floor and soldiers stand guard over them until the festival is over. When wrestlers win a match they go perform some sort of praise ritual to the banners. Perhaps thanking them for strength? Really though, the ritual just looks like the manly wrestlers are flapping their arms like a bird.

The opening ceremonies also involved strange interpretive dancing by children and a parade that involved people in traditional dress, people carrying a random assortment of flags (Mongolia, India, China, Canada, the US and a few others), and then people dressed in a juice box costume and as a bunny rabbit and a robot started showing up. There was also a recreation of a Mongol horde (perhaps the Huns...not sure exactly what horde they were, but they were terrifying looking) attacking another horde. It felt like something out of medieval times.

Onto the sports:

The wrestling starts off with about 1,000 wrestlers (based on my crude calculation), and 10 rounds later a winner is declared. It is a single elimination event and wrestlers are randomly paired against each other. This, combined with the fact that there are no weight categories, makes for some very uneven matches. As soon as any part of a wrestler's body other than his feet or his hands touches the ground, he is out. This happened within seconds in some matches. For others (especially in the later rounds) it took considerably longer.

The wrestlers have quite the costume in tiny shorts that look like underwear and a tight fitting vest. The vest came about because many years ago a female competed and won (a big no no in the manly sports festival). So now all competitors must show they are men and that they have no breasts by wearing a revealing vest.

The archery was a bit less exciting. But it is the only sport women are allowed to compete in (a recent change). The archers took aim at a pile of something (it looked like perhaps rocks), and were awarded points based on how which stones were hit. People stood around the targets to convey to the judges how many points were earned for each shot. At first I thought they didn't need to worry too much as these were professionals. But pretty quickly Mercedes noticed that in fact these poor souls needed to dodge out of the way every so often to prevent being hit by a wayward shot. Also, the men shot from behind the women, meaning if any of them mis-shot, the women could be hit in the back. I didn't see it happen, but it definitely could.

The other sport, horseback racing, is a 35km long race. The jockeys range in age from 3 to 9 or 10 (at the very most) years old!! This is because they want light jockeys on the tiny Mongolian horses. These kids ride without a saddle and apparently every so often a child falls off a horse. We definitely saw horses with no children galloping along toward the finish line. Nowadays there are ambulances chasing behind to collect the children who fall off. They had only introduced helmets this very year to help prevent the serious head injuries and deaths that result. Also, every year horses drop dead at the finish line. We were standing near the finish line and there were some very tired looking horses who did not want to continue on. Luckily, we didn't see any deaths or serious injuries.

The two year old horse that comes in last gets a song of empathy written about it, while the top five horses in each race get songs of praise written about them.

The winners of all sports receive titles, honour and monetary prizes. It makes for some tough competition.

I must say the Naadam Festival was pretty amazing and I'm really glad I was in UB for it. Mercedes and I have moved on to the city of Tsetserleg, a bumpy 11h bus ride from UB. We will be touring around the countryside for about a week, sleeping in gers (the traditional nomadic tent), and testing out just how bad my horse allergies are. It is likely there will be no internet access along the way so this may be my last post until the 22nd. Until then, Happy Naadam!