The Yellow River Chronicles Heads to the Nation of the Eternal Blue Sky!

Hello and welcome back to the Yellow River Chronicles!  Your hard-working YRC staff have been rambling the steppes and dunes of Mongolia to bring you a new three-part series on Mongolia, the nation of the Eternal Blue Sky.

As you may remember, the YRC rolled through Mongolia during last year's Trans-Mongolian railroad trip from Moscow to Beijing.  That brief adventure created the idea for a real visit.  One year later we returned to ride the steppe on horseback and plod the sands of the Gobi by camel when our planned visit to Tibet was undone by ...um...travel permit problems.

The YRC staff have just returned and are in the process of rinsing the camel spit out of our hiking gear and oh, what a process that is.  Honey, pass me the gasoline!  But here's a brief overview of all things Mongolian.

Upon spending any amount of time in Mongolia the first thing one becomes aware of is the continued strong influence and respect for Gengis Kahn, know as "Chinggis Khaan" in Mongolia. The airport is named after him, he is on the currency, and pictures and statues of him are still everywhere.  His empire started in 1206, so Mongolians have been revering him for +800 years.   At that time, Europe was still deep in the Dark Ages--the Italian Renaissance would not start for another 150 years.

To help you get in the Mongol mood, here's a clip from the film "Conan the Barbarian", which won Arnold Schwarzenegger an Oscar for "Best Austrian Accent".  It features a version of a famous Kahn quote:

“The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters.” -Genghis Khan

But IF the Kahn had used the Conan quote, I am sure he would have done a much better job with the word "lamentations".

Great to be here in...where is this again?

Back to Mongolia!

Mongolia features the coldest capital city, the lowest population density and is the second-largest land-locked country in the world. This means they have no navy, ports or seafood to speak of.  While KFC, Mickey D's and Pizza Hut have yet to make an appearance, Long John Silver's has no chance.

The Land of the Blue Sky shares a border with Russia and China, which means as an active democracy, they are politically...nervous.
G.W. Bush was the first American president to visit Mongolia.  The Mongols are still thinking about how he might of answered the question, "What is best in life?"

Many Mongolians get around by horse or camel, but there is also a large number of SUVs to travel an extensive network of unpaved roads.  Travel around Mongolia usually features a long ride bashing around the back of a Russian SUV:

And bash around Mongolia we shall as we head out next week to do some horse trekking and experience the nomadic life in a ger on the Mongolian steppes. Hang on, and we'll see you then!

Mao's Spiritual Nuclear Weapon

Your serve, Great Navigator

Hello and welcome back to the Yellow River Chronicles.  This week we have an Olympics Special Edition:  a first here at the YRC!

To sound the starting gun, so to speak, a few evenings ago the YRC staff stayed up later-than-usual to watch women's gymnastics.  Pixies!  Leotards!  Time differences and no Olympics cable coverage in the YRC staff offices meant that we would go to an local sports bar at around 11:30 in the p of m to watch the finals.

Stay up late?  Hang out in a bar?  We were willing to make the sacrifice, people.

(As a side note, the Chinese are not big drinkers and do not hang out in bars.  Their per capital alcohol consumption is near the lowest in the world. The bar and sports bar is a complete Western invention.  In Shanghai sports bars are generally populated with Australians watching rugby, or Australians watching car racing, or Australians watching...Australians, really.  More on this in a future YRC.)

The US attitude towards Ping Pong...

After watching ping pong for three hours, we convinced the staff to turn the big screens in time to catch the gymnastics competition.  After all, China swept them in 2008, comrades!  

But on this particular night, the big attraction remained, of course....table tennis, AKA ping pong.  So after an hour or so of pixies in leotards, we were back to blinding pong action on the big screen.  What is the big deal with ping pong, we asked after our seventh cranberry and vodka?  It is, after all, the nerdiest Olympic sport.  Why as proof of its epic nerdiness, Bill Gates the uber-nerd, recently announced he is going to help promote table tennis in the U.S.  This from The Global Times:

The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) plans to work with Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft Corporation, to promote table tennis in the United States, ITTF President Adham Sharara said. 

The initiative was brought up after Gates came to London to watch the game between US teen player Ariel Hsing and Chinese Li Xiaoxia on Sunday, Sharara told Xinhua in an interview.
Sharara didn't disclose the details, but said that Gates offered to help after watching Hsing's match, in which the 16-year-old girl nearly pulled off one of biggest upsets in Olympic table tennis history, pushing No. 2 seed Li to the limit before losing 4-2 in six tight sets. 

"He (Gates) was surprised to see the young American girl played so well. He was very motivated. He asked me what he can do to help promote table tennis in the United States. I think we'll work with him. If the United States becomes very strong in table tennis, it's also good for China," Sharara said.

Uber-nerd Gates Pings the Pong while Buffet coaches

The elite YRC Research staff blasted into action and found this from Table Tennis and Ping Pong Diplomacy Article:  We highly recommend you read the entire article by Jeffry Hays, but here are the highlights:

In the early 1950s, Mao decreed table tennis as the national sport of China. Sinologist saw the decree as a shrewd move by Mao to shore up his legitimacy by developing the sport and producing world-class players as a way for China to build post-revolutionary self-confidence, show the world it can excel at something and get over the humiliations of the previous century and a half. [Source: Matthew Syed, The Times of London, August 10, 2008]

Why Mao chose to highlight table tennis is not known. Perhaps it is because he liked the game himself and realized it was the perfect low-cost game for a nation of peasants. In any case, China was admitted to the International Table Tennis federation in 1953 and it wasn’t long before world-class tennis players emerged.

In 1959, Chinese player Ring Guotuan won the table tennis world champions in 1959, becoming the first Chinese to be a world champion in any sport. Mao deemed the victory a “spiritual nuclear weapon.” He was succeeded by Zhuang Zedong, who won the next three world titles. Mao lavishly praised the player and made light of the fact they played in a Chinese way using the distinctive penholder grip.

Table tennis like everything else suffered in the Cultural revolution. Hounded and tortured by Red Guards, three members of the national team committed suicide in 1968, including Rong Guotuan.

Zhuang was major player in the ping-pong diplomacy that brought the United States table tennis tam to China but also has been linked to some dark episodes in the Cultural Revolution. A devoted Maoist and ally of the Gang of Four, he was jailed along with other members of the Chinese table tennis team for allying themselves to Mao’s rival Liu Shaochi—ironic considering the fact that Zhuang once said, “I owe my entire table tennis success to the study of Ma Zedong philosophy.”

After Mao’s death and the collapse of the Gang of Four Zhuang was lost his government position and was forced to work as a street sweeper. He was publicly denounced for among things “wearing a Swiss-made watch” and was sentenced to prison, where he spent four years in solitary confinement.  After getting out of prison he has held low-level coaching jobs and only recently has been invited to minor sporting events.

Back to our regularly scheduled column:

Since Mao unleashed the "spiritual nuclear weapon" China clearly dominates the international ping pong table. They have won 20 of the 24 golds on offer since it became an Olympic sport in 1988, and 15 of the last 16.

Your elite YRC staff is headed to the rec room to get our paddle on, we'll tell you.  However, we won't be back for a few weeks: we're going camel trekking in Mongolia. Or something like that...  Expect a full report when we get back and thanks for tuning in!