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Ulaan Baatar

Batjargal has lived half his life under communist rule and half after. His careers and stories are all the more interesting to me because if his life’s dichotomies. In the 90s he used to fly to Germany, buy a couple of cars, and tow one of them all the way back to Mongolia. Now he owns a stone cutting company.

He offers to take me around Ulaan Baatar for the day and I meet him and his daughter for breakfast. In the hills directly south of UB, next to the giant profile of Chinggis Khaan painted on the hillside, is a memorial that dates back to the strong Soviet-Mongolian ties that dominated the majority of the last century. 

 

At the base of this hill is the Temple of Bogd Khaan Palace Museum, a run-down little exhibit where the religious leader of Mongolia used to live.  Bogd Khaan led the nation during the tumultuous years following the fall of the Chinese Qing dynasty and the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia.  It was Bogd Khaan who turned to Russia for support against the cruelty of the Manchurians after the West rejected his plea of help and set Mongolia on the communist course. 

 

Next we head straight east out of town to a new monument they’re building to honor the birthplace of Chinggis Khaan.  It doesn’t take long to realize that Mongolia is still ga-ga for history’s most notorious thug.  His picture is on the money, statues, vodka bottles, hillsides, and now a 25meter high stainless steel statue in the middle of a remote valley.  

 

 
 



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