INTO THE GOBI
AN ACCIDENTAL PILGRIMAGE
Barbara Mary Annan
Manuscript submitted to the Faculty of Goucher College in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction
2017
Manuscript Faculty
J.C. Hallman
———————————Diana Hume George
————————————
Copyright by
Barbara Annan, Ph.D.
2017
This thesis is dedicated to my big brother, Jack Annan, who lovingly prodded me along,
and to the man I married, Steve Binns, who believes in me even when the writing
goes dark.
i
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
iii
Foreword
iv
Chapter I — The White Old Man
1
Chapter II — To Mongolia
10
Chapter III — The Search Begins
20
Chapter IV — First Gleanings
24
Chapter V — Into the Gobi
29
Chapter VI — Chojin Lama Temple
37
Chapter VII — Ganna: Master of Masks
44
Chapter VIII — Showtime: The Tsam
55
Chapter IX — At Home with Ganna
59
Chapter X — Ganna and the Lama
66
Chapter XI — Finding Him among the Gods
74
Chapter XII — Meanderings with Monck
85
Chapter XIII — Lama of the Gobi
96
Chapter XIV — Planning an Expedition
104
ii
Chapter XV — Hovd
112
Chapter XVI — Bulgan Sum
122
Chapter XVII — Heading North
137
Chapter XVIII — Tsagaan Aav’s Ovoo
149
Bibliography
156
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Badral Yondon for his invaluable help in looking for the White Old
Man, Dr. Balchig Katuu for making the field research a superlative adventure, Dr. Dennis
Merritt for seeing me through my dreams, J.C. Hallman for his unique and deeply
appreciated mentoring, Dr. Diana Hume George for her enthusiastic eye, The American
Center for Mongolian Studies, Natsag Gankhuyag (Ganna), and Hambd Lama Bassuren
of Erdene Zuu’s Lavrin Monastery for his spiritual support.
iv
FOREWORD
The names used for The White Old Man in this thesis include The White Elder,
Tsagaan Ovgon, Tsagaan Aavaa and Tsagaan Aav, Chagaan Eubgen, and Tsaghan
Ebügen. Other names by which Mongols know him also include Tserendug,
Hachintserin, and Tumenast. The Tibetans call him sGam po dkar po. Parallels may be
found in the Chinese Hwa-shang and the Japanese Jurojin, and possibly in the European
St. Nicholas.
A note on the spelling of names: the Latin spelling of Mongolian names poses a
problem, as there are no hard and fast rules. Ulan Bator is sometimes written Ulaan
Baatar, and Hovd is written Khvod, for example. I make no claims to have followed any
scientific principle in my choice, but following Jason Becker’s model, I merely used
whatever seemed to me to be the most suitable.
v
CHAPTER ONE
THE WHITE OLD MAN
We will travel for ages, until we come to the place where the two seas meet, and
we will not stop until we find the one we seek.
Qur’an Karim, Sura 18, al-Khaf
During the soft childhood summers, I played alone. No sports, lessons, or parties
filled the hours. It was a time for the moment. Scented shadows in deep ravines and
humming forests drew me. That was all I needed, the world and the time to explore it. I
didn’t go to school with the local children. We lived in Florida during the winters and
returned north to escape the heat. Kids my age were busy all summer, off at camp or
swimming lessons. I played alone by default and preference, in part because my hearing
was impaired. Rubella—red measles—had taken high-pitched sounds from me when I
was a preschooler. My world had blurred edges.
Late one afternoon—I must have been around eight years old—I was off on a
jaunt, a self-imposed routine of surveilling the trees and sheltering bushes of the
hardwood copse that was my territory. For the first time, I noticed a dark opening in the
dense wall of blue needles at the base of a huge Scottish pine tree. I stopped and crept
into a tight space like an arboreal cave.
The evergreen branches reached out to touch the earth, forming a tent-like, private den,
cool and separate from the world outside. The sharp smell of resin was overpowering.
2
As I crouched within the silent, contained space, I felt a presence there with me,
not another person but a consciousness. The presence was large, the size of a grown man,
filling the area between me and the trunk of the tree. I felt no threat.
I whispered, “Is it all right for me to be here?”
The way one feels the eyes of an other across a room, I felt watched, then
welcomed, even expected. I grew excited. I was having a conversation of sorts with
something otherworldly.
Without sounds, I “heard” that this being was a very old and wise man. He was
offering to teach me things I needed to know. I listened. I had a sense of being chosen; he
had been waiting for me. I wanted to spend time with him, and now I could see him
without my eyes. He wore long robes, white and soft, that draped around him. His hair
flowed like a river of white silk, his white eyebrows grew thick and unruly, and his chest
hid under a beard like frosted cotton. He sat low so that his eyes were not far above mine.
I may have stayed there for a half an hour, but it could have been much longer. I began to
fear someone would find me in the green cave and the old man would go away. I told him
I had to go. Could I meet him there again? I felt a “yes” and slipped past the pine curtains
into the warm dusk.
I went back to the tree-room many times. The old man—he was most certainly a
very old man—told me to keep learning from things around me, to listen and let
everything I saw speak to me.
“Berries, leaves, rocks, water, birds, and animals, everything has a lesson,”
he counseled.
3
I never asked what to call him, but in my mind he became “Father Wisdom.”
Each time I returned, I tried to pay closer attention to what I saw and felt in the tree
sanctuary. A nimbus of darkness lurked just behind the white-robed man. At first I took it
to be the shadowy trunk of the pine, but gradually I perceived it as a closed door. I began
to sense movement behind it. Curious but uneasy, I focused on the old man, who missed
nothing, and on what he taught me. He let me hold the thought that he came from beyond
the dark door.
Father Wisdom became my guide, my teacher, a good and caring being, but he
silently communicated to me that our meetings should be kept secret. I once went against
his advice, thinking that I had something special in my life that would impress my
schoolmates. My peers listened, wide-eyed and intent as if I were telling a campfire story,
but some adults eavesdropped and shamed me with their disdain and unwanted concern
for my mental health.
Foul weather, dark nights, illness, and our annual sojourn in Florida made regular
visits to the tree impossible. I worried about losing his presence in my life, so one day
before leaving for the south, I asked him, “How can I could keep in touch with you?
There are times when I really need to be able to be with you.” He replied, “You must
place your fingers between your eyes, just above the bridge of your nose, squeeze hard,
and shut your eyes. Then imagine yourself walking to my tree, entering my shady shelter,
and seeing me before you. Just be in my presence like that for a minute or two, and then
tell me what is going on with you. If you do that, I will hear you and help you.”
It worked. Father Wisdom’s voice came to me just as it did inside of his
tree room.
4
In rough times when I was confused or overwhelmed, I could reach my mind
towards him. He listened and guided me. “Go outside and find a bush, perhaps one of the
yews alongside your house. Squeeze yourself down under it and stay still on the ground.
Notice the fragrance of the living evergreen’s essence. Look at the bark, run your hand
along it, feel its natural warmth. Look for the soft red berries of the yew, find one you
like, then look at it until it is all you can see or think of. Listen to what it has to tell you.”
I followed Father Wisdom’s instructions. My mind would fill with a berry, a leaf,
or a stone; I would hear its wisdom and feel soothed. That connection with nature was
what I needed, and it was my link with Father Wisdom. Ultimately I came to trust my
inner experiences, the otherworldly image of the old man in white, and his guidance to
listen to everything around me. I grew older and busier, but in the back of my mind I
knew that if I looked for him, Father Wisdom would be there.
Through my high school years and into college I thought about him from time to
time. Then one day, when snow left a snail’s trail of slime and glitter on the
windowpanes of a stuffy and poorly lit classroom, I heard a story that made Father
Wisdom more real to me. Herbert Mason, fully professorial in his tweed jacket with the
skin of an animal turned inside out for elbow reinforcement, broke from his lecture and
suddenly launched into a personal tale. It was the only time I ever heard him deviate from
text study.
Dropping his voice to an intimate tone, Mason’s manner became intensified as he
told the class his story. Several years ago, he was in Turkey, visiting the site of a miracle
described in the Qur’an, a cave near Ephesus where seven young men were said to have
slept for 306 years. While Mason was standing at the sacred area where believers place
5
strips of cloth and folded prayers, an aged Turk approached him. The old man, who had a
long white beard, wore a full-length robe like the Sufis, the Muslim dervishes who give
up everything to know Allah. He had oranges in his hands and offered them to Mason,
speaking firmly to Mason in Turkish. Mason refused to take them at first because he
thought the old man was a poor beggar and needed the oranges for himself. A friend who
was with Mason knew Turkish and said, “He wants you to take the oranges because he
has had a dream about you. You must take what he offers you. His dream showed you
flying in a silver plane to America where you will teach about Islam.”
Mason took the oranges.
When he returned to Boston, he met with a renowned Islamic scholar of the Sufi
mystics of Islam. The scholar adamantly insisted that Mason take his experience with the
old man seriously and study Islamic literature.
“The old beggar you met was Khidr,” she said.
She explained that Khidr is an immortal, a spiritual guide who initiates people
into a mystic path whether they are looking for it or not.
“He sought you out, and you accepted his oranges. He has given you the khirqua,
the holy mantle of the Sufis. You must learn and teach about Islam.”
Prior to going to Turkey, Mason had published a prose version of the Gilgamesh
Epic. He had no plans to become a teacher of Muslim thought, but he became curious. By
the time I took his class in religion in literature, he was teaching the writings of the
Islamic world.
The encounter between an old beggar and a Harvard academic in Turkey was life
altering. My skin started to tingle. I was dumbstruck, feeling as if I were being inducted
6
into a secret society, a network of people who had experienced otherworldly encounters.
Mason’s story held me, re-awakening images of Father Wisdom.
Who was Khidr?
It was as if I were meeting someone from a dream that I had forgotten. I felt
drawn to this figure. I wanted to understand him, learn everything I could about him. To
that end, I immersed myself in study. Two degrees in theology and two degrees in
psychology later, I had accumulated a bulk of esoteric information in my head,
overflowing shelves of books, files of notes, and a hermit’s social life.
* * *
“Khidr” is Arabic for green, the name a reference to the green robes the
mysterious wanderer wears and his connection with rebirth, nature, and eternal life. His
story is told in the Qur’an (Sura 18), and Middle Eastern folktales abound with accounts
of meeting him in dreams, during sickness, while traveling, and during life transitions.
The more I learned, the more this world of strange encounters seduced me. I wrote my
doctoral dissertation on that topic, and Herbert Mason became my external reader. Khidr
was the entry point for me, but myriad forms of this figure, ancient, wise, and immortal,
occur across time and cultures: Elijah the Prophet, Hermes, Mercurius, and Utnapishtim
in the Gilgamesh Epic. The Green Knight in Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. And, to
some extent, the Rebbe of the Lubvavitcher Chassidim, a white-bearded sage, wise
beyond ordinary men, who appeared as a mentor in my dreams.
Of course, another had beaten me to all of this. Carl Jung had described a figure
who appears in a range of cultures and eras as an archetype. An archetype, in Jung’s
theory of analytical psychology, is a thought form, a primordial idea that arises from the
7
unconscious mind. It is a sort of template for images that flow from it and appear to us in
the world. Examples of archetypes include The Divine Child, The Hero, The Trickster,
The Savior, and The Wise Old Man. They are essentially the numinous images of myth
and religion. Jung’s ideas excited me with their unfettered interpretation of reality. To my
wide-eyed amazement, Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, seemed to
know me and my inner life. Jung experienced imaginal encounters throughout his life and
developed his theory of the Psyche to make sense of them.
I read Jung’s autobiography again and again in my forties, each time a dip into a
well of restorative water. His concepts gave meaning to my experiences. Jung and I both
had an ailing, emotionally absent mother and were raised by an older nanny. As a child,
Jung also was sickly, lonely, and isolated. He turned to nature for companionship, living
predominantly in his intra-psychic world in communion with unseen beings and
inanimate objects.
In mid-life, Jung decided to face the shadowy contents of his unconscious and let
himself be open to whatever might emerge. I was thrilled to read that one of the first
figures Jung encountered was a very old man with a long beard and robes. This figure,
whom he called The Wise Old Man, became his inner guide and later revealed himself to
be the Prophet Elijah.
I had found a fellow traveller in Jung. His works drew me deeper into the study of
religion and depth psychology, and later to the Middle East where I sought places,
people, and stories connected to Khidr. Just hearing Khidr’s name felt like a breeze from
an inviting portal or finding rose petals where there were no roses. The sensation might
8
be sparked in a conversation with a stranger, the mumbled utterances of a street person,
or in the poetry of the Sufi Jalaladin Rumi.
An unseen, wise watcher able to take many forms seemed to nudge my steps
throughout the phases of life from school to family to a counseling career in Alaska. In
my fifties, I found a thread that took me back to the numinous old man under a tree.
In an unlikely place, the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, I had
an epiphany. Adventure lust overwhelmed me. I wanted to reach for new limits and take
risks. Listening to the tales of bright-eyed arctic bush pilots and wiry mountaineers at the
Explorer’s Club Annual Dinner, a liquid fire slipped under my skin, urging me to act
while I still could. The names around me challenged me to follow my heart, eminent
names on a roster including past luminaries no less than Sir Edmund Hilary, Admiral
Robert Peary, and Jacques Cousteau. I had been seated at a dinner table beside a softspoken chemical oceanographer who had drilled the Greenland icecap and a bearded man
who wore cowboy boots with his tuxedo and had lived in Antarctica for three years. A
mountain had been named after him, and now, restless again, he was preparing to kayak
the Northwest Passage. Needles seemed to be piercing my lungs as I imagined the
vastness far from civilization that these men knew firsthand. A nearly forgotten energy
perked away inside of me. Awake until dawn, I scoured the Internet for a challenge, an
unfamiliar place, a possibility so far out of my comfort level that I would be fair game for
an encounter with the stranger, with a figure who could guide me on to the next step of
the journey I had started when I went under Father Wisdom’s tree. Khidr is believed to be
the patron saint of travellers, akin to the Greek messenger god Hermes, and the winged
Mercury. People met him when they are at a crossroads, out of their ordinary element.
9
Just before first light, I had applied to be a volunteer in a research project in the
Gobi desert in Mongolia, a place I had always associated with the unknown ends of the
earth and total disconnection from the familiar. A man in a high-necked Mongolian coat
with filigreed designs on the collar looked out at me from an online photograph. His
eyes told me he had seen what I wanted to see. In less than two months I was on my way
to Mongolia.
10
CHAPTER TWO
TO MONGOLIA
Before us lay Mongolia, a land of painted deserts dancing in mirage; of limitless
grassy plains and nameless snow-capped peaks; of untracked forests and roaring
streams! Mongolia, land of mystery, of paradox, and promise!
--Roy Chapman Andrews
In 1913, Beatrix Bulstrode, an intrepid Englishwoman living in Peking with her
husband, hankered for adventure, so she departed for Mongolia accompanied only by a
guide. In her journal, she explained why Mongolia appealed to her. She hoped it would
indulge her “fascination for the unknown deep love of the picturesque, and inherent
desire to revert to the primitive.” My inherent desire was to experience a culture that was
new to me and a place that would give me a new perspective. Just below the surface of
that statement lurked a fantasy of sleeping on the grassy steppe where Chingis Khan
pitched his tent, sitting by an open fire with his present-day descendants, and riding off
on horseback with a fur-clad Mongol.
The actual moment of my eagerly anticipated first contact was the boarding area
for my flight to Ulaan Baatar. Most of the people waiting at the gate appeared to be
Asian, healthy, and robust, but there was something else about them. They seemed to
have more relaxed, looser body motions than the Koreans and Japanese I had been
11
observing. It may have been my imagination after all the excitement that had built up in
me over the past several weeks, but these faces seemed welcoming, smiling shyly as if
they knew me. I had a comfortable feeling, as if I knew them from another place. Several
of the men sported hats that I recognized from photographs of Mongols. Some wore
trilbys, the style favored by Frank Sinatra and the Blues Brothers. A silver-haired woman
in a soft, domed hat that would not have looked out of place at a ladies’ tea in the 1940s
wore a striking high-collared red silk garment. She was enjoying herself, chatting and
handling a small shiny object like a polished stone. When I spied a tiny red cap on it, I
realized with delight that it was a snuff bottle. Mongols greet each other with a ritual of
exchanging snuff bottles. They are often heirlooms, made of semi-precious stones such as
coral or agate like the one across from me, now slipping into its own little
embroidered pouch.
The plane landed in Ulaan Baatar around midnight. A sense of the familiar
flooded me. Bright faces with tight skin, high cheekbones, and eager smiles touted taxi
services. The clothing the locals wore was not unlike the practical cold weather gear I
knew from arctic villages and workers coming off the North Slope oil fields of Alaska.
Ulaan Baatar looked and smelled like dry, smoky Fairbanks, where I had been living. The
rapidly developing capitol of Mongolia spread up the sides of the Tuul River Valley like
a latte-colored pancake batter topped by an unfortunate acrid stratum of polluted air.
Gentle hills and weathered low mountains coddled the thousands of homes in the smoke
from their wood-burning stoves. Wood if they were well off. Stinking low-grade brown
coal, old tires, and garbage if they were less fortunate.
12
My driver pulled up at my hotel around 1:30 a.m. The cool stone lobby echoed
even at that hour with the Russian voices of an arriving business group. Then, bad news.
“So sorry, Madam. Some difficulty with locating your room reservation.”
That sort of news, in the middle of the night after long hours of travel, is apt to stir
me to irritable whining.
“I have a printout of my confirmation. How can you not find my room?” I asked,
trying to be patient.
“Where is your group?” asked the fresh-faced Mongolian concierge.
“I am alone.”
Shuffling of papers.
“But who are you traveling with?”
“I came on my own,” I reply.
“But I need to know who your travel company is. Is your guide here?”
he countered.
“I am by myself.” A higher pitch to my voice now.
“What are you going to do by yourself in Mongolia?”
Obviously “exploring on my own” was not an expected or even acceptable
answer. I fell upon the Gobi desert project I had signed up for in order to get here. “I will
be meeting a research team and doing volunteer work in the Gobi.”
“The GOBI? What part of the Gobi? I am from the Gobi,” exclaimed the now
beaming concierge.
Somehow, suddenly, I had a room. I didn’t even know the Gobi had parts.
* * *
13
Solo travellers were not commonplace. Even since democracy came in 1991,
foreigners who were not members of an organized group met bureaucratic resistance to
independent travel in Mongolia. Silvio Micheli’s experience in 1920 gave me a heads-up
on the kind of reception I might meet. The Italian made a similar statement to the
Mongolian authorities.
“I shall travel alone, of course.”
They looked at him nervously, wondering if he was joking. “They were obviously
distrustful; thinking perhaps of the hordes of spies unleashed by the Capitalist Powers,”
he commented.
Like its neighbor, Tibet, Mongolia had been closed to outsiders for most of the
twentieth century. During the Soviet years beginning in 1921, only “a handful” of visas
were issued to Western journalists and scholars every year. The doors opened a tiny crack
after the Russians pulled out as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Mongolia’s hurriedly
formed infrastructure, reeling from its internal revolutionary upheavals, was running on
fumes, not fully self-aware or ready to receive guests. “Independent” and “tourist” were
hardly words found in the vocabulary of the fledgling hospitality industry.
* * *
I possessed very little familiarity with Mongolian history and customs when I
arrived. I gained a sense of where the country was by poring over maps and read the few
books I could find, but the dearth of current literature seemed unusual. I looked into
quizzical faces when I said, “I’m going to Mongolia.”
“Exactly where is Mongolia? Isn’t it near Russia or China?” I would be asked.
14
Mongolia, I learned to explain, is a landlocked country in eastern Central Asia.
The Russian Federation borders it on the north, and the People’s Republic of China tucks
in it along the southern border. Mongolia’s character has been shaped by its location,
ruled by the Manchus (Qing) from1644 to 1911. Then, after barely a decade of
independence, it fell off the western radar and virtually disappeared in its chosen crucible
of communist rhetoric and government. I was naive about the Russian involvement. For
the first several days in Ulaan Baatar I huffed in western superiority at the evidence of
Soviet meddling, chafing at the drab blocky buildings, the street signs in the Cyrillic
alphabet that replaced the elegant flowing script of the Mongols. The unimaginative rows
of housing, the broken streets and sidewalks, and the lack of goods rankled me. My
understanding of what I saw was shallow. I grew up in the 1950s, learning to fear Russia
during the Cold War. The Soviets seemed a logical scapegoat for everything in Mongolia
that displeased me. Thus began my slow re-education about this complex and resilient
country, remembering Roy Chapman Andrews’ comment that he knew of no other
country about which there is so much misinformation as Mongolia.
Mongolia was the second country in the world to voluntarily become communist.
The Soviets were invited in. There was no invasion. The decision was the result of
successive oppressive military occupations and Mongolia’s weak position between the
giants. The long-ruling Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, and Mongolia saw a brief period
of limited autonomy. The aftershocks of the Russian Revolution in 1917 gave the newly
formed Republic of China a new opening in undefended Mongolia. The White Russians,
under the “Mad Baron” Ungarn, arrived to help the Mongols and stayed to terrorize them.
The Mongolian Nationals then turned to the Bolsheviks, and in 1921, with their help,
15
Damdin Sukhbaatar, the leader of the Mongolian army, marched into Urga—modern-day
Ulaan Baatar. Mongolia became communist with the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary
Party in power until 1991.
There were advantages and disadvantages for Mongolia as a Soviet Satellite.
When the Russians moved in, they brought advances in health, education, employment,
and agriculture, and a strong governmental infrastructure. Excellent schools were
established with well-scrubbed students in uniforms and Russian-European classical
education including arts, literature, ballet and classical music. I was delighted to spend an
evening in the capital’s ornate opera house, seated in a plush box seat watching an allMongolian performance of Madame Butterfly. In the rural countryside, hygiene,
toothbrushes, soap, combs, and mirrors were introduced into every ger (felt tent).
Lifespans lengthened, and child mortality improved.
The advantages were overshadowed by severe limitations on freedom of speech
and intellectual independence. A relatively quiet grace period ensued after Mongolia
joined forces with Lenin, but after his death in 1924, the purges began with Stalin’s rise
to power. Mongolia’s leader was Khorloogin Choibalsan, a ruthless despot who
enthusiastically followed Stalin’s lead. His policy against religion was just as ruthless as
Stalin’s. The Cultural Revolution and mass executions began in 1927. Communism
shaped Mongolian life for the next several decades as it drew a curtain closing out the
world around it.
Towards the late 1980s there was growing unrest. There were pro-democracy
demonstrations before the 1990 Revolution. The reformer who pacified the protestors and
paved a way for mediation with the government was a young man named Zorig.
16
Sanjaasurengiin Zorig was the most likely candidate for the vacant position of prime
minister but the 36-year-old favorite was stabbed to death in his apartment.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the newly independent Mongols began
looking beyond Russia and China for allies, hoping for ties to a market economy.
Tensions accelerated as Russia and China expressed avid interest in Mongolia’s
previously untapped natural resources: extensive mineral deposits of copper, coal,
molybdenum, tin, tungsten, oil, and gold. Mongols are keen on moving through the
twenty-first century with caution and concern for protecting their independence,
environment, and heritage. Education is a priority since the well-run Soviet-style state
schools and universities were left without funds when communism ended. Today,
young Mongols are choosing to study in America, the UK, Europe, Japan, and Korea,
whereas the older generation of successful students was permitted to go to Leningrad
and Moscow.
When I ventured out of my hotel, I came upon a large new building on the main
boulevard, Enkhtaivan or Peace Avenue, incongruously housing Louis Vuitton and Prada
only steps from small, run-down shops with sparsely stocked shelves. A shift in progress,
albeit an uneven one, was evident as Mongolia picked its way from a country isolated
from the world for decades to modern technology and a market economy. Surrounded by
the post office, the former Mongolian KBG building, and the pink and white State Opera
and Ballet Theater lay Sukhbaatar Square, a vast, open cement plain reminiscent of
Moscow’s Red Square or typical Soviet parade grounds in cities when communism
defined architecture.
17
Sukhbataar Square was an obvious hot spot for pickpockets. My Lonely Planet
guide to Mongolia dedicated nearly half a page to theft, pickpockets, and slashers of
purse straps in Ulaan Baatar. This is an unfortunate symptom of the dire poverty that
grew exponentially as the new government struggled to get to its feet. Education,
economy, housing, health, and the infrastructure of society were abandoned by the
retreating Russians. Hundreds of children have been homeless, living in the heated
sewer pipes in the winter when temperatures can drop to minus fifty. Mongols were left
in 1991 without jobs, money, homes, or any funds for education. The country was
unprepared for the aftermath of Perestroika. Left behind were Soviet architecture, the
Cyrillic alphabet, an appreciation for classical music and opera, and a thirst for education
and modern technology.
Just walking in the city felt like an adventure. En route I passed a tired-looking,
faded yellow building with its name carved large in Cyrillic. I was functionally illiterate
in this land, unable to read the blocky script into which the Russians had squeezed
Mongolia’s rippling language. The building appeared uncared for, but it was the National
Library of Mongolia, full of priceless historical Mongolian documents. Street pavement
and what remained of sidewalks were in sad disrepair, also a legacy of Soviet dissolution.
Curiously, I saw very little trash strewn around, but cleanup crews did not seem likely. I
reflected that perhaps the absence of trash indicates a Mongolian ecological sensibility, a
non-littering gene that harkened back to earlier nature-worshipping practice. Those
thoughts might just be my American agenda, but in fact ecology and environmentalism
are major missions in the newly developing country.
18
I saw small pods of teenagers drifting around the square, occasionally lingering
near heads of curly or light-colored hair, indicating probable foreigners. Sukh Batar was
an obvious hot spot for pickpockets. They gathered there, hitting on tourists busy
gawking, unaware of their surroundings. Continuing cautiously along Peace Avenue past
blocky, concrete Soviet buildings, I mused, “So far, so good.”
Sweet-faced young Mongols in t-shirts talking on cell phones strolled past snack
shops selling buuz, meat dumplings. Older men and women moved gracefully along,
wearing traditional deels, long, dark, robe-like coats with bright orange, green or blue
sashes around the waist. Street vendors sold bananas, sunglasses, and cigarettes along the
shattered sidewalks. Young, slim Mongolian women with glistening black hair strode by
on 4-inch stilettos, wearing thigh-pressing pencil skirts, and silk blouses tucked neatly
into delicate waistlines. They could all have passed for models in a magazine featuring
the world’s most exquisite, seductive beauties. Some might have been in the oldest
profession, as an American tourist I met suggested hopefully, but it seemed that most
women in public just had good self-esteem and flair. The women behind store counters,
women with children in tow, most of the women I saw were immaculately made-up and
attractively attired, none slouching in sweats, jeans, or floppy shoes. The men seemed
equally well-groomed and attractive. I had to curb my tendency to fall in love several
times while walking down the main street. As a woman, I can only stand in awe at the
excessive, redundantly over-the-top beauty of the Mongolian female. An explanation for
such an unfair abundance of perfect genes has been proposed. It has been suggested that
Chingiss Khaan loved beautiful women and allowed only the most beautiful of his
captives to live, impregnated with his seed.
19
Pickpockets worried me, and hyper-vigilance was tiring. I thought I was safe off
the sidewalks in a restaurant, but in the ladies’ room as I washed my hands I caught a
pretty Mongolian arm deep in my purse. I would have protested, uttered something to
someone, anyone, but had no Mongolian words I could pronounce. The best I could
muster was “Hey!” as I pulled away. Mongolian was not like the tonal Chinese language.
It was related to Japanese and Korean as well as the Turkic languages. Like Turkish,
Mongolian used vowel harmony. One Mongolian word that had made it into English was
“hurrah.” It was believed that the Great Khan’s men shouted that word every time they
charged towards a new conquest.
Since Independence, there has been much effort to re-establish the ancient
Mongolian identity that the world associated with Chingis Khan and his remarkable
conquests. Jack Weatherford’s correction of history in Genghis Khan and the Making of
the Modern World (2004) has been a boon for Mongolia’s self-esteem. The work
enlightens the reader about this brilliant leader who brought law, organization, religion,
tolerance and equality for women to his people. Chingis’s name was not spoken during
the years of repression, as the Soviets, who remembered the “Tartar yoke,” taught that he
brought shame to the Mongols, a horrible, cruel monster to be scorned. Chingis’s
previously forbidden name has been revived, perhaps overly so, as Mongols
enthusiastically reclaimed their heritage. The soft, round face of the Great Khan with his
tiny, distinctive goatee beams from the Mongolian paper currency called the tugrug. His
name is on the airport, a main street, a major bank, a rock band, and Chingis beer.
20
CHAPTER THREE
THE SEARCH BEGINS
It’s the job of writers and explorers to see more, to travel light when it comes to
preconception, to go into the dark with their eyes open.
--Francoise Sagan
The concierge at my hotel offered me a flyer advertising an event he thought I
might be interested in. Tumen Ekh was one of several cultural folklore troupes in the city.
They present foreign visitors and travelling Mongols with a kaleidoscope of snippets of
local culture, colorful regional dances, samples of “long songs,” so-called not for the
length of the songs but of the notes, high-pitched morin khuur, horse-head fiddle, music,
contortionists with bones made of rubber, and the amazing, distinctive khoomi,
Mongolian throat singing.
The culture byte that tore me out of my complacent world and into one populated
by Mongolian gods occurred shortly after the throat singer boomed, warbled, and trilled
in an almost inhuman voice. The next part of the Mongolian cultural performance was
called a Tsam dance, according to the flyer I clutched. That was all it said. Maybe it was
all the person preparing the flyer knew.
A silence ensued, the stage darkened, and the spotlight picked out a white-robed
character wearing a long, fluffy, white beard, a Father Time look-alike except for his
21
outsize pinkish-orange head mask, which rivaled a large watermelon. He was bald and
bent over, a bobbing and bowing old man with an exaggerated grin on the mask that
dominated nearly half his face. I had no idea what he was supposed to be doing, but his
actions dragged on. Bow, wave, shuffle. I felt impatient, provoked by the clown-like
behavior and frozen grin on the geezer’s mask. Why was he spending so much time on
stage? What was he trying to do? Then a new thought prodded me: why was I responding
so strongly to this character? He had gathered up all my attention, more than any other
figure in the show. Something about him was familiar, more from my culture than
Mongolia’s. He commanded respect, portraying the classical image of an aged ancestor,
the archetypal Wise Old Man, a priest, or even Santa Claus.
Suddenly a metallic “ker-slang!” shattered the silence as a cymbal crashed in the
dark. With the blast of a horn by a saffron-robed monk barely visible in the shadows, the
atmosphere in the auditorium subtly changed. It was as if an invisible portal to a hidden,
eerie world had opened. The wailing of a Tibetan horn began a ghastly, mournful
pleading, a single loud note that demanded full attention. From behind the folds of the
stage curtains, an unseen drummer struck up a pulsing beat.
Slowly, almost painfully, a seven-foot tall, garish, bloody-mouthed masked
figure lurched onto the stage. To the side, the old man in white was bowing reverently to
this richly robed figure whose shiny head rivaled the size of a prize-winning pumpkin.
His reddish-orange and rather pimply looking face was leering; his long fangs were
angular and sharp. Another startling cymbal crash and a tall, blue-faced, three-eyed god
vied for domination of the stage. He sported the curved the horns of a bull, bringing his
height close to eight feet, and his gold trimmed robes were accessorized with chains of
22
human skulls. Long trumpet bleats filled the theater with unsettling dissonance. I realized
I had stopped breathing. This was serious stuff, not just light entertainment. I was in thrall
to the weird, zombie-like movements of these dancers with their distorted faces, hands
wielding sharp instruments, and gruesome bowls made to look like split human skulls
filled with blood.
The master of ceremonies, the Ed Sullivan introducing the dancing demons to the
audience, was the old man. His white robes and bent-over stature accentuated the contrast
between him and the garish, stately figures. He seemed almost teasing, provocative as he
grinned and waved, seemingly at me. There was something about him that seemed
knowing, mischievous, even smug. Was he a clown? Clowns stir an audience with direct
stares and painted grins, but his role was more important than a clown’s. These were gods
and underworld spirits he was ushering in. He was neither god nor demon, yet not human.
As the dance finished and the last towering costumed figure gyrated back off stage, the
wailing horns were silent. Then the frail-seeming old man did something unexpected,
worthy of a Trickster. He impishly lifted up the hem of his white robe so the audience
could see his boots, raised his wooden staff high in the air, and danced a sprightly jig.
* * *
What I had witnessed was a mere ten-minute snippet, a secular sample of an
ancient religious purification ceremony that can take up to four days to perform. Based
on my minimal acquaintance with quiet, well-behaved Zen Buddhism, there was no
indication to me that this was Buddhism, or as I learned later, Mongolian Buddhism, an
amalgam of local shamanism and a wild, death-focused, erotic Buddhism called Tantra
that clambered over the Himalayan Mountains by way of Tibet from India. The Tsam
23
presented a parade of figures that might terrify a child, even an adult. The old man was
the odd one, an outlier. I wanted to understand what this unsettling performance,
especially the old man in white, meant to Mongolians.
The day after I saw the Tumen Ekh performance, I set my goal to find some
books, any sort of literature about what I had seen the night before. I could feel my
interest in the old man pulling me into a focused state that would preclude traveling in a
tourist-bubble. My gaze was not going to waste its time aimlessly sliding over buildings
that I would never enter, and my eyes would not feed on deactivated museum artifacts.
The old man was the one who would lead me deeper into the secret life of Mongolia.
24
CHAPTER FOUR
FIRST GLEANINGS
The shopper’s mecca, the Soviet-built State Store, Nomin or more casually the
Big Store, Ikh Delguur rose in grimy red tiles from a small plaza on Peace Avenue. It
contained a cornucopia of consumer products that were a treasure trove to herders
visiting from their subsistence on the steppe. There was a comforting supply of food,
appliances, camping gear, jewelry, electronics, modish clothing, and Ray-Ban sunglasses
for this country that had minimal and only sporadic access to Western amenities. I took
the series of escalators, perhaps the only ones in the country, rather than the elevator up
seven floors to the book department in order to observe the goods available and the taste
of the shoppers. As I ascended, I saw below me on the first level, rows of what I took to
be oddly shaped wooden objects, perhaps toys or smooth, molded playthings for children.
It was the grocery’s bread department. Bread took on unfamiliar shapes here. The open
horizontal refrigerator cases that I glided above were stocked with glittering,
unidentifiable twists and swirls of organic matter. I had considerable gustatory research
to do.
The shelves in the English language section of the book department were sparsely
populated with maps, color photography books, and a journal on “Outer Mongolia.” It hit
me that I was actually in Outer Mongolia, or rather, the country that had previously been
called Outer Mongolia. A place name I associated with extreme inaccessibility and
25
foreignness. But where were the books about this country, the modern Mongolia I was
now trying to find out about? There was nothing about religion or the Tsam dance in this
store. I found the Bradt travel guide to Mongolia and rifled through it. Two sparse inches
of type informed me that the Tsam was a temple dance that had been performed at
festivals in the past. Lamas wearing elaborate costumes and brightly painted papier
maché masks acted the roles of various Buddhist gods. I skimmed quickly and then found
what I was looking for. The White Old Man. Tsagaan Ovgon, an important legendary
figure. I emitted an involuntary squeak of excitement.
It was not much, but he had a name, The White Old Man. I had no idea how to
pronounce the Mongolian name, but the book said he was important. Now the questions
began again. Why was he important and to whom? Buddhists? Or was he from an older
religion? Had he been in Mongolia since ancient times? Was he an imported god? Was
he, in fact, a god or a human being? I had put my foot on the trail and was getting
warmer, just like in a childhood game of hide-and-seek.
I gathered that the Tsam had a religious nature, but I had just seen a secular
performance, not sacred. The Buddhist temples were up and running again after being
shut down for many years, but had the ritual temple Tsam been revived? The masks and
costumes were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and monks who knew how to
teach and dance the Tsam had been executed. There were some “wonderful” original
Tsam masks in a few local museums, according to the Lonely Planet guidebook I had
brought from the States. It would take time to bring the old ritual back, but now I wanted
to go to some monasteries, speak with lamas, and, above all, see a real Tsam if they were
being performed as sacred ritual again, so I could have another look at Tsagaan Ovgon.
26
I proceeded with the Bradt Guidebook to a register commandeered by a young
lady, a stunner with rich, creamy skin. I ventured, “Do you have any books that would
tell me about the Tsam or the old man called Tsagaan Ovgon?” Here is what went wrong.
I assumed she spoke English, I assumed she would decipher the strange sounds coming
from my mouth that had no resemblance to the correct pronunciation of Tsam or Tsagaan
Ovgon. I also assumed she would have some familiarity with Mongolian religious
figures. Once more, I realized there was a huge cultural gap to bridge, and assumptions
were not the means for crossing it.
Her eyelids lifted slightly. Encouraged, I tried again.
“There is a dance with an old man with a long white beard. He has a long staff.” I
bent over and made beard-stroking motions.
Something oddly guttural and overly consonanted emerged from her
lovely mouth.
“Pardon me?” I wasn’t sure if she was responding or dismissing me.
“The White Old Man,” she said with a half-smile. Then the guttural sounds again.
“Tsagaan Ovgon.”
I was hearing his name for the first time. The “T”s sound is difficult for my ears
and mouth, and the “g” in Mongolian hunkers at the far corner of my vocal range. Now I
had to struggle with two new words: Tsam and Tsagaan Ovgon. I would later learn that
there are a number of transliterations into English, including Tsagaan Uvgun, Tsagaan
Övgön, Tsagaan Ebugen, and Cagan Öbö. The direct translation is, roughly, White Elder
or White Old Man.
“Do you have any books on him?”
27
“No.” Very little expression or eye contact. I felt that she was being dismissive,
unreadable. The young woman’s economy of speech fit a stereotype of Asian
inscrutability that I thought explained this interaction. Wrong assumption again. Within
the next few minutes the stereotype broke into pixels and faded away. I asked if she knew
where I might find any information about The White Old Man, thus avoiding the rude
noises I feared would make if I tried to say his name the way she did.
“No.” Then she looked directly at me. “Maybe museum.”
I realized then that I was the only Westerner in sight. English was not a language
she had many opportunities to use. On top of that I was encountering the natural polite
shyness of the Mongols, not inscrutability.
“I don’t know much—um—about him. Um—my grandparents know.”
Her grandparents would have known of the White Old Man, perhaps prayed to
him, and probably had seen a Tsam dance. Her parents would have grown up during the
years of repression when no one prayed openly and children were not taught any religion.
The young lady was unsure of her grandparents’ beliefs and of her own cultural
traditions. I was to encounter this response repeatedly, as younger Mongols expressed
their embarrassment and frustration about not knowing their religious heritage. I hoped it
would be possible for me to collect some information about Tsagaan Ovgon and the wild,
garish dancers he consorted with. I didn’t realize that Mongols hungered for exactly this
sort of information.
I was coming up against the results of the country’s loss of religious freedom. In
1937, nearly 30,000 people were executed or imprisoned. Seventeen thousand of those
were monks. People were not allowed to have prayer wheels, scriptures, or images of
28
deities, or to speak the name of anything held sacred. Adults who grew up under religious
repression said that they never said Tsagaan Ovgon’s name for fear of punishment or
death. The younger Mongols I met, less than thirty years old, had rarely or never heard
his name until after democracy. Religious practice was avoided for fear of punishment, so
two generations had grown up without hearing the names of the gods of their land, their
gods who now gave a glimpse of the Mongolian deities to tourists. Mongols I spoke with
were embarrassed by their lack of knowledge about their culture and the loss of their
ancestral heritage. The old man in white was just one figure out of the former pantheon,
but he was the one calling me to find out more.
29
CHAPTER FIVE
INTO THE GOBI
I have seen strange men and things, but what I saw on the great Mongolian
plateau fairly took my breath away and left me dazed, utterly unable to adjust my
mental perspective.
--Roy Chapman Andrews, 1918
A wildlife research project needed volunteers in the Gobi, and that brought me to
Mongolia. That was my official explanation for being there, anyway. My personal,
unarticulated reasons were already being validated and expanded as the country began to
open up and fascinate me with its complex culture and endless blue skies. The project
volunteers, five plus the leaders and staff, met at a fourth-floor walk-up hostel in
downtown Ulaan Baatar. Once we were duly oriented, we ate Chinese food and slept at
the hostel before taking the train the next morning. The train, a sturdy Soviet-built ride
with compartments for four passengers, linked China and Siberia where it joined Russia’s
Trans-Siberian Express.
For eight pleasant hours, we snacked, read, napped, and leaned out of the train
windows, which could actually be opened, taking photographs of horses, rolling green
steppe, herd animals, and occasional round, white tents called gers. Excited but weary,
we disembarked in a flat, empty expanse near a mining town left over from Soviet
30
industrial efforts. The camp drivers eventually arrived, filled the vehicles with gear, and
then we squeezed in to be bounced over what appeared to be trackless terrain for another
two hours. Our home for the next two weeks became visible when we rounded craggy
rocks that formed a valley.
Ikh Nart, Mongolian for Big, Hot, Sunny Rock, was situated in a spring-fed,
willow-lined ancient earthquake fault between crusty metamorphic outcrops. It had
sheltered vulnerable inhabitants for millennia, as evidenced by the arrowheads, stone
tools, and chert flakes scattered prolifically on the steppe’s surface like beads on an
evening gown.
The isolated natural setting of the research camp put me in mind of Eden. I didn’t
want to leave. It was distant from stores, electricity, running water, and even cell phone
coverage. There was time after daily chores to slip off in reverie as the sun sank in
shocking hues, startling the blue vault of the sky. In the gloaming, camels nibbled the
stream’s tender willows, and untended horses pranced through our camp to the spring. It
was chilly for the first few nights, so the Mongolian staff lit cheerful, wood-burning
stoves to warm the gers. I shared a ger with three other women, all of us sleeping on the
floor. When the weather warmed and fires were not needed at night, the stars were bright
and busy. I manhandled my sleeping bag out the door and slept sandwiched between the
hard-packed earth and the sparkling lights that surfed all night.
While the younger volunteers chased radio-collared argali sheep and banded small
carnivores that were live-trapped, I worked with a botanist, counting early blades of grass
on the still chilly steppe. Our transportation was a camp vehicle chauffeured by a camp
driver who introduced me to Mongolian music that disenchanted me at first, much as the
31
White Old Man had. Dissonance, high-pitched voices, stringed instruments wailing in
rapid rhythms, trills and sounds that rolled and warbled. It pulsed along as if it were a
wild creature following a musical score revealed in the rolling, low slopes of the steppe.
After several days of flirtatious teasing, the Mongolian sounds had me anticipating them.
If Taivan’s cassette player was silent, the desert seemed flatter, less magical. I became
hungry for the achromatic sounds. The music awoke a visceral longing in me like the predawn breeze, feathering a sensory G-spot in my ears.
* * *
Saturday night our workweek was over. I was weary and ready to take a solar
shower then head for my sleeping bag after dinner. The canvas of my skin was gessoed
with fine desert sand mixed with sweat so that my color began to take on the healthy
outdoors look of the ruddy-faced Mongols.
“What’s on the agenda tonight?” asked one of the perkier members of the team.
“Laundry,” someone mumbled.
I just wanted to crawl into my sleeping bag. A quiet evening of reading,
journaling, and doing laundry by hand was most appealing. There was something else
afoot, though. Dishes were quickly washed, and ten beaming, flushed Mongolian faces
jogged merrily over to us, high on some hormone I recognized only too well.
“Disco! We are going dancing!” beamed the graduate students and camp staff.
It was a long-established Camp Ikh Nart tradition to go to a disco and dance on
Saturday night.
“All of us. You come too!”
32
Their work clothes had been changed to dancing whites, and Taivan the driver
was polishing the Land Cruiser. The volunteers were silent. The Mongols were animated,
smiling, finally comfortable with us after a week of working together. The inscrutable
manner I thought a bit standoffish was in fact deeply ingrained cultural shyness. Now
they were cajoling, insistent that we, the exhausted volunteers, stop dragging and get
ready to go dancing.
“No way,” said two of the volunteers. I slid wordlessly behind them, planning my
escape route to the quiet, dark ger.
“We are in the middle of nowhere. Where are they going to find a disco?” a voice
in the gathering dusk asked. “The nearest town is over two hours away, isn’t it?”
“I don’t dance,” said one of the women.
“I am too tired, and I hate dancing,” I said.
The single male volunteer looked at the young Mongolian girls’ hair, glistening
and damp from the solar shower, watched them beckon and make little dancing motions
in the sand of the parking area.
“Well, how late would we be out?” He was leaning their way.
“Traitor,” I whispered softly.
That left the four volunteer women. We eventually gave in. Rich, our leader made
the decision for us by saying he couldn’t let us stay in camp alone, and our curiosity
about a disco in the middle of the Gobi moved us into grumbling action. We changed into
the cleanest work clothes we had, dusted off our boots, and headed toward the vehicles.
The sky to the east was dark, and the darkness was solid, a moving pillar. The
air whipped the flaps of the gers. A desert sandstorm was on its blinding way towards
33
our camp.
* * *
Sheets of magenta sand were beginning to obscure the horizon. Could there really
be a disco out there? We had seen no other habitations since disembarking from the train
in the small mining town of Shivigobi. The sky to the East was burnt sienna, growing
darker though the sun was still shining. The flaps of the gers whipped the air. A desert
sandstorm rolled its way towards our felt shelters. Wet, freshly hand-laundered socks and
t-shirts were scooped off the gers where they had hoped to dry.
The Mongols excitedly pushed us to the vehicles, and we drove into black swirls
of dust. The non-Mongols were apprehensive, upset at the risk of being out in a gale and
overtired from the week of unaccustomed physical work. The two Mongolian camp
drivers did not use GPS. Their uncanny navigational skills saw us through what seemed
to be an exercise in folly. After an unnerving, blind ride, during which the Mongols sang
traditional epic songs in a high pitch, we stopped at an unlit, one-story building. It looked
closed. “Where have the Mongols brought us?” five disgruntled volunteers muttered.
We had arrived at Khelsun Uhl, Bald Mountain, a resort used by vacationing
Mongols from the city. There were small bungalows and washhouses around a sacred
mineral spring, none of which were visible in the storm. The lights suddenly went on in
and around the building, and a short man in a suit jacket and slacks walked toward our
vehicles. The Mongols jumped out excitedly and headed for what turned out to be the
dining hall and disco for the resort. Within minutes, the floor had been cleared of chairs
and tables, and the disco ball, a sphere of reflective diamond shapes, was spinning. A DJ
34
appeared, and soon “Rock Around the Clock” and “Peggy Sue,” and “Rockin’ Robin”
soared forth, and the Mongols flung themselves onto the dance floor.
I stood against the wall. I hate to dance. I have hated dances since childhood. The
sound of a dance number starting up kicks off stark terror in me. I perspire, breathe
shallowly, become nauseated, and am clutched by unbounded terror. This is apparently
an accurate description of a panic attack. My coping skills included (1) don’t go to a
dance; (2) if in a situation where dancing threatens, don’t go near the dance floor; (3)
make no eye contact; (4) feign illness; and, if all else fails, (5) go to the ladies’ room and
stay there. The ladies’ room
at Khelsun Uhl spa was a long, barracks-like washhouse
now obscured by the thick, stinging air. People who needed to use the facilities fought the
scathing sand, walking the distance there in pairs, with flashlights. It was not an ideal
escape plan.
It was hot inside and out after the wind abated. I moved to the front porch where
others were cooling off from dancing. The music, particularly the Mongolian tunes that
were played alternately with the 1950s rock, was weaving wormholes in my head. The
voices singing, both male and female, were tremulous, pleading, insistent, and somehow
alluring in their alienness to me. The tunes recalled Chinese music but differed in being
more varied and comprehensible to my Western ear. I heard echoes of Central Asia,
Ottoman Turkey, and a quality of Eros, tongue trilling and deep swells that were purely
Mongolian. In spite of my crankiness and anti-dance fever, I slipped beyond fatigue,
feeling slightly light-headed.
Then, something happened.
35
It may have been the high pitch of the notes, the rhythmic beats simulating horses
in motion, exhaustion, dehydration in the dry heat, or the unlikeliness of bygone
American rock tunes playing in the Gobi that loosened my ties to reality. My fears lost
their foothold. I forgot about being hot, tired, thirsty, and irritable. An awakening lizard,
long immobile, stirred jerkily inside of me. My body was light and energetic, fueled by a
libidinous flame. I moved closer to the dancers, contemplating what significance dancing
in the Gobi desert might have for my life.
In a fugue-like state, I watched my body edge through the crowd. The vacationing
Mongols in the bungalows had been roused and crowded in to join the party, hurriedly
dressed for the occasion in silks and dance shoes. I reached the opposite side of the hall
and stood in front of Taivan, the driver who played the magical cassette music. I had
noticed a whiff of fresh cologne when he walked by me on the porch. He rose to let me
have his chair, thinking I wanted to sit down. I pointed to him, myself, and then to the
dance floor. His eyes showed confusion then opened wide in comprehension. We danced
to a rock song, in our own zones of movement.
Then, the DJ put on a slow tune. I began to tense up. Slow dances agonized me.
Taivan glided closer and placed my hands on his shoulders and his hands firmly on my
hips just at the waistline. A magnetic force pulled me along, and I floated. A few turns
around the dance floor. I had no sensation of being guided or even in my body.
Flashbulbs were going off, and Taivan and I were being photographed by the Mongols,
who were clapping for us. The otherworldly music rolled out a magic carpet. The
amazing trilled “R”s of the male vocalist rippled my delicate inner ears. Something
extraordinary was taking shape all around me. Taivan’s face and neck disappeared,
36
though I could feel competent hands guiding me. Cells in my body vibrated to sounds I
had never heard before. I was aloft, my feet no longer touching the Earth. In the next
instant, I was no longer with Taivan but a man who was grinning, someone I knew a long
time before. It was a man I had known in high school, an adventurer and seeker who died
in his forties. I was dancing with the dead.
It took an effort to hold onto awareness that I was still dancing but not in my
body. A spirit had somehow incarnated in my arms. Was I dis-incarnated now, a visitor in
the spirit world? A thought flashed into my head. If I could dance with someone who had
died, could I dance with an immortal, a deity? I let myself go with whatever came. In that
instant my deceased friend had left and someone else had cut in. I was in the arms of a
deity, the immortal wanderer known as Khidr.
37
CHAPTER SIX
CHOJIN LAMA TEMPLE
Less than two blocks away from Sukhbaatar Square dozed a forgotten smudge of
eighteenth century Lamaism, the Chojin Lama Temple Museum. The information about
the museum contained wonderful original Tsam dance masks. I struck out to see the
collection, hoping to see a mask of the White Old Man. With any luck, some information
might even be available about him, some signage, a book, or a docent who could tell me
about that intriguing Tsam figure.
I missed the broken cement walkway to the unmarked gate of the complex on my
first pass. The former Chojin Lama Temple had survived communism to languish as a
dusty, poorly lit museum, minimally cared for, overlooked, and heartbreakingly
underfunded. Not a star on the tourist horizon in 2010, when I first visited it, this
neglected treasure of a bygone era hunkered two centuries behind in time. A block away,
Peace Avenue buzzed with crowds and traffic, cafes serving buuz and kooshur,
understocked shops and high-end European stores next to Sukhbaatar Square. The
unpainted walls of the monastic compound faded softly, like a gravestone rubbing, into
the background of Soviet-built structures and new hotels. Unique within its
neighborhood, the temple’s curved Qing Chinese roof tiles clung to the eaves until they
fell and joined the shards on the courtyard ground while, on the cornices, loyal dragons
bellowed protest. I was immediately swept into a mood of sad enchantment.
38
The temple would have been destroyed along with hundreds of others during the
Cultural Revolution except for the communists’ decision to preserve a few of these places
for visiting foreign dignitaries to see the “primitive Mongolians’ meaningless religious
trappings.” In spite of communism’s determined efforts to destroy all religious artifacts,
the temple had been de-sanctified and used as a repository for once-priceless relics that
held no value in a secular regime. Since democracy, interest in maintaining the complex
and its contents remained minimal for a number of reasons: poverty, the lingering effects
of communism, and a lack of civic organizations and fund-raising expertise. I considered
the excitement fundraising groups would generate if the house of Chojin Lama’s
treasures were similarly tucked away in a lot behind New York’s Park Avenue.
The outer courtyard, a brown yard of desiccated weeds and mud, remained safely
shielded from nasty spirits by a carved piece of free-standing wall, a standard feature of
Mongolian temple architecture. This Buddhist monastery, or khiid, was once a working
temple, the spiritual headquarters of the late Luvsan Haidav, the Choijin Lama, State
Oracle, diviner and mystic. The title “Chojin” was bestowed on one who was capable of
communicating with the deities while in trance, bringing advice from the spirit world to
help manage life in this one. In some respects, the Chojin Lama was a high level shaman,
and a devout Buddhist, as well. The ninth Bogd Khan, the divinely ordained king of
Mongolia, happened to be the Chojin Lama’s brother. Not surprisingly, decisions of
government passed through the Oracle for consideration and guidance by sharp-fanged,
multiple-eyed committees in the unseen realm.
During the Chojin Lama’s lifetime, the center was open for public worship, but he
designated certain outbuildings in the courtyard as private shrines for his exclusive use. A
39
windowless, one-room brick house directly behind the main sanctuary building, once
forbidden to all except the Oracle, now may be entered with the price of the museum’s
entry fee. Secluded in this chamber, surrounded by bronzes sculptures of deities in coitus,
the Lama practiced Tantric rites. Both the Oracle and the monastery ceased to function
with the 1927 Cultural Revolution. The buildings were closed in 1938 and reopened as a
museum in 1942 to offer an example of the feudal ways of the past. Today it is used as an
exhibit of what had once been a dynamic, thriving Buddhist community. There were no
functioning temples in Ulaan Baatar when US Vice President Henry Wallace visited
Mongolia in 1944. When Wallace asked to see a temple, Prime Minister Choibalsan
guiltily scrambled to reopen Gandan Khiid, known also as Gandantegchinlen, not far
from Chojin Lama Temple, to cover up the fact that he had recently laid waste to
Mongolia’s religious heritage.
Once past the outer courtyard, I had the defunct sanctuary to myself, as few
tourists come to Mongolia before summer and the Nadaam festival. Overgrown
chokecherry trees had begun to bloom along the cracked stone path to the temple steps. I
entered the hushed, red-hued dimness of the ornate main sanctuary, conscious of its
sacred intent even though it had been desacralized. The main hall was set up exactly as it
had been when monks in their maroon robes prayed, facing each other on long benches,
with now silent gongs and trumpets at the ready. The empty red cushions seemed to be
waiting for the monks’ backsides to flatten them with daily devotions. It seemed as if the
robed community had just stepped outside to enjoy the weak spring sunlight.
The museum’s character became evident only in the rows of glass cases along the
walls. As if stunned by their whereabouts, hundred-year-old Tsam masks stared wide-
40
eyed and open-mouthed. There lay the White Old Man’s mask, propped against red
khadags next to the Blue Old Man to keep him company. The chipped ochre paint of
Tsagaan Ovgon’s skin, the thin grey strands of his beard, and the hair around his ears led
me to question his “white” designation. Dull light filtered in from the open door and
upper windows. None of the finely handcrafted masks had been hung or mounted on
blocks but lay on the floor of the cases like discarded toys. They were neither used nor
respected in this environment, dormant since they had been danced to life by a fasting
monk, but they had survived the purge and waited.
Shirtless, bronze-bodied disciples posed in mediation along the perimeter of the
sanctuary while gods with hundreds of arms fanned the air. A full-sized warrior god
stood nine feet tall at the entrance to the altar: the red-faced Jamsrin, guardian of Ulaan
Baatar, known to the Mongols as Begste. When the Soviets changed the name of the
capitol city from Urga to Ulaan Baatar, meaning Red Hero, they unintentionally evoked
this formidable deity. His mask was the largest and most coveted Tsam artifact on
display, not for artistic or religious significance but because of the monetary value of his
face. His gigantic visage was covered with thousands of pea-sized coral beads, a fabulous
fortune invested to create the god’s image, unfortunately resulting in the appearance of a
severe acne condition. Opposite Jamsrin, insect activity had pockmarked the gentle Deer
God’s dappled hide. Blueish, musty air enveloped the silent cohort of demons and deities
as they lay in state.
No guide came forth to monitor my solitary tour; no docent offered a word of
clarification; no explanatory pamphlets lay about. Minimal signage and labels on select
artifacts, mostly in Cyrillic letters, made the tour a guessing game. I lingered, marveled,
41
and muttered, more to the neglected gods than to myself. A staff member eventually
peeked in to check on what I might be doing in the temple all this time. I had evidentially
overstayed the typical tourist’s twenty-minute walk-through by more than two hours.
Despite the dust and tiny hard-shelled insect carapaces coating the artifacts like a
dingy coat of powdered sugar and sprinkles on a cake, the sanctity of the place registered
as palpable. A hefty god created of ebony and gilt-bronze paint seemed to beckon me to
his raised altar niche.
He reigned over an unlit corner at the end of a corridor in the rear of the temple. I
drifted his way without conscious decision until my vision locked in at the level of the
deity’s curly, long-nailed toes. I felt inexplicably drawn to this entity and whispered what
passed for a spontaneous prayer. My petition was simple: to find a way to come back
to Mongolia.
Following local custom, I slipped a few grimy, crumpled tugrugs onto the base by
his feet. This deity was as unknown to me as the rest of the pantheon, but there was
something solid in the presence of his flagrant pose and naked sexuality. His head was
crowned with skulls, and two animals’ horns rose from his head. His numerous buff arms
spread out like peacock feathers around him. A shapely female consort who wound
herself around his waist preoccupied the god, the details showing quite graphically under
his loincloth. A god with other things on his mind, but some of his abundant eyes seemed
to be attentive to his surroundings, even to me.
In time, I learned who he was. This fierce god who danced entwined with his
lover was Yamantaka, the Lord of Death. In Mongolian, he was Erlig-jin Jarghagchim, a
form of the Hindu god Shiva, who mediates in coitus with his consort, Parvati, on the top
42
of Mt. Kailas in Tibet. Yamantaka was the deity with the head of a horned bull that I had
seen before. He had appeared on the stage with the White Old Man in the Tsam. Though
Yamantaka was the ruler of the dead, his role was not as foreboding as it might seem.
The first man ever to die, he became the conqueror of death, placing him in the realm of
the White Old Man, whose unnaturally long life looked death in the face.
After leaving the main temple, one could complete a circuit on a stone pathway
around the building. Three one-room satellite shrines were open to visitors, each housing
exquisite statues of Buddha, his disciples, and the raging gods who emanated from the
divine. On the way, I drifted over to a small white ger in the side of the courtyard and
peeked in. It turned out to be the unavoidable hallmark of any museum; a gift shop. I
entered, knocking my head on the low doorframe, a common and embarrassingly regular
experience for many non-locals, and scanned the room. Postcards, cheap jewelry, small
paintings by local artists, mostly of horses, gers, and mountains, and a table with
Mongolian flags, khadags, and incense burners. I poked around and left, giftless. I exited
and re-entered the ger a total of three separate times.
Each time I reached the compound’s red wooden outer gate, I felt an urge to go
back. I became possessed with the desire to linger, as if I had forgotten something. I
returned to the gift ger to see if I might fancy some small trinket to take with me, to hold
this country close to me: a blue silk prayer scarf, a key chain, a Chingis Khan refrigerator
magnet, or a miniature flag of Mongolia. I repeatedly circled back to the little shop as if
stuck on automatic recall.
The third time entering the gift shop, I was struck, not by the doorframe, but by a
photo. Directly in front of my eyes glowed the head of the old man with the white beard.
43
His mask covered the entire front of a glossy coffee table book. An oversized volume,
placed so that anyone entering would be sure to see it. I had somehow overlooked it.
Unquestioningly, I went home with a heavy tome: Mongolian Sculpture by N. Tsultem,
written in Mongolian. The White Old Man’s face would bring me back to Mongolia.
44
CHAPTER SEVEN
GANNA: MASTER OF MASKS
I had arrived early by Mongolian standards. At a community center in Arlington,
Virginia on a bright April day, alone except for a security guard, I walked linoleum
floors, down empty halls, checking my watch. Ganna had invited me to come to the dress
rehearsal of a Tsam dance today. I had fortuitously learned of this event two days earlier
from a Mongol in Ulaan Baatar who knew of my interest in the White Old Man. The
choreographer and creator of all of the masks and costumes used in this Tsam was a
person named Ganna. I sent Ganna an email to ask if I could get a ticket to the
performance and explained why I wanted to come all the way from New York to attend.
Ganna stunned me by emailing back, “Come to the rehearsal the day before, and I will be
so happy to show you my Tsam and tell you about the White Old Man. I am the White
Old Man in the Tsam.”
By my linear, logical, non-Mongolian thinking, I had arrived right on time, maybe
a little compulsively early. This provided ample, empty moments in which to consider the
purpose of western measurement of time and the nervous thought, “What am I getting
into?” Just then, a clattering noise of metal on metal shattered the silence of the hollow
halls. Two women outside were rattling the locked double doors to the rear parking lot.
Behind them, an SUV had its doors open, revealing dance paraphernalia stacked to the
45
roof. Papier maché masks and bright, shimmering fabrics threatened to spill out. I
breathed a sigh of relief; I had come to the right place. But where was Ganna?
I called out hesitantly, “Ganna?” When I was in the Gobi I had met a woman
named Ganna. I tried not to make assumptions about gender based on Mongolian names.
From behind the vehicle, a force of energy rushed towards me in the form of a
Mongolian man with straight, black, silver-threaded hair pulled loosely back into a
ponytail. His forty-nine year old body was compact, casually dressed in sweats and white
running shoes. A slightly protruding belly suggested his fondness for worldly pleasures.
“I am Ganna!”
I introduced myself, and Ganna exclaimed, “I so happy you come to see my
Tsam!” For a brief moment, he turned back to the women and spoke in Mongolian,
clipped sounds that I took to mean, “Let’s get this stuff unloaded and into the gym!”
Immediately, the women propped the doors open and boxes began to bob down the hall
flashing daggers, religious regalia, and masks crowned with tiny human skulls. Ganna
smiled sunnily at me. His mustache moved his cheeks towards his eyes, black eyes that
reached clear to midnight.
“Uh, Ganna, may I help?” I asked. Seconds later, my arms were grappling with a
melon-sized head of a huge green bird with horns, a Garuda. A four-foot long snake
flopped from its red beak. I wrapped the resistant snake around my neck and joined the
parade to the gym, noting that the still smiling Ganna had sized me up well.
The women from the SUV had finished placing their loads on a pile, and I found a
spot for the Garuda and his unhappy snake. The gym filled steadily with Mongols of all
ages. Tote bags and cartons were unpacked, richly colored material spilled all over,
46
costumes were shaken out and slipped over jeans and t-shirts. The stage disappeared
under mounds of masks and boots while objects that looked like knives, tongs, and
gardening tools were laid out for inspection.
Performers were starting to show up, and, as producer and director of this show,
Ganna’s attention was in demand, but he paused inside the gym to chat with me for a
few minutes.
“I can tell you all about Tsam. We will talk about White Old Man. I made all the
costumes for the Ikh Khuree Tsam, the big one, the first one in Mongolia since 1937. It
took me ten years to complete all 108 masks and costumes.”
“Are there going to be 108 dancers in this show?” I asked.
“There will be forty dancers in the Tsam today. Forty is a good number. A full
Tsam needs 108 dancers.”
Rather than his given name, Natsag Gankhuyag, Ganna has chosen to use the
shortened version, far easier for English speakers to pronounce. He and his family have
been residents of the United States for ten years, living in Arlington where a large
number of Mongols have settled. Ganna had become a self-appointed guru of traditional
Mongolian culture for this small community. Direct and engaging, his goatee’s
countenance evoked the popularized image of Chingis Khan, an intentional likeness that
Ganna played up in his public appearances. He was a charismatic presence like the Great
Khan but assuredly more benign.
“I will teach you whatever you want to know about the White Old Man. He is
very important, not just in the Tsam but for all Mongolians,” he said.
47
Then, he spotted a pair of embroidered red leather boots on the stage. These were
the footgear of the nomads of the steppe still worn by herders today, the same style worn
by the dauntless horsemen of the Mongol Empire when they conquered most of the
thirteenth century world. Ganna picked up one of the boots and looked at it. Looked at
me. It was a teachable moment, he decided. Bringing the boot closer to me he pointed at
the curled-up toes. “Do you know why these are curled upwards?”
“Is it so they will fit into the stirrups and not slip out?”
“Everything in Mongolia has a meaning,” he said, cryptically. Then he was off
again, his skinny ponytail swishing at the back of his neck.
The Mongols believed in walking gently on the earth, taking care not to injure the
land or any form of life. The upturned toes prevent accidentally kicking anything. I found
that out when Ganna continued the lesson, holding up another boot, two years later. It
was the first of many lessons floated to me by this quizzical artist who danced as the
White Old Man.
Ganna’s five-foot ten-inch frame seemed larger than it actually was. He moved
constantly, greeting people and instructing the arriving cast and community members.
Unexpectedly, he beckoned to me, drawing me aside to a room down the hall, which he
unlocked. It was a narrow classroom re-purposed as his studio and storeroom. I entered
with him and immediately felt the presence of others. Eyes the size of Ping-Pong balls
glared from red-rimmed sockets. Masks, brilliantly colored faces of orange and blue, took
up every table, shelf, and chair in the small space. In front of me was one I recognized
from the Chojin Lama Temple Museum, the Deer God, covered with a soft material that
48
resembled a snow leopard’s hide. The White Old Man was there among deities I had yet
to meet. A black-faced mask with blue eyes and thick eyebrows of stiff grey hair.
“Is this horsehair, yak, or camel hair?” I asked.
“Yak,” he said, with the implication that to use any other hair would be out of
the question.
The eyes in the black mask kept pulling at me.
Ganna was delighted that I was so fascinated by his artwork and heritage, and
I was wide open to the barrage of information he was preparing to unleash. “This is
the Black Old Man, Khara Ovgon, one of the four gods of the four holy mountains
that surround Ulaan Baatar,” he said, indicating the blue-eyed face. Ganna’s
impromptu lessons reflected his self-chosen mission to revive and sustain traditional
Mongolian culture.
A perfect foil for Ganna’s intentions, the Tsam had an original function of
educating people about Buddhist beliefs. Mongols were traditionally nomadic herders,
living a rural lifestyle that had sustained them for millennia, so they had little opportunity
for literacy or study of religion. The Tsam dance afforded them an opportunity for
entertainment, socializing, religious education, and a festive occasion of color,
movement, stirring images, and sounds that contrasted with simple steppe life. Thousands
of monks in the over 700 monasteries all over Mongolia were trained to perform the
Tsam for the public at designated times throughout the year.
The Tsam dance came from Tibet along with Buddhist teachings, but the first
Tsam in Mongolia was not performed until 1811. The Mongolians, thrilled with the ritual
and the gaudy, bloodthirsty gang that shuffled around in the dance. They quickly adopted
49
them as their own and introduced their indigenous gods to the dance: the White Old Man
and Begste.
A Tsam ritual would last three or four days. It was the province of clergy, the
Gelugpa, Yellow Hat, monks to perform. Only select monks were chosen to dance, handpicked for youth and strength, as the costumes and masks were weighty and the dance
steps were difficult. Days before a Tsam, monks prayed and fasted, mentally and
physically entering the esoteric atmosphere of the ritual. When a monk donned the full
costume and mask, the deity he portrayed entered him. When Ganna said, “I am the
White Old Man in the Tsam,” he was drawing on that ancient teaching.
The Tsam owes some of its mysterious and shadowy character to the esoteric
doctrine of Tantric Buddhism clearly visible in the exorcism rite that is the center of the
dance. Monks spent swirling, spinning, and circling in trance state around a triangular
tent in the middle of the dance arena. The tent is called the zor, a temporary shelter for a
dough-like, human image that embodies evil. Daggers, three-sided purbahs, and wicked
prongs became the props of special dancers called shanags or Black Hats. The shanags
took charge of the exorcism, unmasked and sultry shamans who claimed the outer circle
of the arena. The head shanag ended the ritual by mutilating and fatally stabbing the evil
flour-and-fat image inside the zor. The remains of the unfortunate doughboy were then
ceremonially carried away and incinerated in a raging fire while the people watching
edged closer. The bolder ones among the crowd approached the blaze to burn folded
papers containing their prayers.
During the intense ritual, when the arena is full of dancers, only one character
floats freely among them all: The White Old Man. Aside from being master of
50
ceremonies, his role has mutated over the years. The respect the audience would have for
an elder shifted to laughter and ridicule at the clownish, even drunken behavior he
exhibited. He provided comic relief from the frightening masks and solemn ceremony.
The only Tsam character to interact directly with the people, the White Old Man drifted
out of the sacred circle, offering candies from a large sack that he carried like a Santa
Claus. He delighted the children and, when approached, would touch people with his staff
or his hand, granting long life and healing. Fertility was associated with him, as well.
Mongolian Cultural Folklore shows that troupes such as Tumen Ekh often present
for tourists a truncated ten-minute slice of a Tsam. There are no explanations or history
given to visiting Mongols and Westerners, so they leave with a memory of garish
costumes and masks, loud horns and drums, and a seemingly out of place grinning old
man in white. The Tsam’s original intent was to frighten and teach people about what
they would see when they died so they would consider right actions. The Tsam scared
children and unsettled adults who had no frame of reference for this mystery play. Sarah,
the wife of British missionary Edward Sallybrass who lived in Siberia among the Buriyat
Mongols in the mid-nineteenth century, attended a Tsam. She wrote that the masks, play,
and deafening music put her in mind of Hell.
The deities portrayed in the Tsam, their masks, and their teachings had been
prohibited for seventy years, and Ganna was determined to bring them back to life. In the
Tsam I attended in Virginia, Ganna was mediator, choreographer, and shaman, turning
Americanized, tech-savvy Mongols into gods few could name. The comic aspect of the
White Old Man remained, to the delight of the Mongols, but Ganna had assumed that role
with the intention of teaching and restoring pre-communist religion and culture. The
51
entire community was learning, listening as Ganna held forth in mini-lectures about the
significance of each character and the meaning of each twisting, evil-stamping, high step
of the dance.
The preparations were in full swing. Vignettes of concentration and excitement
randomly caught my eye like casino lights. Nearly a hundred Mongols busied themselves
with costumes, helping each other dress, practicing moves, or just catching up on local
news. A Mongolian woman knelt on the wooden gym floor and pinned back the too-long
sleeves of a gold-brocaded robe enveloping a boy of about seven. Musical instruments
were being awakened, and a crockpot of bresa, rice and raisins, for the cast simmered
enticingly on a table.
A small man, a Mongol of exceptionally short stature with the face of a dignitary
paraded the perimeter of the gym incessantly. His pacing demarcated the seventh and
outermost circle of the Tsam’s sacred arena. Beaming beatifically as he
circumambulated, he focused on something invisible in front of his eyes. As the morning
passed, he persisted in his walk, but from time to time women lurking on the sidelines
snatched him up, pulled him aside, and outfitted him. First, he was wrapped in a gilded
robe. Then, after more circling, a red sash defined his waist. A bit more circling and his
feet wore curly toed boots and a hat materialized on his head, and finally he proudly
displayed a rectangular object resembling a small jewel box.
“This man is the most important person in the Tsam,” said Ganna. “He is Tsagiig
Sakhigch; he controls the weather. He makes prayers and can predict and make it so that
it won’t snow or rain or be windy when the Tsam is performed. The Tsam was always
52
held outdoors. Freezing temperatures and snow storms could ruin a Tsagaan Sar Tsam on
the lunar New Year, and rain could hurt the costumes in a summer Tsam.”
Eerie music vibrated in the air. A violin playing a non-Western scale? Sort of
whingeing and achromatic, plaintive enough to be a Krakow ghetto fiddler’s tune,
suddenly interrupted by a startling sound: a horse’s whinny. The ancient horsehead fiddle
of the nomads, the morin khuur, whose strings were made of horsetail was said to have
the magic to call a horse into the room. The sounds emanated from a rear corner of the
stage where a clutch of young Mongolian men with longish, straight raven hair bent
towards each other in a circle of folding chairs. Two fiddles were visible and a large
object, a drum of some sort in the center, evoked the look of a Native American drum
group. Another sound soared up, audible fingers slipped through my ears down to my
chest where it altered my heartbeat. The voice of a khoomi, a throat singer. His voice
held a deep note while a second, high-pitched sound arose simultaneously from the
singer, and the two created a third wailing cry in midair. It was a duet of spirit sounds
birthing a new creation, a chthonic call from a human to the unseen world.
A Mongolian man glided like a nun in a habit, wearing a floor-length magenta
robe entirely embellished with skull beads and thick appliquéd symbols. His eyes were
shadowed by fringes on a broad-brimmed black hat that would make a Mariachi
singer proud.
“Hi. My name is Oogii,” he loomed. “I am dancing in this Tsam as a shanag.
That’s sort of like a wizard.”
A wizard? I knew very little but had heard that there were sorcerers in this
performance. A row of five apricot-sized human skulls stared, hollow-eyed, along the
53
crown of his hat, framed by gilded foil flames. The skulls signaled initiation into Tantric
rites involving sexual and death symbolism. The fringes created a curtain between the
dancer’s sight and the underworld, shutting out distractions so that the spirits might be
visible. This was a shaman. The shaman smiled at me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ganna invited me to come because I am interested in learning about the White
Old Man.”
Like attracted like, and another tall, muscular man in identical purple robes and
broad-brimmed black hat slid up to us.
“Hi. My name is Oogii,” stated number two wizard.
“Hi Oogii, I’m Barbara.” Was Oogii a popular name in Mongolia? Both of the
Oogiis were solid, well built.
“I am a boxer,” said the second arrival. In a green and yellow football uniform, he
would look like a Green Bay Packer. His face glistened with sweat.
“This costume is really heavy! Here, feel my sleeve, pull up on it.”
I pinched the thick fabric between my fingers and lifted. It was surprisingly
difficult to hoist. “The material in the sleeve alone must weigh fifteen pounds!” I said.
The entire garment displayed itself as a stiff, self-supporting entity, a pliant shell of hefty
material festooned with metallic embroidery, beads of ersatz bone and glass, and
glittering bits of silver. An unforgiving garment. No wonder only young, strong monks
had been chosen for the performances that lasted several days.
The two Oogiis mischievously slashed the air around them with their three-sided
daggers called purbahs that they held in their right hands. One Oogii held a flat, curved
54
blade for killing evil spirits in his left hand. The other Oogii had a white papier maché
human skull bowl with a bloodied brain exposed. These were serious wizards.
With everyone in costume and ready to roll, Ganna, now dressed as the White Old
Man, revealed his authority as director and educator. He lined up the cast of forty and all
the supporting staff, volunteers, parents, and dressers outside the main door of the gym.
For over twenty minutes he lectured them on the Tsam, impressing upon them the
meaning of what they would be enacting physically and spiritually. A long time to
stand in hot, heavy garments, but the Mongols were tough, and the White Old Man was
their mentor.
55
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHOWTIME: THE TSAM
The day after the dress rehearsal, the troupe reassembled in Rosslyn, downtown
Arlington. I arrived early, as usual, and waited in the Artispace Theater for Ganna and the
Mongols to show up. And show up they did, no longer an intimate, family like gathering
but a tense, hurried and much larger crowd. Teachers, reporters, supporters, vendors, and
a television crew milled about in the lobby. Women with pins and sewing needles made
final adjustments to costumes, and foil roaster pans filled with Mongolian snacks ferried
their way backstage.
Ganna was a fleeting vision of a pony-tailed, goateed man swirling by in a silken,
creamy, embroidered robe. He seemed to move constantly from room to room,
encouraging, organizing, and troubleshooting. The two Black Hats, the wizards Oogii and
Oogii, came over to visit with me.
“Will you take our picture?” they asked. Black smudges had been applied below
their eyes, again conjuring up the football player image. In traditional Tsams the black
make-up had been formed out of fat and ashes from the charnel grounds. The Oogiis
donned their massive black hats for the photograph, instantly morphing into priests of
darkness. The transformation was pure art, with a hint of shamanic shape shifting.
The show was ready to begin. A media crew flailed around in a winding thicket of
wires, creating a tripod and speaker bunker for themselves by stage front and center. An
56
announcer gave a little opening greeting and said, “This evening’s event will be broadcast
live from Virginia to televisions in Mongolian gers.”
The narrow auditorium lights dimmed. The atmosphere was tense, the odor of
sweat drifted out the stage door where the dancers were lining up. A sound akin to deep
wailing filled the space. The moment had arrived. There was a release of pressure as if a
gate had been unlocked and cool wind was blowing in from the other world. The Tibetan
trumpet continued its mournful cry as a drum began to beat a steady rhythm. Plaintive,
high squeals and sighs rose from a horsehead fiddle. Horses seemed to be neighing
overhead; was it the fiddle? Birdsong erupted from somewhere, then piercing, irritated
squeals filled the room.
“Eeeeeeeeeee!”
An attractive Mongolian woman in a skirt and fitted blazer leaned over on the
bench we were sitting on and whispered to me, “That is the sound of the demons. They
are angry that the gods are coming.” I looked curiously at her and saw that she was
serious. My skin prickled.
Movement on the side of the stage was spotted and eyes turned towards the place
where the Tsam dancers would emerge. A family in rich, buttery silk robes, Khusin
Khan, the ruler of Kashmir with his wife and four children, all in moon-shaped smiling
masks, strode with dignity onto the stage and seated themselves on a royal bench that
awaited them. They were here to watch the Tsam, models of attentive appreciation.
Slowly the stage was populated with stiffly moving dancers dressed as skeletons,
the guards of the Tsam and keepers of the sky burial grounds. The Master of Ceremonies,
the White Old Man, could now take the stage to prepare the audience for the entrance of
57
the horrible denizens of the land of the dead. It was Ganna, now fully concealed by the
grinning oversized, baldheaded mask of the old man. He made his entrance alongside a
lion the size of the two men inside of it, demonstrating to the audience that animal
instincts could be subdued. Numerous strange and gruesome creatures followed, gyrating
and twisting in procession.
Ker-slang! Cymbals clashed, and the gods entered, one after another. They were
ugly and demonic-looking, moving slowly as underworld deities are wont to do. Redfaced Begste, blue-faced Mahakala, bull-horned Yamantaka, and the Deer God each
minced forward, zombie-like in rigid, high steps. The gloomy sounds and dragging feet
evoked the lugubrious landscape they inhabited. Ganna had demonstrated one of the
muscle-cranking steps to me the day before, lifting his leg waist-high, twisting the foot at
an unnatural angle in midair, saying, “This is to destroy the evil beneath,” as he stamped
his curly-toed boot down.
The gruesome parade marched by the audience, forming a circle in the
performance arena. Every figure in the cast except the White Old Man moved forward.
The White Old Man ranged in and out of the formation. He floated back and forth,
touching, guiding, bowing to the gods, appearing to be an innocent shuffling elder as he
orchestrated the collision of two realities as the underworld broke through into the
theater. The Black Hats maintained course on the outer rim of the circle as the gods stood
in the inner rings of the shamanic universe. My Oogiis were not recognizable among the
several shanags spinning clockwise, then counter-clockwise, maroon robes flaring as if
they were preparing to fly. They were alien, forsaking all that was human and familiar,
eyes in shadow, arms extended with their fingers posed in mudras, Buddhist hand
58
symbols, around instruments of torture. Mysterious, tall, dark, and dangerous, the Black
Hats brought Eros into the Tsam for me.
59
CHAPTER NINE
AT HOME WITH GANNA
The one-bedroom apartment where Ganna lived with his wife, Mogi, and
Zanabazar and Margal, their son and daughter, was arranged to function as a traditional
nomad tent. One enters to face a red velour-covered bench opposite the door where the
man, the head of the house sits—in this case, Ganna. Two straight-backed chairs were
available for guests not accustomed to siting on the floor. Everything of importance was
stored or organized neatly along the walls. Three-foot tall statues of serenely meditating
Buddhas and full-breasted bronze goddesses called Taras populated the perimeter of the
room. A computer screen rose up from a stack of books, drawings, and masks in
progress. A television on one wall, bookcases, and individual altars for each member of
the family: everything needed was there, as orderly and compact as a nomad’s ger.
Mogi greeted me warmly and offered tea, while Ganna guided me to a chair next
to him on the left side of the room, the traditional position for a guest. Mogi and the
children sat on the floor and politely sipped tea, not speaking unless spoken to. When it
was time for my interview with Ganna to begin, or, more accurately, my lessons with
Ganna, my notebook, cameras, and recorder came out of my bag while the rest of the
family quietly evaporated.
Ganna offered to teach me whatever I wanted to know about the White Old Man.
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He dove right in, saying, “When I was growing up it was the communist time.
You never talked about the White Elder or put (religious) pictures out. Having images or
telling stories about Tsagaan Ovgon or any other god, you could be punished, sent to
prison, or death. When I was growing up, nobody talked about these things.”
He shook his head sadly.
Ganna studied art in Ulaan Baatar, and won a Soviet Young Artist’s award, which
led to a commission to sculpt a statue of the Buddha for a temple. He spent three years in
Leningrad replacing the original sculpture that had been destroyed by the Nazis. When
Ganna returned to Mongolia in 1988, he was uncertain what he would do next. He
claimed that his life changed when he saw a documentary film about the Tsam dance.
“The first time I ever saw the White Old Man was in a black and white movie that
showed the old Tsam dance being performed before the Cultural Revolution.”
Deeply affected by the images of masked dancers and traditional costumes not
seen since 1937, Ganna said, “I found out what I was meant to do next. I saw beautiful
masks. So many were destroyed! I felt very sorrowful and wanted to rebuild them. Why
did the communists destroy such beautiful art?” This was the first time Ganna had ever
seen a picture of the White Old Man.
For the next decade, Ganna struggled financially as a young artist while he
nourished his dream of recreating the artistic heritage of the Mongolian religion. He
sought out Tsam relics, masks, and dance paraphernalia in local museums such as the
Bogd Khan Winter Place, the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Arts, and the Chojin Lama
Temple Museum. Unfortunately, very few pieces had survived the purges, and those were
in poor condition.
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“I had no resources to go by,” he said.
Then Ganna recalled that he had recognized the face of a young monk in the
documentary. He had heard that the monk was still alive, fortuitously escaping the fate of
many clergy. Ganna inquired at the newly reopened Ganden monastery and was able to
track down the monk who had been in a real Tsam. The monk, Dashzeveg, had avoided
death by becoming a layman for several decades, but when freedom returned he reembraced religious life and became a lama. Lama Dashzeveg lived alone in his ger where
he immersed himself in prayer and studies. When Ganna approached him, he accepted
the artist as an apprentice disciple. The two embarked on an intense period of several
years of study, with the lama translating Sanskrit texts about the deities in the Tsam, their
appearance and attributes, while Ganna drew and sculpted. It was still dangerous activity
when they began in 1988, but they told the authorities they were making the masks the
artist way, not the temple way.
“Most Mongols didn’t know anything about the Tsam or the masks,” Ganna said.
“Mongols are forgetting their history. People think the masks maybe come from India or
Tibet but they are Mongolian.”
Is the White Old Man a Buddhist god? I asked. I was not sure if the Buddhist
claimed him as a deity or not. “Was he a Mongolian deity before Buddhism came?”
“The White Old Man is Mongolian,” said Ganna.
Then how did he become a figure in the Buddhist Tsam, I wondered. The Tsam
itself had a well-documented and colorful history before it came to Mongolia, arising on
the Indian subcontinent then migrating to neighboring countries over the centuries as
Buddhism spread. Tibet dramatically transformed the ritual, carrying over elements of the
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indigenous Bon religion, secretive practices involving shamanism and blood offerings
that became the basis of Tibetan Tantra.
The Tsam did not catch on in Mongolia until well after Buddhism arrived.
Mongolia enjoyed its native beliefs based on shamanism, animism, and Tengrism, the
worship of the Eternal Blue Sky. Buddhist teachings did not take a firm hold on
Mongolian life until the seventeenth century. At that time, when the gods of Tibetan
Buddhism were introduced to the gods of Mongolia, they freely intermarried and created
a new hybrid form of Buddhism. The Mongolian White Old Man, Begste, Garuda, and
Mahakala danced with the Himalayan pantheon in a new Tsam that had never been seen
before. It has been said that of all the Tsams in the world, including those of Tibet,
Bhutan, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, and China, the colors, creativity, and quality of the
Mongolian masks and costumes are the finest.
An interesting tale illustrates the relationship between Mongols and Tibetans. In
1578, Mongolian ruler Altan Khan, then in his seventies, invited the Tibetan Lama
Sonam Gyatso (Sodnonjamts) to Mongolia. The Mongolian ruler was so impressed by the
Lama and his teachings that he bestowed a new title upon him: Dalai. The Mongolian
title means “oceanic” and has been since been carried by all the successive incarnations
of the Dalai Lama, who is believed to be an incarnation of the deity Chenrisig (who in
turn is an emanation of the Buddha).
Tibet included the White Old Man in one of the many Tsam ceremonies that have
been recognized, but, as Ganna asserted, the figure of Tsagaan Ovgon is Mongolian in
origin. The story goes that while the thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876-1933) lived in exile in
Mongolia, he was enchanted with the performance of a Tsam with a character who was
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new to him, the White Old Man. Upon his return to Tibet, the Dalai Lama reported a
having a dream in which he saw the White Old Man dancing in Tibet. Interpreted as an
auspicious sign, the dream led to the incorporation of this new figure into the Tibetan
Tsam. Cross-cultural fertilization between Tibet and Mongolia satisfied both countries in
the years to come.
Lama Dashzeveg taught Ganna about the blessings for nature and the land
associated with the White Old Man, impressing the artist with the importance of caring
for the environment. Ganna decided that Tsagaan Ovgon would be the first mask
he created.
Then, Ganna, in his circuitous manner, returned to my question. “Why do we
have the White Elder in Buddhism? He is a special person who is 108 years old. In
Buddhism, we believe the number 108 is a special number, like the beads (he jiggled the
string of prayer beads he has been fingering). He is old, and Mongols have respect for old
people. Old people are white; that’s why we call him the White Elder. He is called white
because of his white hair and because he is pure like the snow. He looks like a child, a
baby, and sometimes he becomes like a young kid. This is shamanism.”
Ganna leaned forward and took a sip from the now room temperature cup of tea
that his wife had refilled earlier. I scrawled notes as quickly as I could and doublechecked the recorder.
The White Old Man’s head mask in the Tumen Ekh Tsam had rosy cheeks, red
lips, big eyes, and a bald pate that had made me think of a baby, but I didn’t realize that
was intentional. Now what was this about shamanism?
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“In Mongolia, the ancient religion is shamanism,” he continued. “In shamanism,
for example, a shaman connects with the sky, with heaven. Ancestors who have passed
away are seen as spirits in the sky by the shaman. The spirit comes though him and
changes his voice.” Ganna began speaking in low, guttural tones to imitate the shaman.
“This is how the White Elder comes to the people.”
Ganna gave the knob of the little brass canister prayer wheel on the table a spin. I
could hear the rustling of the sutras, the rolled up paper prayers sighing as the mantras
took flight. He stared at it and thought. When he began to speak again, his intensity
had sharpened.
“The Mongols were strong warriors in Chingis Khan’s Empire, then they lost
their power and were put down because of Buddhism.” The new religion from Tibet was
encouraged as a political stratagem that backfired, resulting in 300 years of hardship rule
under the Ming Chinese. The first Bogd Khan, Mongolia’s holy king, Zanabazar, initiated
this move, which he hoped would help Mongolia but ultimately led to the loss of the
freedom and fierce independence associated with Chingis Khan’s reign. Thousands of
young men who would have been warriors took vows of celibacy, poverty, and passivity.
“Young people who could work and fight went to the temples and became monks.”
Three waves flowed over the steppe, bringing Buddhism to the Mongols. The first
one, which did not gain solid purchase, was launched in the third century BCE. The
second surge occurred during the reign of Chingis Khan, and the third wave crested
during the sixteenth century CE and endured until communism forbade practicing any
religion. Since 1991, Buddhism has steadily gained ground in Mongolia despite
competition from Christian missionary efforts. The current enthusiasm for Mongolian
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cultural heritage may develop into a fourth wave, and Ganna is surfing it. He has devoted
himself to recreating the religious arts with his Tsam, masks, costumes, and painting, in
addition to starting traditional dance and music groups. History lesson over, Ganna
revealed that he had recently completed a master’s degree in Mongolian history online
from Chingis Khan Institute in Ulaan Baatar.
As the afternoon progressed, showed me photo albums of his art career and told a
story about himself as the White Old Man. When the Dalai Lama visited the University
of Indiana, Ganna produced a Tsam to honor His Holiness. When the Dalai Lama saw the
White Old Man, he became excited and almost like a child, rushed up to the costumed
Ganna, saying, “Please give me your blessing, White Old Man!” Ganna gulped, taken
aback by hearing the head of his religion asking for a blessing. “I didn’t know what to do!
How could I bless His Holiness? But he kept saying, ‘Please bless me,’ so I did.”
The White Old Man is a protector of nature and life. Ganna had recognized the
connection between current concern for the environment and the deity’s area of power.
In 2009, an organization for environmental consciousness, Mongolian Buddhists
Protecting Nature, published a document with its mission statement and an icon
representing care of the earth. They had chosen The White Old Man as their poster boy.
Mongolia had a long history of nature worship that inspired the government since the
time of Chingis Khan to create national parks and vast tracts of land designated as
Strictly Prohibited Areas, off-limits to human activities. At one time, over a third of the
country was protected land. This reverence for the land stemmed from Buddhism’s
teaching of respect for life and the cultural memory of animistic beliefs.
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CHAPTER TEN
GANNA AND THE LAMA
I visited Ganna on the Mongolian celebration of the Lunar New Year, Tsagaan
Sar, or White Month. The date or the festival falls roughly in February or January, almost
but not quite the same time as the Chinese New Year. Mongols enjoy this weeklong midwinter holiday, a time for visiting family, exchanging gifts, and showing resect for their
elders. Housewives make buuz by the hundreds, freeze them outside the ger, and serve
them to the constant stream of relatives and guests. Consumption of vodka, a legacy the
Russians left behind, has become a significant part of the tradition.
At Ganna’s apartment, the family and I ate Mogi’s fresh steamed buuz and toasted
the New Year with vodka served in silver lined wooden bowls. “You know why silver? “
Ganna asked.
“I have no idea.”
“It is because poison turns silver black.” There had been a time when enemies
showed false hospitality out on the steppe.
“Good to know that. Cheers, then. Tell me, do you know of any connection
between the White Old Man and Tsagaan Sar?”
“I never heard of that,” Ganna replied.
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Ganna, like most modern Mongols, grew up with no exposure to Mongolian
festivals, the Tsam, or the White Old Man.. His information, like mine, was gleaned from
various sources, cobbling bits and pieces of lore together into a collage. I was going on a
lead from book, which mentioned that in the past a Tsam was held on the Lunar New
Year, in which Tsagaan Ovgon featured prominently. The winter Tsam had been
discontinued. Now the only Tsams were summer or early autumn. I wondered when the
original Tsams were held, and how they differed from each other. Most important for me
was the question, “Did all Tsams include the White Old Man?”
Ganna said, “Maybe you could ask a lama.”
“Do you know a lama around here I could talk with?”
“Mogi and I are going to see a lama tomorrow to have our New Year’s fortunes
told. Do you want to come?”
“Of course, that would be wonderful.”
“We’ll start to drive early in the morning. It takes four or five hours. The
Buddhist temple is in New Jersey.”
Ganna drove while Mogi took advantage of a day off work and slept in the back
seat. I rode up front and listened as Ganna furthered my knowledge about his culture. The
lama we were on our way to visit, Lama Yondonjamts, was a friend of Ganna’s. “When I
built the statue of the Buddha in Leningrad, the ashes of Lama Yondonjamts’s mentor
were flown in to Russia to for the consecration. We put the ashes inside the Buddha,”
Ganna explained. “There has to be a ceremony when a lama puts ashes of a holy lama,
crushed jewels, incense, silk scarves, and herbs into a Buddha or a stupa. This is called a
Tsundag, and it makes the object come alive.”
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The Mongols who settled in quiet suburban towns in Monmouth County did not
emigrate from Mongolia; they hailed from Khalmykia, a Mongolian Buddhist province
by the Caspian Sea in Russia. Ganna and Mogi were not Khalmyks; they belonged to the
Khalkh Mongolian tribe, the majority in Mongolia. The Khalmyks descended from the
Oirats who ruled Western Mongolia, but because of their desire for better pastures and
pressure from the Dzungar Mongol tribe, they migrated to the Volga River area, north of
the Caucasus Mountain range in the mid-1600s.
In 1951, deported and displaced Khalmyks began to come to America, where they
settled south of Newark. World War II splintered the people of Khalmykia, as some had
fought with the Red Army and others had joined the Nazis. In 1947, the Soviet Union
ordered mass deportation of the Khalmyks from their homeland for their war crimes.
Starvation and death by freezing in boxcars decimated the deportees. The survivors
scattered throughout Europe and to Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It had been four
hundred years since the Khalmyks had separated themselves from the rest of Mongolian
culture by going to Russia. I reasoned that their religious practice would be similar but
have distinct differences from what I encountered in Mongolia.
Would the White Old Man be in their tradition? The lama we were about to meet
might have some answers.
We were stiff from hours of driving when Ganna pulled up in front of a single
story, red frame house with a white wooden fence around the lawn, the Nitsan Buddhist
Temple of the Khalmyk community. Three monks welcomed us warmly at the door of
the monastery’s dwelling quarters. They knew Ganna from his work on the Buddha in
Russia. The former head of this temple, His Eminence Diowa Hutagt Gegen, was their
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founder. His ashes now rested in Ganna’s creation in St. Petersburg. The monastic
dwelling, once a middle-class New Jersey family home, now Mongolized, luxuriated in
the scent of incense and boiled mutton. Two of the monks, both in their thirties, were
from Mongolia. The third was not yet a full monk, a young tank of a man from
Khalmykia, very sweet and built like a wrestler. The star attraction was a 94-year-old
sweetheart of a venerable lama, named Yondonjamts. He was called from his bedroom to
bless us. We sat with him at the dining table drinking tea that the heavy-set monk served.
We had brought khadags as offerings for the aged lama, and currency notes. Then, to the
elder’s delight, Mogi presented him with a Tsagaan Sar cookie, a holiday specialty
shaped like a rolled up tube. Lama Yondonjamts even lifted the useless lid of his closed
left eye so that he could take in the treat with both eyes. Unfortunately, it was the only
cookie that remained after I blithely crunched away all the rest during the long drive. I
worried that my greed and hunger was visible to the monks, whom I suspected could see
my embarrassed aura. In return for the khadags, we each received three Kit-Kat bars and
a gold-colored thread, which the lama placed around our necks as he blessed us.
Then, it was time for Lama Yondonjamts’s nap. First, however, he would give
Ganna and Mogi the divination they had driven all this way for. For this ancient service,
Ganna and Mogi went into the lama’s bedroom. I trailed along. The ancient one, a
renown fortune-teller, now in his checked flannel bathrobe, sat on his bed and threw dice
to tell the future for the year while Ganna and Mogi knelt on the floor before him. Unsure
of what to do, I stood by the bed and watched, studied the bedroom’s altar, and felt the
peaceful quiet of the monastery like a comforter of soothing air wrap around me. We then
proceeded to their temple, a red-painted structure next door to the monks’ dwelling.
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I entered the foyer of the Khalmyk temple to come face to face with what I had
made this trip for. The small entry was dominated by a large mural of the White Old
Man. My excitement and flurry of camera activity stirred curiosity in the monks and
other Mongolian visitors who had drifted in for a Tsagaan Sar prayer. The painting
covering the wall depicted the old man with the usual snow-capped mountain in
the distance.
I babbled, “It’s the White Old Man! What do Khalmyks believe about him? What
is that mountain’s name? It’s in every picture I have seen of Tsagaan Ovgon, so it must
have some significance.” As Ganna’s student I had learned that everything Mongolian
has meaning. “Is that the holy Mount Kailas in Tibet?”
“Maybe,” said one of the older monks. Another robed one agreed. More red
draped figures appeared in the doorway, and a discussion ensued.
“It might be Kailas,” said one.
“No, it is the Fruitful Mountain, Dzimislig Mountain. That is the permanent home
of the White Old Man,” said another.
“Where is the Fruitful Mountain? Is that in Mongolia?” I asked.
“In China,” was the reply.
Now will I have to go to China to find him? I thought. It was becoming more
complicated. Meanwhile, Mogi had prayed, and Ganna had photographed the temple’s
interior. We were leaving to visit another nearby temple. There were three Khalmyk
Buddhist temples in this little town.
The next temple, less than a mile away, was not a converted house, but had been
built as a temple and had the distinction of being consecrated by the current Dalai Lama.
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The round-faced, chunky monk had squeezed in along Mogi in Ganna’s car, and as soon
as we drew up to the temple, he hefted his bulk adroitly ahead of us.
“Barbara!” he called out. His feet fairly danced under his muscular bulk as he
waved me to the rear wall of the sanctuary where a small, framed painting hung just
above my eye level. It was the White Old Man. The monk’s round moon face beamed
radiantly. It took me several seconds to get my bearings on the image. It was not what I
was used to seeing. It was an old man with white hair, but something was different. The
requisite pairs of swans and deer were there, and he was seated, cross-legged, under a
fruiting tree, but this figure was seminude, had his hair in a knot, and held an urn, the
type of vessel that the Buddha is sometimes shown with, signifying the water of Eternal
Life! My sprightly sumo monk then held a metal vessel with a spout up in front of me.
Ganna explained, “This is amrit, holy water, hold out your hands for it. Watch
me, and drink it.” The monk poured the liquid into our cupped hands. It tasted of saffron
and sweetness. Before I could barrage anyone with questions, Ganna and Mogi hustled us
back into the car for the third stop on our pilgrimage.
The Tashi Lhumpo Temple was a mere few blocks away. It was becoming cooler
as the sun lowered over the frame house of worship. A handsome, slim, seventy-three
year old monk greeted us and took it upon himself to show us around. Tenzing Dakpa, a
Tibetan, spoke English and dearly wished to interest people in his religion. He sparkled a
knowing smile at me. Then I noticed a grinning moon-face behind him. The big monk
had alerted the Tibetan to my interest in Tsagaan Ovgon. Tenzing, in a crimson V-neck
sweater over a golden robe, and a maroon jacket for warmth, showed us into the temple,
where he waited for my reaction. A framed picture of the White Old Man hung facing the
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door. Confusion and excitement swept through my body. Tsagaan Ovgon was standing!
All the images I had seen depicted the old man seated on the ground like a lump. Here
was a figure of regal bearing; his straight white hair swept itself into a tidy bun on the top
of his head like a Hindu ascetic. The image spoke of holiness and majesty, his white
robes fell elegantly against his body, and his head was framed by an orb; the White Old
Man had a golden halo! This was definitely not the balding, bent, slightly overweight,
grinning old man in rumpled garments that I was familiar with. Tenzing explained, “This
is the Khalmyk Tsagaan Aavaa. Here and in the old country, Khalmyks call him The
White Grandfather.”
There was some official consensus, according to Mongolian Buddhist lamas I had
asked, on the characteristics that identified the White Old Man. There is always a pair of
birds, a pair of deer, the cave, a fruiting tree, prayer beads, the dragon-headed staff, and
sometimes boots made of tiger skin. Often, a lake of stream with fish shimmered in front
of the old man. Almost always, a snow-capped mountain could be seen in the distance to
his right. It reminded me of reading Tarot cards. One learns to feel the presence and
understand the message of the deity, of Tsagaan Ovgon and each of the Tsam gods, from
the symbols around him, in his hands, the number of eyes and arms or skull decorations,
and the posture. It was slow in coming, but I was discerning a method for recognizing the
figures in the Tibeto-Mongolian pantheon. The White Old Man was the perfect starter
god, the easiest to identify of the whole writhing, bulging-eyed lot. He looked like a
human being.
Tenzing was on a roll, chattering and insisting that I look at each of the tankas in
the main sanctuary with him. He was high on my obvious interest. There was another
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painting in the sanctuary. In Khalmykia, Tsagaan Aavaa is not kept out in the foyer, but
placed among the gods in the sacristy. “The White Elder is called Mi-Tser-ring in
Tibetan. That name means he is the god of long life,” said Tenzing. We were locked in
intense conversation as the sun dropped below the trees. Being around Tenzing filled an
unidentified longing in me as well as my need for an understanding of Buddhist
iconography. I considered how I might return, spend a day, a week or two, and leaving
anytime soon did not cross my mind. Ganna and Mogi had other ideas. They were
looking up at the darkening New Jersey sky and becoming restless after patiently waiting
out my lengthy tour of the temple with Tenzing, coming to realize that it might not end
anytime soon. The long drive back to Virginia awaited us. Even further away, Khalmykia
beckoned in my thoughts. In the dusk, Tenzing and I lingered on the temple steps for a
photograph together.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
FINDING HIM AMONG THE GODS
A tour of Mongolia boasting a Harvard scholar of the Manchu dynasty was
leaving from an upscale UB hotel, so I relocated from my simple base for one night. This
would be a way to see more of Mongolia in a compact presentation. As I settled into my
room, the hotel phone rang, an unusual sound for me to hear in Mongolia where I knew
few people. The caller introduced himself as my guide, asking if I would meet him
downstairs. He sounded young, hip, and cheerful. I scanned the vast, marble lobby and
saw no one resembling a young American tour guide. A Mongolian man in slacks and a
polo shirt turned away from the front desk and strode brightly over to me. This beaming
young man was Badral Yondon, my tour guide. His English was perfect, with all the
current colloquialisms. I needed to stop making so many assumptions.
Badral struck me as articulate, unpretentious, and patient. In his thirties, he had
been guiding for several years and today would take on the responsibility for sixteen
well-travelled, culturally sensitive, sometimes cranky Americans for two weeks. Badral
proved to be an exceptionally placid and positive traveller, not only on this trip, but also
with me on private research expeditions for several years to come.
I rode shotgun with Gongor, who had a wolf’s knucklebone dangling from his
keychain. The other tour drivers were younger. Gongor was a veteran, the leader of the
pack. In the Mongolian creation story, a blue wolf mated with a roe deer and the
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Mongolian people came out of that union. Like all Mongols who drove for a living,
Gongor possessed many talents: chauffeur, driver, mechanic, weatherman, and
sometimes crooner of haunting Mongolian songs. I counted myself lucky to be in his
vehicle especially since Badral was along with one other tourist, a perky birder from
Boston in her seventies. The itinerary promised us an overview of Mongolia’s historic
and cultural high points, but my personal agenda had little to do with what the rest of the
group was expecting. I was along for a guy in a white robe with a long white beard.
We stayed at tourist ger camps, small clusters of white felt tents set up in rows,
typically with a dining hall and bathhouse with flush toilets and showers. The first day
after driving and sightseeing all the way from UB, we pulled into Khankhar Uul Camp in
the Khognokhan Mountains. I needed to stretch and be alone, so I struck out while
everyone else settled into their gers.
Our camp was in the sheltering shadow of a low, grey rock cliff, with a view of
oceanic steppe, the pale blue, undulating atmospheric layer spread out across the vast
plain, looking, perhaps, as it did when this part of the planet was under the sea. The air
felt fresh and cool, tinged with a reassuring fragrance of wood smoke. The landscape
enchanted me: empty, yet feeling inhabited, somehow still animated by people who had
lived millennia ago. Wandering farther than I suspected I should go, I came upon a small
creek, really just a rivulet’s dry track, about a foot wide. I followed it towards its origin
until a rocky, ash-colored butte ended my excursion at a place where others before me
had been drawn and left their mark. A brilliant blue khadag wrapped itself around a
skinny, nearly leafless willow by the streambed. It was a place of worship. I breathed
deeply and began my own prayer, placing my head and hands on the tree’s smooth bark.
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The sanctity of the land throbbed all around me. The smell of wild sage pushed for
attention, strong, and lemony. The rocks were alive, showing me glimpses of the faces of
ancestors who lived and died here. Above me soared Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky—a
sheltering canopy—and I was overcome with gratitude. The land called to me, and the
strange old man in white was the Lord of the Land. I considered skipping dinner but
decided I should try to be part of the team, at least at first. Besides, I wanted to see what
was on the menu. It was meat, of course. This was Mongolia.
We each had wood-burning stoves in our gers, a bare florescent light bulb, a small
table with a plastic Chinese thermos, two cups, a wooden chair, a bed and a nightstand. A
padlock and key hung on a nail by the door, which was usually left unlocked when you
were inside so the staff hearth-tender could slip in to start your fire before you got up in
the morning. It was a bit unnerving for me the first few times I woke in the semi-dark to
see a male or female Mongol crouched only a yard from my bed. Privacy is shaped
differently in Mongolia. Nomad families of ten or more live together in one room. The
frequent intrusion into my privacy that unsettled me was not meant to be the invasion that
I felt. A discrete focusing of one’s eyes, a narrowing of one’s visual field created a selfcontained, non-threatening presence.
The next morning, the ground was white with hoar frost. After a comfortable
night’s sleep under heavy blankets, when the fire died, I walked to the dining hall. The
group was discussing morning walks and sleep, or the lack of it. They chatted about the
relative comfort of the beds, the surprise of the firelighter’s visit, and how the camp’s
massive black dog had kept them awake. Mongols tend to keep very large dogs, giant
mastiffs with dreadlocks, to guard and protect their homes.
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“That dog was barking all night. Could you sleep?”
“I couldn’t sleep at all. Can’t they do something to keep the dog quiet?”
“It was just awful. I am so tired.”
“The dog probably scented wolves around the camp,” said Badral. The discussion
ended abruptly. I did wake once in the wee hours because I felt a presence in the ger with
me. I fumbled around and flicked on the flashlight. No one was there.
* * *
For the next few days, we drove for hours across the greening steppe,
contemplating horses, sheep, goats, cattle, and camels, the Five Snouts that have made
life in Mongolia possible. These herd animals were the basis of subsistence living for the
nomads. The steppe gave voice to the past in vertical, slab-like Deer Stones from a
Bronze age sacrificial cult, and windblown remnants of Buddhist monasteries marking
mass graves of monks executed during the 1930s. We were headed to a famous
monastery, Erdene Zuu, in the former capitol city of Mongolia, Kharakhorum. There
were ruins and archeological sites to visit, places of past lives, but I knew that here in the
home of my Mongolian language teacher, a painting of the White Old Man was alive.
The town of Kharakhorum was country quiet, a day’s drive to urban Ulaan
Baatar. About 10,000 souls snuggled in this fertile valley of the Orkhon River. Our
homes for the next two nights were in a ger camp between low hills where sheep and
goats surged and bubbled across tender spring grass. At night, the stars blazed
undiminished by artificial light.
After breakfast, Gongor and the drivers caravanned us over to the newly
inaugurated, state-of-the art Kharakhorum museum funded by the Japanese and Dutch.
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An expertly curated collection of artifacts hinted at the significance of the still being
reconstructed history. Ogedei Khan had reigned during the golden years of the Mongols
when people, possibly even Marco Polo, came to see this major locus of cultural
exchange. Currency was minted, and richly embroidered fabrics became available. In
about the year 1254, a distinguished guest arrived: the Flemish Franciscan missionary
and papal envoy to the Mongols, William of Rubruck. Rubruck was the first European to
provide an eyewitness description of Kharakhorum. The Franciscan described a
wonderful silver fountain made by the conscripted Paris silversmith for the Khan.
Formed in the shape of a tree, it had four silver lion heads at its roots, each one
containing a conduit-pipe and spewing forth white mare’s milk. There were four serpents
around the tree’s trunk, each one spewing forth an alcoholic beverage; wine, mead,
khoomis, and rice ale.
Religious tolerance had once reached an unprecedented peak here, a movement
begun by Chingis Khan. His successors encouraged dialogues and public debates
between Buddhist, Muslim, Taoist, and Nestorian Christian theologians and provided
temples and sanctuaries for each faith. A diorama of the city in the thirteenth century city
led me to fantasize a stroll down the dirt lanes of the walled compound, listening to
Nestorian church bells, hearing the call to prayer from a minaret, the gongs of the
Buddhists, and seeing Chinese Taoists strolling and bowing to each other. A noble
sociological experiment, whether idyllic or contentious in its reality.
This was the Empire of Chingis Khan in the land that, in a later time, Beatrice
Bulstrode desired to visit in order to see the “primitive” Mongols. The warrior culture
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had faded; the buildings and fountain were destroyed or stolen. The rule of the Qing
Chinese and the communist years had tried the Mongolian cultural core.
Stupas, 108 of the little white shrines that Buddhist erect wherever they wish to
tack the holy spirits to a place, lined the tops of Erdene Zuu’s walls like a baby’s teeth.
Most of the courtyard was empty except for rough stone outlines of where buildings had
stood. On the left side after entering the main gate, a few structures that had been spared
played host to tourists. They had originally served as temples, built in the Chinese style
with roofs that lifted the edges of their skirts. Now docents led visitors into the unlit halls
of museums that had once been sacred space. They were used to confuse tourists with
garish, multiple-eyed statues stolidly waiting in hollow pavilions sticky with bird
droppings. The high walls and images were darkened during the years of prayer by
smoke from incense and oil lamps.
I made an effort to pay attention, make notes, and learn who these deities were,
only to be overwhelmed within the first fifteen minutes. Monks spent years, a lifetime,
learning the proper names, attributes, and specific prayers for each deity in the roster of
Tibeto-Mongolian gods. I had ambitiously hoped to sort out which of the bulging-eyed
visages might be of local origin. That was an unrealistic expectation. This was a long
journey and I was on the train with more than half my life-ticket already punched.
We left the temple deities to their patient, eye-bulging tasks and wandered back
out into the courtyard. A breeze blew in half-hearted little shifts, covering the scraggly
weeds with a fresh covering of dust. Once a fabulous royal entourage had worshipped
here, and structures had filled the entire space. Now, we saw a new, large white stupa, the
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temple museum, and a few buildings in the far corner by the exit gate where the group
was headed.
Badral had something else in mind. His generally reserved demeanor changed as
he began waving, smiling, and beckoning us to come to a recently reconstructed Tibetan
style building. Lavrin Khiid was the only living, functioning monastery that rose out of
the ruins of hundreds that had once graced Erdene Zuu. Young men, some still boys,
came here to become monks, and about twenty of them were now training to be lamas. I
was hopeful that some of the older monks might be able to tell me something about the
White Old Man.
We were asked to wait outside while the body of muttering, red-robed men
finished clanging and trumpeting their way through a ritual. Several members of our
group became restless and began drifting away, snapping photographs as they moved
towards the vendor’s tables beckoning just beyond the outer gate. In any case, the diligent
monks and the Buddha were unruffled by us. We who remained with Badral shuffled our
boots on the bare earth and spun the walking prayer wheels on the entry path, set at a
height so that someone passing by could spin out a prayer. In front of the entrance to the
sanctuary, an adolescent monk made full-body prostrations on a special board for that
purpose, while an older man, a lay person in slacks and a jacket, performed identical
prostrations alongside of him. A slim monk about twelve years old, wearing a frayed and
worn maroon robe, studiously observed every move we made. He brought to mind the
story of another young monk who lived in this monastery when it was flourishing in the
1800s. Rinchin, a well-known Mongolian author, tells of how the monk Bunia devised a
parachute out of monks’ robes and executed several successful glides from the third story
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roof of the temple. He proudly shared his discovery with his community and was severely
beaten and left to die for his audacity.
The sounds from the temple eventually stilled, and Badral waved us in. I was
almost on top of Badral’s daypack, eager to enter the sanctuary. Badral slipped into a
reverent attitude as he entered, keeping a sharp eye on his charges. Once inside I
followed him as he began to move clockwise with local devotees around the perimeter of
the sanctuary. People pressed their foreheads against a tall stack what appeared to be
ingots of gold, brick-shaped objects wrapped in golden silk. “The Kangur,” whispered
Badral. These were the 108 books of the Buddhist canon. I felt too self-conscious to
imitate the devotees’ bows but followed their actions of placing a few tugrugs in front of
each of the images. I was happy to just know the names of a few of the lot on the altar
wall altar: the Buddha, Green Tara, White Tara, Mahakala, Manjusri, and Palden Lhlamo,
deities that embodied justice, healing, prosperity, and protection.
As I edged sideways along the central altar where the Buddha reflected the light
in an amber glow, almost obscured by silk scarves and offerings, I paused. An image in a
glass case looked like nothing I was familiar with. I took a step back to allow pilgrims to
pass by me, then moved closer to fully take in a two-foot-high white, hand-molded
sculpture shaped like a pine tree, wide at the base, narrow at the top. It appeared to have
been made out of Play-dough, a soft surface covered with flowers, swirls of leaves, and
Buddhist symbols in primary colors.
To my astonishment, at the base of this sculpture reposed the White Old Man! It
was really Tsagaan Ovgon. I checked the symbols surrounding him and recognized the
staff and prayer beads in his hands, the tree full of ripe fruits, flowers above him, and the
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animals at his feet. I had been holding my breath, and my excitement was causing my
cheeks to flush with heat. It was an answer to my question about whether people pray to
him. He held a place of honor in the most sacred area of the temple, the sanctum
sanctorum. What made it more interesting was that the sculpture itself looked fresh. Not a
dusty relic or even a few years old, the pliant-looking dough-form appeared to be a recent
creation, as in last week.
This sculpture was known as a balin to Mongolians, or a torma, as it is called in
Tibet, where the concept originated. Balin were routinely created as a mediation practice
by monks, and after being forbidden for most of the last century, the appealing devotional
images were being shown to the people again. These bright pastry sculptures represented
a food offering for the gods, formed from a thick pasty dough made of goat-fat and
buckwheat flour or barley flour with honey. The word for honey is “bal" in Mongolia.
I didn’t really understand then what I was seeing as I stood gaping with Mongols
praying all around me. I desperately wanted to take a picture of it.
There was a problem. Photographs were strictly forbidden in the temple.
I scooted over to Badral as decorously as I could to beg his assistance. “Please
may I take a picture? The White Old Man is on that sculpture. I have been looking for
him this whole trip. Please?” I wheedled.
“It’s not allowed in here, but let me talk to one of the monks.”
I waited while the rest of the group filed by. Badral spoke with a young monk, and turned
back to me.
“He says, ‘No photos.’” I was crushed.
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“Can you ask someone to explain to me what this sculpture is for, who made it,
and what it means? I want to know anything you can find out.”
“Wait. I know the head lama of this monastery. Let me talk to the guy in charge
over there.” Badral conferred for a few minutes with a lama seated on a raised red chair
by the door. From behind a row of monks bent over sutras, I quivered with tension,
staring back at the sculpture.
“This monastery has a special connection to Tsagaan Ovgon,” Badral said when
he came back to me. “The monks make devotions to him and this paste offering is one
way they do it. The lama said you may take one, only one photograph.” I headed back to
the sculpture, following the clockwise circuit I had walked before, Badral at my side.
Unfortunately, two members saw me take out my camera and maneuvered over to snap
their own photographs under cover of my permission. I was no more righteous than they.
I took two.
I was still standing in front of the main statue of the Buddha, looking at the image
of the White Old Man, when I felt greenness and light fill the air around me. I wanted to
stay, but the rest of our entourage was exiting. Badral started towards the door. I slowly
followed him, humming with questions.
“Badral, could you ask the monks about Tsagaan Ovgon for me? Do people
actually pray to him as a god or a saint?” I grew frantic at leaving what I wanted so much,
answers that would bring me closer to knowing the old man. The group filtered away past
the courtyard.
“I would be happy take you to meet Hambd Lama Bassuren, the head of this
monastery. He would be able to tell you what you want to know. At the moment, he is at
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a Buddhist conference in Thailand, but if you would like, I can take you later. You said
you are staying in Mongolia all summer, didn’t you?”
“That’s right. Thank you, Badral. Please, let’s plan to come back to see the lama.”
I was in the right place with the right guide.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
MEANDERING WITH MONCK
It was mid-June and the valley of the Tule River lay windless under the sun with
temperatures in the seventies. Street artists of Ulaan Baatar plied the streets carrying
awkward flat folders of their winter painting achievements: gers, horses, mountains, and
charging warriors of Chingis Khan’s Empire. Tourists, having recently discovered
Mongolia as a travel destination, strolled in bulging cargo pants and open backpacks,
offering unprecedented opportunity to hopeful pickpockets. I had some open-ended time
after the Harvard tour group ended, so I resolved to delve deeper into the intricacies of
Mongolian religion. The newly restored monasteries would be a likely source of
information about the White Old Man, but I would need an interpreter.
Monck Orgil Lkhavga, a bright thirty-one year old, had accompanied the tour as
an apprentice guide. I had enjoyed his astute, ironical attitude and sometimes oppositional
but well thought out ideas. When the possibility of hiring him as a local guide came
about, I decided to engage him for day trips to the monasteries in UB.
Monck would be fun to travel with on my quest. His sense of humor was good,
and there was the fact that he was tall, lithe and handsome and resembled a rock-star with
his pencil mustache and long ponytail. Men in Mongolia generally did not wear
ponytails, but Monck enjoyed his sense of being different. He was skeptical about
religion in general but spoke English exceptionally well, had travelled in Japan, Korea,
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China, and India, and had an inquisitive mind. “Eternal Mountain Peak,” the meaning of
Monck Orgil’s name, would be my guide and interpreter for the next few weeks.
Early in the morning, before the day had heated up, Monck eventually arrived at
my hotel with a car and driver for our initial excursion. “Should we go over to Ganden
monastery first?” he asked.
“I have an errand to run first,” I said. “ And I need you and the driver to help me.”
I needed to go to the US Embassy to have a document notarized, a grindingly slow
procedure that would take up the entire morning. I was required to bring two witnesses in
with me, so the three of us passed through security, leaving our knives with the officer,
leaving the two Mongols unsure about entering American territory. We then waited, and I
fidgeted. Mongolian time flows like water, but not always as fast or in the direction an
American expects. Monck occupied our waiting period by attempting to explain me how
Mongols perceive time. He drew a circle with a cross in it.
“This is a day for a Mongolian. The spaces represent morning, afternoon, evening,
and night.” Then Monck drew eight more lines in the circle. “This is how Americans
divide their day, with smaller sections. 8:00 a.m. does not mean anytime between sunrise
and noon as it does for a Mongol. There is a little leeway for being late, but there are
misunderstandings. Now, this is Japanese time.” He filled the circle with crosshatched
lines until it became a fine mesh. “There is no room for error for a Japanese. It is the
polar opposite of Mongolian thinking.” Monck and I were to have several opportunities
to consider our differences in time-space perception.
After the document was duly notarized and witnessed, we were ready to collect
our knives and grab a light lunch. Monck chose a guantz, a local cafe for kushuur (fried
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flat, meat-filled dough packets) and sutsei tsai (salted milk tea). “Light” and “authentic”
were words that did not go together in terms of local cuisine. I discovered, to Monck’s
consternation later, that kushuur made me sluggish and sleepy. The next time, I would
order the only “light-like” dish, vegetable soup, which is fatty mutton broth with a slice
of onion, potato chunks, and sometimes a slice of carrot.
* * *
Ganden Monastery
With full bellies and greasy lips, we rolled off into the afternoon to begin the
research on the White Old Man. Our first stop was Ganden, or Gandentegchinlen khiid,
the largest Buddhist temple in UB. The main temple, a tall, white Tibetan-style structure
that looked it had been thrust up from the earth’s interior during a tectonic shift. Its height
was determined by the gold-plated statue of Chenrisig, a form of Avalokitisvara, both
forms of the Buddha, who sheltered his 26.5-meter body inside. After joining the fervent
crowd circumambulating the giant, Monck and I noted that we did not see any images of
the White Old Man.
An idea struck me. It seemed an opportune time to take advantage of the fortunetelling services offered by the lamas. Geser Sum was a monastic facility that housed an
entire team of lamas whose special training was in the ancient art of divination. Many
Mongols plan their weddings, first haircuts, and business decisions after consulting a
zurkhachi, an astrologer. We found the proper building, and Monck established my place
in the line of people waiting for their consultations.
A petite middle-aged woman next to us struck up a conversation with Monck,
asking where this non-Mongol was from and why she was here. As they chatted and
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Monck told her about my interest in the White Old Man, she became more intense in her
conversation. Monck translated for me, “This lady is telling us about the town of
Sainshand in the Gobi. She says you should go there because of your interests. You
should especially visit Khamryn Khiid, where Lama Danzan Rabjaa lived. It is an
amazing, sacred place, according to her.” Monck, smiling his skeptic’s smile, said, “She
told me that there was a miracle there. When the Emperor of Japan visited Mongolia, he
had no heir, so he went to Khamryn Khiid to pray. After he returned to Japan, his wife
conceived a son who was born in 1960. Emperor Akihito was so grateful that he sent a
thousand sakuras, cherry trees, to be planted in the Gobi desert where Danzan Rabjaa had
lived. With no set plans for the next few weeks and willing to follow the suggestions of
strangers, I decided to take that trip with Monck.
After about a half hour, we were signaled to enter a tiny room lit only by daylight,
where a middle-aged monk sat on a cushion on the floor. Lama D. Tsogbaatar indicated
that I should sit before him facing a low wooden table with books, pamphlets, and
notepaper stacked against the outer wall.
“What can I help you with?” the lama asked.
Monck replied for me, “This is Barbara. She is an American who wants to learn
about Tsagaan Ovgon. She would like you to tell her what fortune has for her in her
research.”
“I would like to ask another question, too, about romance. I would like to know
what the Lama sees for me with a man I recently met.” I said. Monck translated, with
no quips.
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The lama took my birthdate and made some calculations. Then he asked me to
think of three numbers between 1 and 10 and tell them to him, then to do it again. He
burrowed into some worn booklets and kept his head bent as he made calculations.
“To learn about Tsagaan Ovgon, you can come to Mongolia for a year, if it is
possible,” said the diviner.
“What about the man I met?”
“Your study of Tsagaan Ovgon is better for you than this man,” replied the Lama.
The ancient, ineffable wisdom of the East, Lama Tsogbaatar sounded like my
father.
I had my answers, but I did like romance. Eros fires my internal engine. My
current male interest was a Japanese-American rock climber whom I had met at the
Explorer’s Club. It was an online correspondence that eventually ground itself down to a
disappointing nub. Tsagaan Ovgon, even if enigmatic, was certainly the more promising
and rewarding male interest in my life.
The lama handed me a small astrological calendar that he had published. I
thanked him and made my offering to him, placing tugrug notes in his hands with both of
my hands, the way Monck had coached me to. The double-handed gesture shows honor
and respect, as well as that one is not holding a weapon in a concealed hand. On our way
out, we stopped at the monastery’s gift shop. On a shelf behind the cashier were dozens
of brightly colored framed paintings, about five-by-seven inches in size. There, at last,
was Tsagaan Ovgon, and he was going to come home with me. I had already collected a
statue of the Green Tara and a tiny Buddha and had noticed that a little altar had been
quietly forming itself in a corner of my room.
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“I would like to buy the Tsagaan Ovgon,” I told Monck. Monck spoke to the lady
behind the counter, and she asked him something. Monck asked me, “Do you want the
framed and a blessing?”
“Yes, I would like the frame.”
“Do you want it blessed?” asked Monck.
“Well, yes, sure, I mean, what do you mean? Will a lama bless it for me?”
“Yes, but it will cost you extra.”
“Okay.” It was only a few dollars in US currency. The clerk took the painting
through a door and into the monastic labyrinth. I envisioned a dark hall with long rows of
monks hovering over paintings, muttering Sanskrit prayers. Then, it dawned on me that
this was what Doogo, my Mongolian language teacher was talking about when she said
her sister had taken the painting she made of the White Old Man to Ganden and the lamas
made it come to life.
When my painting came back from being blessed, I asked, “Monck, is my
painting alive now?”
“Yes, that’s what you wanted isn’t it?”
It seemed so normal here to speak of things unimaginable in other parts of the
world. I pressed my fingertips against the glass, wondering if I might feel the White Old
man shifting around as he tried out his newly awakened body.
Our next monastery was totally different from Ganden, in surprising ways.
* * *
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Dashchoilon
The complex of buildings that comprised Dashchoilon monastery, unlike the
stately, traditional architecture of Ganden, was modernistic. Plaster domes looking like
grounded spaceships or oversized gers popped up behind the compound’s walls. A little
tower peaked on top of each dome and strange blue and white-dotted waves enclosed
mustard-yellow fillings, eye-like, on both sides of the maroon exterior, evoking the
Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu. The upside-down-bowl buildings were once used for
the Soviet State Circus in the 1930s and were moved to this location after the
monastery’s original 1890 buildings were destroyed.
Inside the first dome, huge wooden prayer beads drew us over to inspect them, a
rosary of 108 beads, each the size of a basketball. Japanese Buddhists had donated it with
the hope that it would someday be held by a fittingly large statue of the Buddha. Now
that I had some idea where the White Old Man might be found, I scanned the circular
space and my eyes hit upon a glass display case with a two-foot tall, waxy, decorated
object in it. On close inspection it proved to be a balin, a honey, flour, and fat devotional
sculpture like the one I had first encountered in Kharakhorum. Walking around it
revealed flowers and trees and—yes, there he was! The White Old Man sat toward the
bottom of the balin, smiling under a fruiting tree, accompanied by pairs of deer and
swans. I took a deep breath. He was being venerated. On the curved walls all around were
murals. On my right was Tsagaan Ovgon, grinning among the gods. Photographs were
permitted here, a more relaxed temple than Lavrin Khiid.
The second dome resonated with gongs and prayers in full production. Monck
quickly located a lama who agreed to speak with us when prayers were over.
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Altankhuyag Lama, in his thirties, led us to the unlit rear of the temple where the air
tingled my senses with the scent of incense: not sandalwood’s sweet perfume smell, but
dried Mongolian juniper. The sharp scent always stirred a sense of comfort in me. A
double row of monks chanted the last of the morning prayers as Monck and I sat down on
a low bench in front of the lama’s desk. The lama sat, facing us, and smiled. I noted his
straight white teeth and clean-shaven head. He slipped his cell phone out of the folds of
his red and orange robes with six inch cerulean blue cuffs and placed it on the desk. After
checking the large, shiny watch on his wrist, he turned his full attention to us.
I spoke up first, excited to have this opportunity to speak with a Buddhist
clergyman who would be familiar with all the deities in his monastery. “Thank you so
much for your time, Lama. I am in Mongolia to learn about Tsagan Ovgon, the White
Old Man.”
“Barbara is American. This is her third time in Mongolia, and she is hoping for
help with her research on Tsagaan Ovgon,” said Monck. The lama spoke some English,
but I was positive he did not recognize my pronunciation of Tsagaan Ovgon.
The lama nodded benignly, saying, “Ah. You want to know about Tserendug.”
“Tserendug is the same as Tsagaan Ovgon.”
“Tserendug is the Tibetan name, the correct name for him. He is placed with the
deities, but he is not a god. He is not to be worshipped.”
I was taken aback by the sternness of the lama, who was critical of anyone
who would pray to the White Old Man. Then the lama launched into a discourse on
Buddhist cosmology.
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“There are six levels of human existence: three levels above and three below. God
is at the top. That is called Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky. At the second level, there are the
gods such as Manjusri, Mahakala, and Green Tara. The next level is made up of humans
and Tserendug, who lives at the same level as humans.
“We should not pray to Tserendug. He is not a deity. He is our peer. We must
never pray to humans, but only to god and those above us.”
I was surprised to hear that Tserendug was at the human level, not with the gods. I
had heard he lived with them but was not one of them. I was hearing many different
things. Oddly, the name of the Green Tara kept popping up whenever I heard the White
Old Man being discussed. I asked the lama about her. He shook his head and, short of
rolling his eyes, stated firmly and somewhat imperiously to forget the idea that Green
Tara and The White Old Man had any connection. The lama was on a roll.
I had been hoping to hear some clarification on how the White Old Man came
into Buddhism, or some explanation of the powers I had seen him display in the Tsam.
There were too many unexplained aspects to this figure. Lavrin monastery in Erdene Zuu
was a perfect example of contemporary active devotion to Tsagaan Ovgon/Tserendug.
Had Mongolian Buddhism spawned opposing theological schools of thought about his
humanity? I immediately thought of Khidr, who was revered as a saint or demigod by
some Muslims, while the orthodox mullahs frowned on reverence for any being other
than Allah. Another similarity between the White and the Green mysterious wanderers
to consider.
My scrawls were winding themselves into words that only I could read, or
perhaps not, filling pages of my black moleskine notebook. Lama Altankhuyag
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continued, “The three lower levels are animals. Horses are the noble ones. Pigs are the
evil ones, greedy. The lowest ones are the tigers because they kill each other.” He went
on with doctrine for a little longer, then Monck and I thanked him and stood up to leave.
The lama surprised me by saying to Monck, “Tell Barbara I would like to stay in touch
with her. We might work on a project together.” We exchanged email addresses, and the
lama gave me his cell phone number, inviting me to come and talk with him anytime.
Then, in his next words, he made my day.
“There will be a Tsam dance here on July 9. Come early in the morning. It is a
full-day ceremony.”
I was delighted. It had been my hope to attend a real Tsam performed by monks. I
assured the lama that I would be there, while atheist Monck shifted a little, suspecting
that he might be in for a long day of religious ritual. Driving away, Monck informed me
that Altankhuyag hosted a Buddhist radio show in Ulaan Baatar and ran an nongovernment organization (NGO) to promulgate Buddhist teachings about ecology and
care for the earth.
“I think the lama has an idea that he could connect you to his NGO. He needs
funding,” said Monck. I was pleased with the meeting even though it had not gone the
way I might have liked. It was good to have all viewpoints on a topic. Then Monck burst
my bubble.
“You know, you really should be better prepared when you go into an interview.
You are a professional.”
“Monck, I didn’t know we were going to be interviewing anyone today”
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“That makes no difference. You should always be prepared and have a written list
of questions and a recorder. You didn’t direct the interview but just let him go on.”
I was hurt, but Monck was right. Young wise guy. If I were to travel with Monck
again, this was a foretaste of an interesting journey.
Later, Monck said, “There is no unified work about The White Old Man. It would
be good for you to prepare a monograph, something for visitors to Mongolia to read, for
everyone. Maybe you should write something about each of the Tsam characters. It
would be a good thing to do.” I was heartened.
“It might be true that Tsagaan Ovgon is a deity. After all, he is the symbol of
protection of the earth. Actually, he is the Mongolian nature deity,” Monck said.
That resonated with me. Father Nature in contrast to Mother Nature, or maybe not
contrasting but completing her.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LAMA OF THE GOBI
Whenever I passed in front of the glass front of the hotel gift shop, I quickened
my pace lest the trap-door spider in the form of a bored Mongolian saleslady spot me as
prey. One grey, rainy day, I drifted in to check the bookshelf, ignoring the sudden
animation of the clerk. The selection appeared unexceptional, mostly Mongolian guidebooks and photography collections. I glanced at a thin, tangerine colored book. A
drawing of a white-bodied, semi-naked figure in a mediation pose on the cover led me to
decide it was a guide to Buddhist practice. Not something I wanted to read right now.
Besides, books claiming to be how-to manuals to the Big Nirvana did not hold appeal for
me. Nonetheless, in the face of a dearth of reading material, I picked it up.
“This is guide to Mongolia,” said a female voice. The clerk pushed a pre-read
copy of Lonely Planet in front of the book I now held.
I said, “No, thank you.”
“Felt ger?” A tiny ger on a key chain dangled before my eyes.
“Not right now.”
The title of the book caught my attention. The Lama of the Gobi: The Life and
Times of Danzan Rabjaa, Mongolia’s Greatest Mystical Poet. It had been written by
Michael Kohn, who authored the Lonely Planet guide. I liked his style. Even more, I
liked the words that were flashing through my neurons at the moment. Mystical. Poet.
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Gobi. Lama. Danzan Rabjaa had been a controversial lama known as the Noyon Khutagt,
a title given to reincarnated holy lamas. He was “famous for his many love affairs and his
unconstrained consumption of alcohol, both of which are prohibited to Buddhist monks.
Mongols love him for both.”
“Ah, a real person,” I sighed to myself.
A miniature wooden camel was marching across the pages. The saleslady’s
insistent sales buzz had intensified. I needed to be alone with this book. I bought it,
squirreled myself in my room, and discovered that I had made a fortuitous purchase.
Danzan Rabjaa (1803-1865) lived in Dornogobi Aimag as a physician and a lama
of the Red Hat sect of Buddhism, writing philosophical treatises, screenplays, and operas.
A rebel, he broke ground in granting equality to women in his temple and his theater
productions. The book unfolded the story of how, during the Cultural Revolution in 1937,
a precious treasure was hidden. Before they could be destroyed, Rabjaa’s personal
effects, religious icons, robes, Tsam headgear, carvings, books, and personally created
paintings were buried in the Gobi desert sands. Only one man held the secret of the
location and passed it on to his son, Altangerel, before he died. When freedom of religion
returned to Mongolia in 1991, Altangerel watched as the boxes were dug up and their
priceless contents moved to the newly built Danzan Rabjaa Museum in the lama’s
hometown of Sainshand.
What, if anything, did Danzan Rabjaa have to do with the White Old Man?
The lama produced and choreographed Tsam dances, sometimes performing in
them himself. I thought of Ganna, who danced as the White Old Man in his Tsam. The
Tsam was described as a venue populated by ghoulish characters, each with terrifying
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demonic masks and skull necklaces. The cast included deformed animals, evil spirits,
Indian yogis, and the Chokyi Gyalpo, the bull-headed religious king who slew the Lord
of the Dead. This creature performed the ritual sacrifice by dismembering a corpse and
scattering the limbs. I stayed in my room immersed in the realm of the dead for the
remainder of the day.
I wanted to see a full Tsam more than ever. There was so much more to the ritual
than I had realized. I had prayed blindly at the feet of the Bull-Headed dancer without
having a clue about his actual activities. The White Old Man was described as an old man
with a long white beard who played the comic role to ease the tension in the ritual, which
was meant to instill fear. The old man named Tserendug had been part of the pantheon of
shamanic gods, a symbol of fertility for both people and livestock. He had been invited
into the Buddhist realm by lamas who recognized his popularity. Danzan Rabjaa toyed
with the Tsam dances and, in doing so, made some unusual alterations in the fairly
consistent ritual, changing its rules and conformity. One major change he made was to
increase the presence and importance of female characters.
The most intriguing change the lama made was to de-emphasize the role of
Tsagaan Ovgon/Tserendug. The Old Man was made subservient to his female protectordeity. In one scene, he mistakenly milks an elephant. His reaction upon realizing this was
a humiliating moment for Tserendug and comic relief for Rabjaa’s audience. I felt
embarrassed and sorry for “my” old man. Musing on Danzan Rabjaa’s devaluation of the
White Old Man and Lama Altankhuyag’s insistence on the mere humanity of him, I
speculated that the lamas might have felt an old, now unconscious threat. Tsagaan Ovgon
might have been more than just a powerful shamanic figure in pre-Buddhist times, but I
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had nothing but my own intuition to go by. The book had stabbed at the core of my quest.
A trip to Sainshand and Khamryn Khiid, the haunts of the Lama of the Gobi might shed
some further light.
* * *
Sainshand
The desert town of about 20,000 people, not far from the Chinese border, must
have literally been a watering hole on the China-Russian Tea Road to have been given
the name that meant Good Pond. Monck and I had arranged for a Land Cruiser and a
driver, Togtokh, a quiet colossus of toned muscle who ferried us swiftly through the now
drying steppe of high summer to Sainshand.
Driving took up most of our first day, broken by a stop at a roadside diner in the
small village of Choir, known in pre-Soviet times for its great monastery and later for its
Soviet airbase. On one of our numerous rest stops, shuffling into the sands, I found a
stone unlike any I had ever seen. An oyster-grey, translucent, smooth as glass rock with a
wart-like bump on one end. The apricot-sized stone raised eyebrows on both Monck and
Togtokh when I displayed it. They both conceded that this sort of rock had significance
for Mongolians. “It is special. It’s a Gobi stone. You should keep it.” The free-range
Gobi stone found a home in my pocket and, later, a name. It was onyx. Later, I was to
meet Gobi stones resting on altar stones by ovoos as offerings to the local spirits.
Sainshand Sum, or township, is the capitol of Dornogobi, so there were passable
restaurants and an inviting town square, all spruced up and decorated for a local
summer festival.
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The attraction we had come for was the Noyon Khutagt Danzan Rabjaa Museum.
Monck headed out to find it and to see if it was open as soon as we checked into our
hotel. His initiative made up for his skepticism that the museum even existed. There was
a line about it in an older guidebook but nothing current online or by Mongolian word of
mouth. Monck succeeded on his mission, even arranging a meeting with the curator the
next day.
The desert night had begun to lose its coolness when I awoke. My window
opened onto the square and I contemplated the scattered remnants of last night’s revelry
as I sipped tea. In-room water boilers always enhanced my stays in Mongolian hotels, and
I carried my own tea supply. Breakfast was not until 9:00 a.m., when I met Togtokh and a
weary-looking Monck in the dining room. Monck had taken advantage of the festivities
during the night. An open-air concert had gone on until midnight in the night streets.
The recently built museum was worth the trip. The lama’s remarkable collection
was well lit and better curated than the holdings of Ulaan Bataar’s Zanabazar Museum of
Fine Arts. Dozens of the lama’s own paintings illustrated Tantric teachings, several
incorporating images of the lama himself as the central figure. Tantra, I reminded myself,
was a doctrine that employed symbolism of death and sex, so it should be no surprise that
the lama’s artwork gave graphic evidence of his interests. His Tsam costumes and masks
had their own idiosyncrasies.
Danzan Rabjaa had been a Black Hat dancer, a dark wizard, new information that
grabbed my attention. When I saw the characteristic shanag’s broad-brimmed hat he had
designed for himself, I stared in amazement. He must have loomed a magnificent vision
dancing under fifteen kilos of silver. The information on the signage gave me pause. The
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hat symbolized the world. The dome rising out of its center represented Mount Meru, the
sacred mountain and the center of the world, the mountain that shamans ascend in trance
states. A thrill up tingled my neck. Mount Meru has been identified as Mount Kailas.
So, here in the Gobi, in the quiet exhibition halls of a singular museum, a
connection between the shamanic shanags, the White Old Man, and the gods of the
underworld drew itself into a knot. If this lama had been a sorcerer, why did he downplay
the role of Tsagaan Ovgon? I gazed at the massive hat worn by a controversial mystic and
seducer of women and felt I was being watched. Moving on to a display of the lama’s
handicrafts, I scanned the objects blankly, still mulling over the hat and what it might
mean to be a master of Tantric arts. I glanced into a display case at a cream-colored
carved block the size of a coffee mug. I moved on, and uneasiness, a pushy little feeling,
nagged at me. I succumbed and returned to look again at the ivory block more carefully. I
squeaked involuntarily. It was loud enough to catch the attention of Monck, who was still
examining one of the more sexually explicit paintings.
“Look! It’s Tsagaan Ovgon!” I blurted. The ivory block had been hand-carved on
all four sides in great detail. On the side facing the glass, there was a cross-legged figure
holding a staff, seated under the thickly foliaged branches of a tree, with tiny animals
below his feet. Above the tree was a range of mountains. The curator heard the excited
chatter and came over to see which exhibit had caused such a reaction. “Danzan Rabjaa
carved the image of the White Old Man on this piece. He tried to diminish the old man’s
importance in the Tsam. Why do you think he would go to the effort of carving this
beautiful piece?”
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Neither Monck nor the curator could answer me. Once again, more questions
than answers.
From Sainshand we drove about an hour to the place that we had heard about
from the lady at the fortune-teller. Khamryn Khiid was the name of the monastic
compound that Danzan Rabjaa built in 1821 near a spring in the desert. Destroyed in
1930, it was being restored as an energy-healing site. Tourists, followers of a Danzan
Rabjaa cult, Buddhists, and New Age seekers climb, roll, and sing according to
traditional and prescribed ritual practices all over this spot for physical and spiritual
healing. It has been named Shambala because it was said to be one of the three entrances
to the mystical land at the center of the earth that provides energy to all forms of life.
Interestingly, one of the other entrances is said to be on Mount Kailas.
Monck found an aged-looking lama, only 63, who energetically led us on a tour of
the area while making sure we performed all of the rituals, including rolling on the
ground to absorb energy, ringing a gigantic bell, and singing a song Danzan Rabjaa had
written, “Perfect Qualities.” Monck looked on as I followed instructions, and he was not
alone in being a skeptic this time. A double ovoo made of two mounds of rocks covered
with milk offerings looked unmistakably like a woman’s firm, full breasts. Danzan
Rabjaa’s tribute to women, a sacred site for honoring one’s mother and female relatives.
Farther on, a wispy stream pinned down low cliffs that were honeycombed with manmade cave openings. In this place, lamas would meditate, sealed away from the world for
108 days, with rice and tea brought to tiny openings in their clay doors by novice monks.
The trickling stream bed under the wall of cells attempted to bring nourishment to
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scrawny, desperate brown trunks and dry leaves, the legacy of the Japanese Emperor’s
gratitude: cherry trees.
Monck told me. “You are beginning to have a hole in your ear.” He meant that I
was starting to pick up words and understand Mongolian. That was encouraging, as I was
going back to the Bridge School for Mongolian language class again the next day. After a
sweet-smelling, cool second night in the Gobi, we drove back to the city. I knew we were
leaving the quiet life and felt a loss when we hit paved road just outside of Ulaan Baatar.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PLANNING AN EXPEDITION
The hallowed halls of higher education glowed with the light from bluish
florescent tubes, the better to light black and white photographs of academics in black
gowns and highlight gaudy Soviet awards of recognition. Expressionless middle-aged
men in suits or blazers over V-neck sweaters carried briefcases as they popped in and
out of half-panel glass office doors. The Mongolian Academy of Science housed the
country’s brightest, and herein toiled the professor we were coming to visit, Dr.
Balchig Katuu.
“This professor we are going to talk with is the head of the Linguistics and
Folklore Department. He not only knows about the White Old Man but has published a
paper about him. I thought the two of you should meet,” said Badral.
The years of flapping about on my own, trying to find someone knowledgeable
about the White Old Man, were about to end. I could almost smell the archived journals
of Mongolian lore mingled with the stale air of the academy’s classrooms. It had been my
hope to connect with the universities on my first trip, and a winter was spent sending
inquiries and letters to names with Ph.D. after them to no avail. It seemed at once too
good to be true and about time for this to happen.
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“Dr. Katuu is an expert ethnologist originally from Uvs in Western Mongolia. He
has published several books on Mongolian epics and songs. I don’t think he knows much
English, but I can translate for you,” said Badral.
We located the professor, immersed in papers in an office crowed with desks and
cubicles. Badral introduced me as Dr. Annan, who had being coming to Mongolia for
several years to do research on the White Old Man. I felt as if my relationship with the
ethereal figure had just become incarnate and explained my interest in the White Old
Man. Katuu exemplified the look of a tenured academic in a soft, tan sweater over a dress
shirt, wire-rimmed glasses, and a blazer. His smile was genuine and warm, and his face
was pleasing to me, a cat-lover, as there was something cat-like about his features. He
handed me a thin booklet with a white cover. I could only make out the most important
words: the Cyrillic letters of Tsagaan Ovgon’s name, цагаан ѳвгѳн. The two Mongols
spoke at length, and when Badral was not translating for me I let the strong sound of the
language play a riff on my eardrums, occasionally recognizing Tsagaan Ovgon’s name.
Badral explained, “There is a prayer in the book that was made at Tsagaan
Ovgon’s ovoo in Katuu’s home region. He remembers going with his parents to make
offerings there frequently when he was growing up.” Katuu told us a little bit about the
area of Mongolia where he was born.
“My homeland is in Davst on the Russian border. When I was growing up, it was
all under the Soviets, so we could go to the Tsagaan Ovgon’s ovoo. It is possible to see
the ovoo across the border now, but we can’t go over to pray there anymore. People pray
to him, much more out there in the west than around Ulaan Baatar . Uvs and Hovd
provinces has stronger belief in Tsagaan Aava than here in Central Mongolia.”
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“It would be interesting to interview some elders out there and hear stories about
their worship of him,” said Badral. “I would like to propose a trip that we three make
together with the purpose of doing interviews. Maybe we could even go to see that ovoo.
Are you interested?”
Katuu responded immediately, “We might be able to get permission from the
border patrol to cross over to visit it.” He was eager to jump on board with us. My eyes
were drying out from being open wide with excitement so long.
“This is something we can think about for next summer.” Badral said.
“I will try to round up elders who might tell us their stories about the White Old
Man” Katuu said.
* * *
The following spring, I was back in Ulaan Baatar, ready to embark on a freelance
ethnological research expedition with Katuu and Badral. We three seekers were heading
off to Western Mongolia to find the White Old Man of Mongolia. Badral picked me up
on a clear September morning at my Ulaan Baatar hotel in his SUV with a smiling Katuu
in the back seat clutching a black canvas briefcase. We exchanged the Mongolian
greeting “sain bain uu” with a handshake and drove over to the Tsendenbal Institute.
Katuu had arranged for us to interview a woman from Western Mongolia who had
often visited a special place when she was growing up that she called “the White Old
Man’s house.”
Under a gilt-framed picture of Tsendenbal, prime minister of Mongolia before
1991, Badral and I sat at a dark wooden conference table across from Buyan Togtokh.
Katuu introduced her as a retired middle-school teacher from his hometown of Davst.
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Buyan’s shining short grey hair effectively showed off a pair of long, teardrop pearl
earrings as they swung over her high-neck Mongolian-style blouse, a striking purple-pink
silk with gold piping. Was our interview the reason for her fine attire? Formalities of
dress and procedure from Soviet times lingered in Mongolian life.
She began, “As a child, I would go to a place in a grove where six streams met
and visit a little wooden house with a picture of Tsagaan Ovgon inside.”
“More like a shack or shed,” Badral clarified as he interpreted.
“Local people brought things there. My father would take pieces of meat to leave
on Tsagaan Sar, the Lunar New Year. The shed always contained people’s offerings of
khadags and hand carved wooden statues of deities that were placed on a shelf above
waist height.”
“There was a time during the migration period of the Western Mongols when it
was taboo to place deities below waist level,” Badral said. People in that area, originally
a large population known as Oirats, had moved around dramatically because of
political pressures.
Buyan continued,“ A saddle, bridle, and stirrups were next to the picture of
Tsagaan Ovgon.”
“Why?” all of us pondered, “Was Tsagaan Ovgon ever associated with horses?”
Was the tack supposed to be for Tsagaan Ovgon’s horse? None of us could remember
ever seeing him portrayed with a horse, only wild animals and birds. Perhaps someone
made a special prayer for a lost or sick horse.
“The picture of Tsagaan Ovgon in the house was traditional,” Buyan explained.
“He looked like a nice old man, not like the modern, commercial, goofy guy. A family by
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the name of Gurvan lived nearby, and the father took care of the shrine voluntarily. No
one told him to do it, but he cleaned it up and kept it tidy. There was a teepee, a sort of
shrine made of up-ended branches nearby. It had paintings of the Buddha and Tara in it.
No images of Tsagaan Ovgon. Only paintings hung within, none of the little carved
statues. Those were only in the shed with the White Old Man. Then, one day when I was
in fifth grade, I went to visit the little wooden house, but it had been destroyed, and
everything inside was gone.”
“That would have been in 1959. Buyan doesn’t know what happened to it,” said
Badral. “That was a time when collectivization was going on under the Soviets.
Representatives of the local police would likely be the ones to have confiscated the
images of the deities and demolished the wooden building.”
Tsagaan Ovgon’s role in Uvs province was believed to be that of protector.
People prayed to him for protection of animals and from the Tuvans who crossed the
border, marauding and harassing the people on the Mongolian side. Davst means “the one
with salt” because the salt mines were located there. Perhaps because of the saline
content of the land, there is not much pasture in Davst, so people are careful with the
land. They do not cut bushes or grass. So their connection to Tsagaan Ovgon is stronger
than around Ulaan Baatar.
“Do you want to ask Buyan anything, Barbara?”
“Do you know of people having dreams, visions, or actually meeting Tsagaan
Ovgon?” So far I had never had an affirmative answer, but I was not quitting. There were
innumerable legends of encounters with Elijah the Prophet, Khidr, and wandering
immortals, so I reasoned that someone must have met the White Old Man.
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“I haven’t heard of any. Have you?” Buyan said, turning to a highly decorated,
aged officer of the communist era Mongolian Army who had joined us. He had been
invited as a guest because he had also grown up in Davst. The medals on his chest caught
the overhead light as he shook his head.
“No.” Buyan commented, “Shamans do that sort of thing. I am not a shaman.”
Katuu produced a pen and paper for Buyan to give us directions to the exact
location of the shrine so we could find it.
“I’m was pretty sure we will be able find the Gurav family and ask them about the
place,” said Badral.
“It’s a shame,” Buyan continued. “Over the years, the springs dried up, one by
one. My parents believed it was because Tsagaan Ovgon’s house had been destroyed.”
Before we left, we all posed for a rather stiff group photo under the portrait of the
former prime minister. I was the only one smiling.
Lunch at a nearby restaurant evolved into a strategy session as Badral laid out the
logistics of the trip. Then, Katuu told a folktale, and I asked questions about Tsagaan
Ovgon, “Why is he called white? I read a line in the Secret History of the Mongols stating
that Chingis Khan’s shaman wore white clothing. Is the white robe of the White Old Man
meant to show that he is a shaman?”
Katuu responded without missing a beat in the conversation, the first time anyone
had even tried to acknowledge that question, “Chingis always wore white after he left
behind his name, Temujin, and took the title Chingis Khan. He sat on a blanket of white
felt and members of his ancestral tribe carried him around on it.”
The waitress brought the hefty dishes of mutton we had ordered, and we dug in.
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Katuu continued, “The White Month, Tsagaan Sar, was the original time that
Tsagaan Ovgon came out to bless people. He appeared with all his animals. The
Mongolian Lunar New Year festival with the White Old Man was lost when Buddhism
came and moved him to the summer Tsam.”
That had been my speculation about the Tsam dates. Katuu was proving to be a
rich resource, and entertaining to boot.
After lunch, Katuu walked back to his office and Badral asked me, “How did you
think it went?”
“I was delighted with Katuu’s personal knowledge of the White Old Man.
Listening to Katuu tell the folktale in Mongolian made me think I could detect a dialect.
He drew out the sound “aaaa” the end of words, almost as if he
were singing.”
“Katuu is a Durbet, and his dialect was actually a little bit hard for me to
understand,” Badral explained.
“A Durbet? For some reason, I thought we were going to be with Torguts in
Western Mongolia.” I had been reading up on the Torguts, a group descended from the
Oirats. The Durbets, who settled north of the Torguts were yet another Mongolian tribe.
“I wasn’t even sure ‘Katuu’ was a Mongolian name, but I asked,” Badral
confessed. Katuu told me it was originally Gatuu, a Tibetan name that had a different
pronunciation. The schools in Uvs where Katuu went changed the G to a K. Where I
would say a K sound, Durbets say G. Most of the people in Uvs are Durbets.
It was becoming evident to me that we would be learning about nuances between
Durbets and Torguts and Khalkh Mongols, as well as how their beliefs about the White
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Old Man might differ. Most of my Mongolian contacts up to now, as far as I knew, were
Khalkh, the majority ethnic group in Mongolia. Now I knew two Durbets, Katuu and
Buyan, and they both believed in Tsagaan Ovgon.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HOVD
On a pleasantly cool morning in June, the three of us gathered in the crowded
domestic departures area of Ulaan Baatar’s outdated Chingis Khan airport. It was
summer, the Nadaam festival of the Three Manly Sports would begin soon, and city
people were heading out to visit family in the rural areas. In a few hours, we would fly on
one of Air Mongolia’s Fokker 50 aircraft to the western city of Hovd and from there seek
out what we could learn about the White Old Man.
Badral, our cheerful, unflappable organizer and low-key captain of the expedition,
owned Mongolia Quest, the company that organized the logistics. His enthusiasm for this
trip stemmed from a personal interest in cultural preservation. His father had been a
professor and renowned scholar in Sanskrit and Tibeto-Mongolian religion. Badral
dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps but was disappointed by the upheaval
created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which ended funds for education. With no
means to attend college, Badral became a valet in a hotel, where he picked up his very
American English.
An indispensable member of the team was the placid Togtokh Buyan.
Coincidentally, the lady who had told us her story about the White Old Man’s house was
named Buyan Togtokh. Togtokh was our driver and mechanic, his bronze six feet of
muscle radiating serene confidence and reassurance to the three of us who were older and
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smaller. Togtokh was the selfsame driver who had taken Monck Orgil and me to
Sainshand four years earlier. He was not with us at the airport, as he had left for Hovd a
few days earlier, driving the SUV loaded with gear and gifts for our ten-day excursion.
Dr. Katuu was the scholarly navigator of the team, born in this region and having
long taught at the University of Hovd. He wore a typical Mongolian hat, a summer weave
trilby that covered the bald top of his head, and his thick, straight, greying hair formed a
bowl that ended at his neck. The little soul patch under his chin was unusual in Mongolia,
especially for his age, early sixties. Katuu had published over forty books on Mongolian
epics and folklore. His presence in the airport was soon noticed. Beaming men and
women, more than a dozen former students and relatives, spotted him, hugging him
warmly. He became animated with his encounters, not at all the introverted academic I
had surmised. I was a bit intimidated by his position and achievements. Not having a
common language made breaking the ice difficult. Badral’s suggestion of a snack of
buuz and salted milk tea in the airport cafe eased the tension. He was a pro at finding
food and opportunities.
“I visited the Chojin Lama Temple Museum yesterday.” I said, trying to start a
conversation. “I specifically looked for images of Tsagaan Ovgon. A Tsam mask of his
face was in a glass case, but I didn’t see any images of him with religious significance.
There was only one painting of him, a mural across from an illustration of the Four
Friendly Animals. Both murals were in the foyer of the rear temple, not the main
sanctuary. Since the Four Friendly Animals are from a secular fable, wouldn’t that
suggest that The White Old Man was considered less than a deity by the monks who ran
that temple?”
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“I heard that there’s a new temple in Hovd. Perhaps we’ll see Tsagaan Ovgon
there,” said Katuu. “It’ll be interesting to see if the new temples out west have images of
him. Chojin Lama Temple is old.” Badral created a comfortable flow of conversation
going as an interpreter. Katuu continued, “I contacted a man in Bulgan Sum who
remembers who remembers that some monks arriving in town with a moving temple they
had on wheels. We will ask him about that,”
“Mongolian men are sometimes shown wearing their hair in a long pigtail. When
did that stop?” I asked, noticing a stylized painting of traditional Mongols.
“That hair fashion was forced on the Mongols during the Qing period. So that
way the Chinese could grab the tail and cut the Mongols’ head off!” Badral said.
Katuu smilingly offered another explanation. “Actually, pigtails go farther back in
Mongolian history than the Qing period. They are true Mongolian culture. They sides of a
man’s head used to be shaved, leaving the hair long on top. The practice of shaving the
head is still done to three year old boys.”
“Yes, my kids all had their hair shaven off when they were three,” said Badral.
“It was a war custom for the Mongols to peel off all the skin with the pigtail, face
and all, and hang them up as proof that one has slain the enemy,” Katuu said, picking up
his teacup.
“So the Mongols practiced scalping just like the American Indians, but they were
more serious about it,” said Badral.
“Not only that,” Katuu said, “the Mongols did the same to their favorite cows and
kept the dried faces along with the animal’s heart and lungs, which were hung in their
gers all winter. In the spring they ate them.”
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Peeled cow faces were not just academic learning for Katuu. He probably knew
exactly how shriveled bovine skin, dried hearts and lungs looked and tasted. There was
something mischievous about him.
* * *
Hovd was a Mongolian city, or Sum, with a small-town feeling. You could sense
the slow pace of life as soon as you stepped off the plane. In due time, our baggage was
brought around outside of the terminal and left for us to discover. After Ulaan Baatar, this
relaxed mode was a welcome change, without traffic or crowds, only horizons spreading
light in every direction, as there were no buildings taller than walk-ups. The nearby
mountains were inviting, like gentle cupped hands that hoped to hold you. Katuu fixed
his gaze longingly at the hills, musing, “I used to take long walks there every day when I
lived in Hovd.”
A Disney-like sight amused us on our walk to the university: a twelve-foot-tall
Mongolian boot painted blue and orange. No one was sure why it was there or what it
was supposed to mean. The nearby River Buyant freshened the soil, releasing earthy
smells. Horticulture was not a typical feature of nomad life, but the Chinese grew
watermelons and tomatoes when they lived here, and now the Mongols are growing
them. They are famous for them and ship them all over the country.
In the spacious, tree-shaded center of town, Katuu led us to the base of a statue of
great historical significance, Galdan Boshogtu, the seventeenth century Khan of the
people of Western Mongolia, the Dzungar-Oirats. Katuu, now our private docent, pressed
his extensive knowledge and pride upon us. “Our Khan, Galdan Boshogtu, was a
powerful, spiritual lama who went to Tibet to study and returned to help his people. He
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became a military strategist and fought against the Khalkh Mongols for independence,
winning a major battle in 1688. The people in Central Mongolia were being pressured to
submit to the Chinese by Zanabazar.” In effect, it was a Mongolian civil war, and the
memory of the years of glory and independence still reverberated here.
“The distinctions between Central and Western Mongolia make this almost like a
different country. I had no idea there was such political and military separation, separate
history, and uniqueness of dialects,” I said.
Badral, a Khalkh, said, “I never knew this. This is not something we were taught
in Ulaan Baatar when I went to school.”
“And Buddhism came here almost a century after it went to Central Mongolia, so
there are religious differences” said Katuu.
“And the sutsei tsai here is supposed to be the best milk tea in Mongolia,”
“It is.”
* * *
In a stuffy, narrow office crammed with archived documents and linguistic
papers, we met two middle-aged men, professors in linguistics and folklore, who had
been Katuu’s students. We drew up stools around Katuu, watching as he withdrew a clear
plastic folder from his briefcase. The article he had written about Tsagaan Ovgon was
passed around. By now, I was familiar with it, as Badral had made an English translation.
We looked at the prayers to Tsagaan Ovgon to be made at an ovoo, a photo of a recently
sculpted statue of him that we were hoping to see in the next town we visited, Bulgan
Sum, and notes about the wooden house that Buyan Togtokh that told us about where the
White Old Man was worshiped up in Uvs Province. “We are going to cover the full
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expanse of the West to learn about Tsagaan Ovgon. We hope to find elders with stories of
him and interview them,” said Katuu, with optimism.
“Here are some photographs I took of Tsagaan Ovgon’s image in Buriyat and
Khalmyk Buddhist temples in Russia,” I said, wanting to show the regional variations. I
finally had an audience who had heard of the White Old Man. I asked if the locals knew
the story of the Green Tara and the White Old Man. There was general head scratching,
so I became a storyteller to the Mongolian folklorists.
“One day, the Green Tara could not find her son, Oyou, so she went to an old
hermit in the mountains who was a diviner. He threw his black and white dice and saw
that the boy was safe, just up in heaven visiting the gods. The Green Tara was so grateful
that she told the old man, ‘From now on, you will have long life. You will be Tsagaan
Ovgon and have the power to bless the land and all the animals.’”
“Here, we call him “Tsagaan Aav,” said one of the professors. That was a
welcome gift for me, easier for an English speaker to pronounce than Tsagaan Ovgon.
* * *
A newly paved road led out of town, recently built for commerce with China.
There was no traffic in either direction. We were headed to Bulgan Sum, a town a thirtyminute drive from the border with China. About an hour out of Hovd Sum, the peace of
the steppe settled into us. A deserted shoreline surrounds a shining flatness, Lake Hovd,
reflecting the sun with low craggy mountains in mist all around. We drove long, penciled
lines on the empty terrain, far from any evidence of human habitation except for the
occasional ger, a creamy white mushroom in the shelter of a hill. Being so far from the
modern world in this timeless landscape stirred an unsettled feeling me, something akin
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to awe or fear. It was high noon. We had been ascending gradually until we approached a
mountain pass.
“People say that to be a man you must be able to cross this pass. It is Ikh Ulaan
Daaba, the Great Red Pass. When we get to the other side, we will be in the Altai region,”
said Badral. Togtokh pulled the vehicle off to the right, up an incline to the base of a
cairn nearly twenty feet high. At the top, a tall post beamed upwards, wrapping itself in
flapping blue silk scarves. The men began to purr softly among themselves in the throaty
and sibilant sounds of Mongolian. There was only the gurgling the sound of the motor
until we stopped and the voice of the wind took over. The only ones in sight for miles, we
claimed the ovoo for ourselves, but briefly, as the popularity of this pass was evident. The
thousands of stones, mostly light grey with a chalky texture that constituted the cairn
gave testimony to a multitude of believers. I had traveled with rough Mongolian drivers
who said they didn’t believe in anything, professed no religion, but always circled the
mountain pass ovoos without question.
We piled out of the vehicle. Katuu slipped on his blazer, adjusted his trilby
against the wind, and tucked his briefcase under his arm. He had talked seriously about
the importance of dressing properly to show respect for the spirits who owned this pass.
“Now we’re going to make a prayer to Tsagaan Aav, to ask him for good luck and
protection on our trip,” he said. He bent over several times, picking up stones to toss to
the ovoo, studying each stone, discarding some, until he had six or so in his hand. I
followed, picking up a few small stones and some alpine blossoms that I spotted. He
placed his briefcase at the base of the cairn, next to a rough stairway of around twenty flat
rocks that led to the peak where khadags shuddered as the wind stripped them of their
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prayers. Katuu circled, eyes focused straight ahead, tossing his stones to his right where
they clunked against the thousands of their kind already there. Offerings had been left
here, scattered randomly; hard-boiled candies, bits of blue glass, plastic bottles with blue
labels, objects heavy enough to not be blown away.
I circled, tossing stones and trying to recall the prayers that I had read in Katuu’s
essay. “Um Ma Hum,” some Sanskrit words like that. I knew it was a plea to Tsagaan
Aav to let good come, and that this ovoo of his would be the biggest. I became caught up
in the rhythm of circling, the pressure of the wind, and the majestic sight of the steppe
between the bare rock of the mountains. Badral was fussing around in the back of the
SUV, so I widened my circle to stop and ask him, “What are you looking for?”
“This, to offer to the deities,” he said. A fifth of Ulaanbaatar label vodka was in
his hand.
“Oh, that’s a great idea.”
“Yes, but I don’t have a cup to pour it into.” He turned and continued to rummage
through the bags and boxes. “This is all I can find.” He held out a grimy, orange plastic
cap from a gas can. It would serve as our chalice.
I returned to the base of the ovoo’s stairs where Katuu was intently leaning over
the flat rock. Dark, oily patches marked where incense had been burned before. Katuu
began setting up an altar. Matches came out of the briefcase, a plastic baggie containing a
coarse, light green powdery substance I recognized as the dried juniper and cedar burned
in the Buddhist temples. Katuu struggled to light a mound of incense while Togtokh
shielded the flame with his large hands. The tangy smoke rose and was avidly accepted
by the wind spirits. An ancient ritual was assembling itself neatly as I drew closer.
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Katuu, now priest or perhaps shaman, radiated authority as he stood up and
accepted the bottle of vodka from Badral who was standing by, an acolyte at the altar. His
other hand then went out, open, palm up, waiting. Badral made a precise motion of
placing the orange plastic gas cap into Katuu’s hand. Without looking at any of us, totally
focused on what he was bringing to the holy, he filled the gas cap with the clear vodka.
His eyes blazed as he raised the cup to the blue sky above. Unseen watchers gathered
from the air surrounding the peaks. He tossed the vodka to them in all directions, crying
out words not meant for our ears. Setting the bottle down, Katuu took a shimmering strip
of golden silk from his briefcase and folded it lengthways three times so that the open
side faced outward, towards the recipient to be honored, in this case the spirits of the
ovoo. With the vodka bottle, the orange plastic chalice, and the golden khadag, he
mounted the steps to the mass of blue color tied to the post on top. He stood facing the
deities and offered his prayers to Tsagaan Aav. I turned away to hide my face, which was
bucking with distorting muscles. Gasps and tears had their way with me as I lost control,
caught off guard by the unfolding ritual.
It was my turn. The three men indicated with hand motions and voices raised
against the wind that I should follow Katuu’s example and carry the bottle and cap to
the top and make an offering to the thirsty spirits. Katuu tutored me, demonstrating the
toss, flinging the vodka with his whole arm, crying, “Tochmoi Khairkhan!” with each
of the four libations. I imitated him in a dry run, with no idea if my pronunciation was
even close to correct. It didn’t matter. Something was happening inside my body. An
electric current juddered through me from the crown of my head to my pubis. From a
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distant place, a thought came about shamans shaking involuntarily when they contact the
spirit world.
Dazed, I climbed the ovoo, sobs still pushing my chest from inside. I reached the
top clutching the bottle and stared at the pole, listening to the ripping sounds from the
shreds of blue silk on the pole. The bottle was hard to open because I was shaking.
Moving thickly as if underwater, I filled the orange cap with vodka and gave a hefty toss
towards the pole. The pole was on the windward side of where I stood. Like being
slapped, I felt my eyes and face smart and burn as the liquid spirits returned to me in a
gust. Stunned, I recovered with a little giggle and looked down. The men were not
looking up. I made my remaining three tosses to the right and left and cried out the words
Katuu had given me. The thirsty ones of the Great Red Pass devoured my mutterings
without ado.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BULGAN SUM
The last large town in Mongolia before one enters Inner Mongolia in the Republic
of China. Bulgan retained the lifestyle of the nineteenth century. Traditional dress,
elegant, practical deels with boots were not uncommon. Shops had hitching posts in front
for customers coming on horseback. Herds of forty or more sheep used the main street to
travel to pasture. My first morning there, I woke early and, feeling the safety of the quiet
town, went walking before the sun made the day any hotter. On the sweaty, dusty return
to the hotel, I had the experience of being surrounded by goats, sheep, cows, and camels
en route to their summer camp, right through the center of town. Children, grade school
age and older, rode horses to control their herds, making it possible for pedestrians and
the occasional car to move along with them. Life flowed languidly, like sheep in the
morning street.
The small Bulgan history museum was all ours the next day, as Katuu knew the
curator. Torgut costumes and crafts and black and white photos of prominent Torguts
insisted that this was a distinctive, proud culture. Edified, we waited in the sweltering,
still air of our rooms for an elder Katuu had contacted. After about an hour, Badral
knocked on my door.
“The elder is here. He is going to tell us about Tsagaan Aav. Katuu is starting
the interview.”
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Naimaa, a sprightly eighty-year-old Torgut man with tight facial skin and deep
smile lines, sat across from Katuu. He had dressed for the occasion, sporting a brilliant
red deel-like shirt, cut to mid-thigh, black slacks, and a tan fedora. Katuu, in a T-shirt,
with the window open behind him, perched on a straight-back wooden chair with his
notebook open. The men exchanged snuff bottles in the traditional manner.
“Boys would fight until first blood, and this ritual means ‘I will follow the rules—
my word is good,’” Badral explained.
Naimaa shook my hand and offered me a sniff of his snuff. Our right hands folded
against each other as the stone container was passed. I took out the stopper, sniffed the
little stick of a spoon, nodded, and completed the ritual by passing the bottle back. A
velvety, emerald green sack waited to envelope the smooth, hard-working snuff bottle.
“I apologize for coming to your room instead of inviting you to my home,”
Naimaa said. “I am so glad to have a chance to tell you what I know about Tsagaan Aav.
I grew up during the Russian period, so I heard of him when I was young, but I never saw
any pictures. I never saw him, but I thought he looked just like an old man, like Santa
Claus, carrying a staff and prayer beads.”
“Do you know of anyone who has seen Tsagaan Aav?” I asked.
“Tsagaan Aav rarely shows himself to people. Once, a hundred years ago, he fell
down form the sky. Someone saw him and waited for him to pass by. He shows himself
to someone once every one hundred years. Something bad will happen to you if you tell
that you saw him, so people are very discreet about this.”
“Did you ever see him in a Tsam?”
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“No. I have heard of the Tsam, but I’ve never seen one. I think my parents
probably saw one.”
“So you call him Tsagaan Aav, not Tsagaan Ovgon?” asked Katuu.
“Tsagaan Aav, Uhlaan Tsagaan, Uhlaan Tsagaan Aagvaa, The White Old Man of
the Mountains is what people around here call him. He comes down from the mountains
where he lives, higher up, closer to Tengri.”
“The Oirats always called him Tsagaan Aava which means ‘white grandfather.’
The Torguts don’t say “old,” as it is offensive, so they say, “white.” Naimaa, what gods
do you worship?” said Katuu.
“Red Tara.” There are twenty-one emanations of the goddess Tara, but
worshipping the Red Tara surprised us, as she was not a common choice. White Tara and
Green Tara were the popular goddesses, at least back in Central Mongolia.
“Some time ago, lamas from China brought a ger-temple mounted on wheels and
pulled by camels. The monks stopped and set up their images on the grass in front of the
temple and put food out for them.”
“There are Torgut Mongols living just over the border from here,” said Katuu.
“They were part of the group of Dzungars who left Russia in the eighteenth century. It
would be interesting to visit and see how they worship Tsagaan Aav.”
“We would have to get visas, and that could be problematic for an American,”
said Badral. “Maybe next time.”
“What about permanent temples here? Did you visit any when you were growing
up?” asked Katuu.
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“We had a temple here with images in it long ago, but a powerful lama gave them
to Ganden Monastery in Ulaan Baatar for safe-keeping during the repression. In the
1930s, all the monasteries were destroyed. In the 1990s, after freedom, we asked Ganden
to return them, and they refused. Now, all you see in the local monasteries are new
images. When I was a little boy, I saw images from the temple, all broken and piled up
outside. I was afraid to get too close to them. My parents told me to stay away from the
piles. Even today, I still try not to get too close to those areas. There is only one of the
original monasteries that still has a few walls standing. There are still pictures on rocks
around it. I heard that a lama took some of the images and hid them in the mountains.”
“And now that you have religious freedom, do you keep a home altar?”
“I just have a small statue of Bayan Damintsuren that I bought somewhere. I don’t
remember where. I always remember Tsagaan Aav when I pray.”
As he spoke, Naimaa held his hands out, palms up. Katuu immediately pointed to
Naimaa’s hands.
“Look! You see this? Look at how he holds his hands out. This is how prayer to
Tsagaan Aav is done in this part of the country. Prayers are offered with hands open,
palms up, not folded together the way the Buddhists do. Tell me, Naimaa, do you pray
with your hat on or off?”
“My hat is always on when I pray.”
“Good. That is the right way. That is how we Durbets do it in my region, too”
The door to the bedroom suddenly swung open. No one was there. No breeze had
any energy to blow on this dead, hot afternoon. We all looked at each other. “Tsagaan
Aav has come,” Badral said. Soft chuckles, a little shiver.
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“So, why don’t you have more images at home?” asked Katuu.
“My parents didn’t give me any. I bought the little Bayan Danimtsuren, but my
father did leave me two sutras. One was stolen from me, and I take the other one to a
monk to be read every Tsagaan Sar.”
“I heard there is some story here about two mountains and an old man who made
something happen. There is supposed to be an elder here in Bulgan Sum who knows
this story.”
“Oh, yes. I am an elder, eighty, but not the oldest in town. I can tell you this story.
There is a woman here who is a hundred years old. People live a long time here. There
are two mountains nearby, just over on the Chinese border. One year at harvest time, two
young men working in the field made two big piles of wheat. An old man walked up to
them, seemingly out of nowhere, and told them, ‘This is a very good harvest.’ They
replied, ‘We have worked hard but this is not so good. The piles are not very big,’
contradicting and being disrespectful to the elder. When they turned around they saw that
their piles of wheat had become piles of stones, and the old man was gone. That is how
the two mountains came to be.”
After we discussed going with Naimaa to see a new statue of Tsagaan Aav the
next day, Naimaa put his green snuff bottle sack into his pocket, said, “Za, Za,” stood,
and was gone into the heat of the late afternoon. Badral, Katuu, Togtokh and I walked to
a dark restaurant-bar that was hotter than our hotel. We were the only patrons. Badral and
Katuu cooled off with bottles of Mongolian beer. Hot mutton soup was the plat du jour.
Togtokh claimed an upset stomach and excused himself, and Katuu began one of his
mealtime lectures.
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“There is a special animal, always a male, designated in every herd, called a seta.
A horse is chosen because of certain signs and characteristics. He is decorated with strips
of brightly colored cloth. There is a seta in a herd of sheep, also. The seta may not be
ridden, killed, or eaten. When a herd animal is lost, his owners put barley, wheat, and
butter on the feet of the representative animal and they pray to Tsagaan Aav to bring
it back.”
Our fan-less bedrooms retained the day’s heat that night. The main street below
bleated and whinnied until dawn as families moved their herds out to the summer
pastures in the cool of darkness. We drove to Naimaa’s home the next morning, with less
energy than we had started the trip, to pick up the perky octogenarian in his red deel-shirt.
He seemed delighted to be a local guide and to take us to the statue of Tsagaan Aav that
had recently been installed in a public park. A locked public park, as it were, named after
Queen Sorkhagtani, mother of one of Chingis Khan’s sons. She would surely have been
dismayed with the lack of hospitality and good housekeeping in her park. We stood in the
empty parking lot, fiddling with the padlock until the volunteer caretaker arrived bearing
a key. The park’s fountain was dry, the grass crispy, and loose rocks and rubbish littered
the path to a statue of a Torgut King, Oosh Khan. He was remembered for saying, “You
can be killed, but you cannot be defeated.”
The Torguts had a tumultuous history. Originally descendants of the Great Khans,
they were a noble group of the Oirats. In the 1600s, many of them moved west, out of
Mongolia, to the Volga region. Some of the Torguts migrated back to Western Mongolia
in the 1700s, where the Qing Manchu Emperor ruling the territory granted them
permission to settle.
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“More than half the people died in transit. It was winter and they were persecuted
by the Russians,” said Badral.
A grey, hulking form was seated under a simple metal awning in the park. It was
the White Old Man, proud on a three-foot high pedestal. The top of his balding head was
a good eight feet from the ground. I chattered, “Who put this here? Is this considered a
religious shrine or a decoration? How long has it been here?” By now our little group had
grown. The curator of the museum had joined us, along with three other men who wanted
a glimpse of the researchers who were so interested in their Tsagaan Aav.
“We’ll see another statue just like this one when we get to Bükhmörön,” said
Badral. “A local politician donated this statue to the people of Bulgan Sum during
election time two years ago. He had several sacred objects from Tibet put inside of it.
Maybe he did it to promote spiritual values. We are so close to Tibet here. I guess you
have to ask the guy who donated it.”
I looked around to see what Katuu was up to.
Katuu, correctly attired for prayer in his blazer and hat, had been walking circuits
around the statue. His briefcase leaned against Tsagaan Aav’s right knee. When he
stopped, he began the incense ritual with Togtokh standing by to assist. Naimaa slipped a
small plastic bottle filled with milk from the folds of his loose shirt and began his
circumambulation. He sprinkled milk on the statue, pausing to touch his head to the
carved stone on all four sides. I followed Naimaa, and he gestured that I should imitate
his movements as best I could. When Katuu’s incense was successfully lit, he made a few
twisting motions in the air with the fingers of his left hand, a barely noticeable gesture
unless one was standing right next to him. I was reminded of priestly fingers held in
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blessing. Katuu circled a final time, touching his head to the base twice on each of the
four sides, honoring the neglected image.
* * *
Bulgan’s Mother Rock
A stream braided its way through a marshy grove near the outskirts of Bulgan. On
the far side of the grove, we could discern a mass of bright color, roughly a triangle, the
size of a door wrapped completely in a blue and green gown of khadags. It leaned against
a sun-washed base of a bare cliff. As with our first ovoo on the pass, by coincidence, we
had arrived just at high noon.
“This is the local Mother Rock. There is another one, a massive boulder, in
Central Mongolia,” said Badral. “There was an ovoo here before the communist time, but
it was moved to a more secluded spot on the top of the bluff. Now it is back where it
was.” A small ovoo stood by Mother Rock, its blue silk flags drooping in the heat.
We all started out towards the gaily-dressed rock but were immediately stymied
by soggy wetland. Overhanging willows with blue ribbons tied to their branches soaked
their feet in multiple strands of water. The khadags had nothing to do with marking a dry
path. Wet feet were not going to keep me from the things I had come to Mongolia to see.
I struck out, hopping over rivulets until I reached the dry fine sand at the base of the cliff.
Glancing back, I saw Katuu wave and lift his briefcase as he tried to make out the path I
had followed. He gave up and hopped like a kangaroo as I had, joining me by the Mother
Rock. He touched the rock reverently and then set about his ritual preparations.
Sunlight bounced off metal in the sand, catching my eye: a brass oil-vessel half
buried in the sand. Its blackened, greasy bowl had been used for burning incense. I
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moved up to Katuu, who had set three incense cones on a flat stone, and showed him the
vessel. He flashed a cat-like grin, cleaned the vessel with sand, and filled it with loose,
crumbled juniper needles. The wind blew his matches out repeatedly. I squatted and held
my hat to shield the flame then picked up his briefcase for a wind-block. The fire
snatched up the offering and grew strong. Katuu stood up, went to the Mother Rock, and
caressed her several times. Then, he placed his head on the holy stone, motioning for me
to do as he did. I did so, feeling serendipitously apprenticed to a shaman.
* * *
Jav’s Story
The word had gotten out in Bulgan that researchers staying at the hotel wanted to
hear stories about Tsagaan Aav. That evening, we had another visitor, Jav, a smoothskinned man in his forties. A coil of light green prayer beads with two or three coral
beads and one blue bead circled his right wrist. He sat in the chair Naimaa had occupied.
Katuu sat down and opened his notebook.
“Here is a story I can tell you about Tsagaan Aav. There were two men who were
working outside on a farm. Suddenly Tsagaan Aav appeared out of nowhere and stood
next to Otgon, one of the men. Tsagaan Aav reached into his belt, pulled out a small
shoe, and gave it to Otgon, saying, ‘You will have a son who will grow up to become
famous and successful, but you must never speak about meeting me.’ Otgon looked at the
little shoe in his hand, and when he looked up again, Tsagaan Aav had disappeared.”
“The other farmer caught a glimpse of the meeting and asked Otgon who the
stranger was. He pestered him until he revealed what happened insisting on secrecy. The
other man could not keep from telling everyone about the meeting with Tsagaan Aav.
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Otgon soon had a baby boy, whom he named Dejee who was born mute. He was smart
but could never become successful or famous because he could not speak. Otgon kept the
little shoe but then it was lost. Dejee died a few years ago.”
I had listened as if to a fairytale until the last statements when it became evident
that Dejee had been a real person. I felt reality slipping onto the story like a sock.
“Do you want to hear another story?” asked Jav. “My father was out hunting with
several men. Some of them chased the deer into a funnel where the shooters were
waiting, but no one fired a shot. The chasers were upset and asked, ‘What went wrong?
Why didn’t you shoot?’ The shooters replied, ‘We saw a man riding on the back of the
lead deer, a man dressed all in white. How could we shoot?’”
“Just a few days ago, we were wondering if Tsagaan Aav ever rode a horse, and
here we learn that he rode a deer!” I said.
“Oh yes, he does ride a horse,” Jav assured us. “Around here we always put a
sprig of caragona on the right side of our ger’s door to keep away evil spirits and a piece
of ice on the left side for Tsagaan Aav’s horse to lick if it is thirsty.”
“People also put a block of salt out for Tsagaan Aav’s horse during Tsagaan Sar,”
said Badral.
Jav had arranged for us to interview Dejee’s younger brother later on. After
supper, the brother did not show up, so we retired for the night. The next morning, I
learned from a tired Badral that Dejee’s brother had arrived at 1:30 a.m. Katuu, who
seemed to require very little in the way of food or sleep, interviewed him in the men’s
bedroom until 3:30 a.m.
* * *
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Khumaj’s Story
Bulgan Sum seemed to have been set alight by word that the esteemed Dr. Katuu
was in town and looking for people who could tell stories about Tsagaan Aav. We were
picking up all sorts of folklore, as well, and Katuu was delighted.
“The beliefs and customs of the Torguts here are very much like what I grew up
with in Uvs Province.”
The weather had cooled off slightly, and we were enjoying the languid hours,
reading and catching up on sleep while waiting for elders to pop in to visit us. Seventythree-year-old Khumaj, Dejee’s older brother, arrived in a dress shirt and grey slacks, a
businessman with a white straw fedora. He described himself as an agronomist, educated
under the Russian system.
“Later I became the governor of Bulgan Sum, then I was an inspector in the
Mongolian-Chinese border station for a while. And now I plant trees. I have planted over
a hundred. My grandfather moved here in the early 1900s. My father worshipped the Old
Man of the Mountains, Tsagaan Aav, all his life. One day, my father was working on the
farm with his brother-in-law, and he walked over the nearby river to get some water.
Suddenly, there was an old man standing next to him, as if appearing out of nowhere. The
old man gave my father a small ceramic shoe.”
“This might have happened in the Dolon area of Bulgan. Now it is a national
park. Khumaj is not sure because this happened before he was born in 1944,” said Badral.
“What happened to the little ceramic shoe? How big was it?” asked Katuu.
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“The shoe was very small, just about the size of my first thumb joint,” said
Khumaj as he held up his thumb for our consideration. “My father kept the shoe in a little
sack which he wore around his neck.”
“That is a custom in this part of Mongolia. Many people keep sacred objects in a
sack which they carry or wear.”
Badral asked a few questions and translated for me. “It was not a baby bootie, but
an adult style shoe. We are not sure if it was a traditional Mongolian boot or not.”
“My father was convinced that the shoe Tsagaan Aav gave to him kept our family
protected. Before he passed away, he made a new sack for the shoe and asked one of his
sons to make an offering on the mountain ovoo.”
“That is the same ovoo where we made our offering on the way here, Ikh Ulaan
Daaba,” said Badral.
Here is where Khumaj’s face grew dark. “In spite of being sworn to secrecy, my
father’s brother-in-law knew what had happened by the river, and he talked about it. He
was a pest, always asking my mother to get the shoe and give it to him. Finally he broke
her resolve, and she got it for him. My father was so angry at her for not consulting him.
That is how the shoe was lost.”
“Did having the shoe really help your family?” Katuu asked.
“Oh, yes. All of my father’s children went to university and have good jobs. The
problem was that there was gossip about his meeting with Tsagaan Aav. Someone started
a rumor that Tsagaan Aav gave my father a white horse, and they came from all over
wanting to know where the descendants of that horse were.”
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The horse and the White Old Man were connected again. Back in Central
Mongolia, a lama had told me he had never heard of an association between Tsagaan
Ovgon and horses. Here in Bulgan, there were horses tied up behind our hotel, horses
were everywhere, and certainly tied in local lore to Tsagaan Aav.
“I told you about the trees I plant. My father planted trees to make up for all the
ones that were cut down during the communist era. He used to say, ‘Tsagaan Aav is like
a border patrol guard, making sure that no plants or animals get hurt.’”
Katuu was beaming. “I just have a couple of thoughts. One, we say, ‘every man
must write a book and plant a tree in his lifetime.’ Two, we can conclude that Tsagaan
Aav is not just a mythical figure. He really exists, and people have encountered him. A
meeting with him can change one’s life.”
“But Tsagaan Aav only appears to one person every one hundred years,” Khumaj
reminded us, “And that person may not tell about it.”
“If a shaman can call down spirits, then certainly Tsagaan Aav can be seen and
talk with people,” said Katuu, making me wonder more about his religious practice.
* * *
Khumaj’s Ger
Sheep and goats again pressed down Bulgan’s streets, rebels scuffling away in
short bursts, then being resorbed in the common furry body when chastised by dogs and
herders. It was a lovely June day, and they were on their way to summer camp. Togtokh
managed to negotiate passage through the animals and find Khumaj’s ger. The exgovernor’s home was situated behind a wooden fence near a lush leafy backdrop. It was a
six-section affair instead of the typical five sides, thus larger than normal, reflecting
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Khumaj’s position in the community. His wife, a flowered scarf wrapped around her hair,
played the perfect hostess, serving us milk tea and cookies as soon as we entered. Lest we
leave hungry, and this was not mealtime, an uncovered joint of cold mutton and a carving
knife waited on the floor by the lifted rear flap of the ger, staying cool. The central table
was hidden under an array of dishes filled with various treats with long shelf life:
jellybeans, dried Chinese kiwis, jujubes, and a hard homemade cheese called arruul.
Khumaj served us elegantly with tiny crystal stem glasses of fine vodka. Each of us made
traditional offerings by dipping the right ring finger in the liquid, flicking the liquid to the
spirits, and touching our forehead before sipping.
Khumaj’s son, a well-built man in his forties, joined us. He had left work to help
our research, as he had the inside story on the statue of Tsagaan Aav in the park. It was
his boss who had made the donation. First, snuff bottles had to be exchanged in the ritual
greeting, and then we could talk.
“My boss ran for parliament in 2013,” he began. “He commissioned the statue to
be built in Ulaan Baatar by the artist Baatartsog for 13 million tugrugs, about $15,000.
There was a statute here originally that the communists destroyed, so a new one had to be
made. We had a severe drought, and my boss hoped that would help and make the local
people happy.”
Badral muttered something that sounded like, “Yeah, right, typical politician,”
under his breath.
“When the statue arrived in Bulgan Sum, a lama held a consecration ceremony,
and holy objects were placed inside: parts of certain plants, trees, stones from the holy
mountain near Ulaan Baatar called Bogd Uhl, and incense, all bundled together in
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khadags of seven different colors. There are two of these statues. Someone in the town of
Bükhmörön had a copy made.”
“We should try to see that one. We’ll be driving right through Bükhmörön,”
Katuu said. “Can you tell us how people pray to Tsagaan Aav around here?”
“The people around here pray to him for good fortune. In this area of Mongolia,
you are not supposed to make offerings to him with vodka the way they do in Central
Mongolia. Here, they make white offerings, using milk. Tsagaan Aav is not a god, but he
is the Lord of all living things,” said Khumaj’s son.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HEADING NORTH
We had eaten a hot lunch in Altai Sum on a hot day when we were driving south
to Bulgan. On the way north, we stopped again and repeated the lunch, eating at the same
table, the only table in the simple room where the same lady heated the same menu of
rice and goulash for us on a single burner. Pickles were gratis. Katuu had made an
appointment for us to meet the civic commissioner after we ate.
We met the official in a narrow room where we sat at a table while he sat behind
his desk, giving us a little of his time. His smile was tight while he listened to our
interests in the White Old Man and religious customs. When he spoke, it was
begrudgingly, creating a rift in the already uncomfortable communication.
“I can’t tell you much. All the temple and ovoos in this area were destroyed
during the Cultural Revolution. No one has home altars anymore. I don’t know anyone
who does. People who did that sort of thing were rooted out during communist times.”
He seemed glad of it.
“That did not go as well as I had hoped,” Katuu said afterwards. “I am sorry.”
“It was important for me to meet someone like this so I could see for myself how
people were during the communist time. Meeting this commissioner showed me the
ongoing effects of religious repression on the Mongolia people,” I said.
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We continued north, back through the Great Red Pass where we had prayed at the
ovoo. I looked past Katuu at the post with its blue khadags. He was looking at it, too.
Then he raised his hand, palm upward, wiggled his fingers as if plucking a musical
instrument above him, and whispered soft sounds. I turned away to give him privacy and
was slugged by the sight of steppe in the distance, full of air and life since humans had
been around. It felt like I was falling in love.
The drive north went on for hours. Katuu and I wrote our notes, and Badral
caught up on sleep. In a town called Erdeneburene, Katuu, the tireless ethnologist,
hopped out and ferreted information from everyone in sight. After finding out who the
knowledgeable locals were, he scribbled notes and told us we had a new place to visit.
Not on any road system. I exulted at being so far out in the world I could fall off of it or
even into a new world. This was the adventure I hoped for, one with purpose,
productivity, mystery, and fine companions.
Deeper into the steppe, farther from paved roads, we travelled without
explanations from Katuu. I had no idea where we were headed, but Togtokh had a handdrawn map Katuu had elicited from a citizen of Erdeneburene. He and Badral were not
sure what we were going to see, but it surely had something to do with Tsagaan Aav. We
rose up from a pristine valley onto a ridge and stopped just below the crest. An orphic
cluster of statues had gathered up above us, their presence signaled by snapping Tibetan
prayer flags tied between what looked like telephone poles. There were nearly twenty
oyster-grey figures, some rising as tall as fifteen feet. This new grouping of the gods’
images was a profound statement of religious belief in the area and a backer with a great
deal of money. This pantheon, with its bright new silk khadags, and multiple fresh tire
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tracks in the grass, miles from human habitation, was a slap in the face of communism.
Katuu was vibrant with excitement, briefcase and hat in position.
Badral hustled to the rear hatch and began rummaging through boxes and plastic
grocery bags. He mined the mounds of crammed-in gear until he retrieved cookies, dried
apples, hard candies, khadags, and a bottle of milk. “Unwrap the candy before you offer
it. Better for the environment,” he advised. We were using milk now instead of vodka,
learning the ways of the West.
Katuu was issued milk and cookies for offerings and he scurried up to the site as
if pressed for time. There was a sense of urgency afloat, as if we had come upon
Brigadoon, a rare sight that might disappear. The stones seemed to be vaporous, greyblue chunks of clouds edged with frost, about to be absorbed into the heavens behind
them. By the time I reached the circle of statues, Togtokh was already at a three-foot high
altar built of brick-shaped flat stones. Katuu tossed his cookies, so to speak, as he
circumambulated, then joined Togtokh to offer incense. I threw my snacks and some
salted cashews, and, even before I had made a complete circuit, birds nesting between the
altar stones emerged to enjoy the advantages of living in a prime real estate location.
What was this amazing place? I wondered at its very existence. The entire
complex spread out over forty feet, sentinels in stones high on a bare ridge overlooking
forever. I had to walk around slowly to take it all in. There was a circle of the twelve
animals of the Asian astrological calendar. Each carved stone creature was three to four
feet high. Within the circling zodiac marched the five snouts, all male representations of
the nomad’s herd animals, sheep, cow, camel, horse, and goat. Overseeing all loomed the
most sacred images, three tall, graceful carvings: Tsagaan Aav, a stupa, and the figure of
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a woman holding a child. In front of each of the major figures, rectangular carved stone
altars awaited ceremonial offerings. All three altar-fronted figures were guarded by a
five-foot tall incense burner, creating an outdoor inner sanctum.
We all circled, each of us wandering off independently to ponder different
objects. Katuu went into orbit, circling each image and then the entire complex.
Eventually, we gathered in front of the female goddess as if we were not ready to
approach the largest image, the reason we had come.
“Who is she?” I asked. Her legs were crossed in the lotus position; a child about
two years old sat on the right side of her lap. Her firm, right breast was exposed.
Someone had placed two stones and three weathered books in front of her.
“A goddess of fertility,” said Badral, above the wind. “Katuu said that’s who she
is. He doesn’t have any idea what her name is.”
Katuu returned to greeting and contemplating each individual image, tying a
blue scarf around the animal statue of his birth year. I did likewise, seeing out my birth
year’s monkey.
Finally we approached the one we were really here for, Tsagaan Aav. Majestic,
the tallest figure on the mountain, this White Old Man was not the goofy guy of the
Ulaan Baatar folklore show, but a sage projecting age, wisdom, authority and beneficent
power. He sat cross-legged on a lotus, serenely holding his staff and prayer beads. Two
deer and a pair of swans lay below him etched on the pedestal, mounted on a square
block where Mongolian script curled out what I thought might be a prayer or dedication.
We all circled around him, eyes focused inward in respectful demeanor. I stopped
to gaze at the prayer flags above, some so tightly wrapped around a rope that they could
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hardly flap out a word. My eyes slid down to Tsagaan Aav and beheld a pigtail. The old
man sported a thick rope of hair, braided loosely, that fell down his back, almost to his
waist. There seemed to be some designs on his back. I squinted. The Big Dipper, seven
stars revered by Mongols as Dolon Burkhan, the seven gods, danced down his right
shoulder blade. I moved over a few feet over to examine his left side. Looking up, I saw
the sun, Nar, raised high on his other shoulder.
I pulled Katuu out of his reverie and gestured for him to look up. Katuu’s smile of
delight and surprise about the new variations in the form of Tsagaan Aav mirrored and
fed my sense of awe. This was more than we had expected to find. Katuu, once again
moved to respond, squatted in front of the White Old Man’s feet, extracted his priestly
tools from the briefcase, and began the devotions. The wind blew water from my eyes. I
crouched beside him, before the deity who had called us here. Katuu’s hands formed a
cup around a mound of powdered juniper as I pushed a lit match inside. Our hands
glowed briefly as the evergreen burst into flame, releasing pungent fragrance.
“I have never seen anything like this before,” he said. “We have to document all
of it. Take pictures, and then draw Tsagaan Aav. Draw every single statue, and then draw
a map of the whole complex.” In an instant, I had become one of his graduate students on
a field trip. I took photographs and scribbled away, conscious that, not long ago, all
places like this were smashed to pebbles, and the people who built and cared for them
were shot.
In awe of the place, I burbled to Badral, “This really answers our question about
Tsagaan Aav being worshipped. The sacred places are being rebuilt. There is so much
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more in what people say about him in this area than I have ever heard or read. I feel as if
we have found what we were looking for.”
Badral smiled, looked back at the old man on the hilltop, and said, “Katuu just
told me that Tsagaan Aav is the archetypal shaman.” I boggled. Badral had just nailed the
essence of the quest.
* * *
Bükhmörön
We had hoped to track down and visit the copy of Tsagaan Aav’s statue that we
had heard about in Bulgan’s Sum’s public park. The donor’s name was still a mystery, as
was the donor of the complex we had just visited. The civic commissioner, or
Bükhmörön, showed us photos of the statue’s consecration ceremony, when Tsagaan
Aav’s image was been installed on a mountain pass and blessed by a lama. The photos
showed several warmly dressed men in heavy winter deels bowing before the statue,
touching it with their heads, and smiling for portraits with the lama.
“Where is the statue located?” Katuu asked.
“I could tell you, but I am sorry. Women are not allowed to visit the site. It is a
place for men to go to worship.”
Our plans changed. We would continue on to Bayan-Olgii for the night. The
commissioner was sympathetic. “Would you like to download the photos of the
consecration from my laptop?” While we waited for the download, Katuu found out that
there was a wedding in progress.
“We are going to go to see if we can meet with some of the elders attending the
wedding,” he said. Four highly-placed men in their eighties, pillars of Bükhmörön, joined
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us in the reception ger. We sipped sutsei tsai while we waited for them, and when they
entered, I had to catch my breath. In riotous color and sumptuous fabrics, they resembled
noble khans from the eighteenth century. Azure deels with golden sashes, a bright red
deel with a sky-blue silk belt. And one of the younger men, only seventy-nine, could have
stepped out of a medieval painting of Central Asia; his deel shimmered like satin, the
colors of the morning sun changing as he moved. Swirling maroon designs embroidered
entire garment from his calves to the round, high collar. A rounded felt hat with a narrow
brim topped his white hair and sideburns that he had combed forward over his sharp
cheekbones, and an abbreviated trowel of a beard framed his face. I gaped, mesmerized
by this vision of the old Mongolia described by Haslund, Gilmour, and Bulstrode.
Once snuff bottles and silver-lined vodka bowls had been duly passed around by
the impressive quartet, Katuu opened the topic of out interest, Tsagaan Aav. “We heard
that you have a new statue of the deity in a pass near town. How did that come about?”
“For many years in the past, a shrine to Tsagaan Aav in that pass protected our
animals and brought us luck. It was full of images of the gods and sutras, but the
Russians destroyed it. We all approved and supported the new statue.”
“How often do people go up there to worship?”
“On the second and sixteenth day of the first summer month. Groups of locals get
together. For example, everyone born in the year of the monkey contributes and then the
offering is taken to Tsagaan Aav’s shrine. Every year the people born in that animal year
do this.”
“What happens to the money? Is it just left at the statue?” I asked, picturing wet,
rotting paper tugrugs stuck to the statue or blown into the wind.
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“Yes, offerings are just left up there for the spirits. Every year a lama comes from
Ulaan Baatar, burns the money, and cleans up the area. People who go there to pray also
clean up and do repairs when they see the need,” the man in the red-deel replied.
After we left, Badral observed, “What a difference between the two statues. They
are exact copies by the same artist, but Bulgan Sum’s Tsagaan Aav sits neglected in a
locked, unused public park, a politician’s show of financial strength before an election.
The Bükhmörön image is an effort to restore the deity to the people so they will have
healthy herds and good luck. We saw the photos of men bowing and touching their heads
to Tsagaan Aav on a cold mountain pass. No one comes to him in the park.”
It was drizzling when we drove out of Bükhmörön, then it began to hail. Soon, a
rainbow appeared and Katuu said, “Maybe the spirits want to disturb us and get our
attention because we have been talking about Tsagaan Aav so much all week.”
Our overnight in the city of Bayan-Olgii was just that, an overnight stop, because
we were in Kazakh territory, and, as Muslims, they do not have the same beliefs as the
Mongols. They have a whole other set of interesting lore, some of which tell of an old
man in green who blesses the land, an immortal named Khidr.
* * *
The Mystery Donor
The closer we drew to the small city of Ulaan Gom in Uvs Province, the more
animated and bubbly Katuu became. We were nearing his hometown, and he could see
the outline of Davst Mountain to the north. His birthplace was two hours from where we
would spend the night, and he was exhilarated. The returning Durbet’s pride shone fierce
and bright.
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The next morning, we gathered in the hotel dining room after breakfast to meet
the donor of Tsagaan Aav’s statue near Bükhmörön. Up to now, he had remained a
mystery, until Katuu had gone after the elders for information. Mystery man arrived on
our time, not Mongolian time, at 10:00 a.m., a golden-skinned businessman in Western
clothing, casual slacks and a light jacket. A uniformed Mongolian girl served us tea. The
formalities were covered. We began to hear they story we had come for. He leaned
forward at the table.
“I’ll tell you the story of this statue of Tsagaan Aav and why I had it built, but I
don’t want my name associated with it. You may not use my name or photograph. This is
not about me.” We agreed.
Orgil, not his real name, said, “I was able to pay for the statue because I made
money in construction and the coal business.”
Katuu had no need to lead Orgil with questions. The story tumbled out of its
own accord.
“I grew up in Bükhmörön. My mother always made offerings to Tsagaan Aav. I
asked her who the old man was and she said, ‘The White Father, a god who lives on the
mountain and protects us.’ My own father died when I was eighteen days old, and I have
never seen a photograph of him. When I was in fifth grade, in 1976, we were living in our
family’s wintering place, not far from where the new statue of Tsagaan Aav is now. As a
child, I was expected to go out to fetch wood, and when I was out alone on the mountain,
I saw an ovoo, the kind made of branches.”
“It looked kind of like a teepee,” Badral clarified for me.
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“I peeked into the ovoo and saw a wooden statue about 46 cm high. It was
Tsagaan Aav. I started going to the place by myself regularly. I had never seen any
pictures of Tsagaan Aav, but I knew it had to be the old man my mother prayed to.”
“How did you figure out it really was Tsagaan Aav?” asked Katuu.
“When I got to middle school, I read a book about the Tsam, and so I knew that
Tsagaan Aav, like the statue I went to, was an old man with a beard and a staff.”
There was a pause as Orgil seemed to fall into his story.
“Years later, after I was grown up, I decided to bring my own family up to see the
statue. When we got there, the statue was gone. There was only a wooden base with
nothing on it. A small ovoo had been put up there, with a painting of Tsagaan Aav
hanging inside of it. A larger ovoo had been built a little higher up the mountain.
When I went back to town I asked the elders about it. They said, ‘We knew about the
wooden statue that was up there. The rumor is that some people took the statue for their
own temple.’”
Not long ago on a spring day, Orgil and his wife went back to visit the ovoo. “It
was raining. We were dismayed when we saw the painting of Tsagaan Aav all wet with
the colors running. This was about four years ago. We went home and thought about
what we could do to honor Tsagaan Aav. I remembered hearing about the artist
Baatartsog and ordered a statue from him. The people in Bulgan Sum saw it and
commissioned one for themselves. We put ours up in the year of the snake. People thank
me for doing this, but I am not looking for thanks. I just did it because someone had to.”
“Are you religious?”
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“No, but it was amazing how well everything went along after we decided to have
the statue built,” said Orgil, taking a deep breath and shaking his head in disbelief. “I did
it for my mother and my family. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. On March 26,
2013, I went to that spot on the mountain with a Buddhist lama. I put in a base and had
him read a sutra. Two rabbits watched us the whole time while we prayed, then it began
to rain. After that, it hailed, then snowed, and finally a rainbow appeared. I was amazed.”
“We have been visiting all the places where people pray to Tsagaan Aav. We
heard of your statue when we were in Bulgan Sum and planned to visit it, but the elders
in Bükhmörön told us it was for men only.”
“That’s true, but I don’t pay any attention to that. I take my wife up there with me.
We go to pray there every Tsagaan Sar.”
In response to my questions about the White Old Man’s origins, Orgil said, “I
don’t know, but I do remember a story like that about Tsagaan Aav and the Green Tara.”
I listened, wide-eyed, as Badral translated Orgil’s story. This was the first time I
had met a Mongolian who knew or had heard of this charming tale. Orgil’s story was
short and to the point, omitting some of the more colorful details of the version I had
narrated for the professors back in Hovd. The old hermit’s black and white fortune telling
dice and the name of the Green Tara’s son, Oyun, were left out. A new character was
introduced, however, a green crow, peri addendum,) that told the old man that the boy
was playing up in heaven. In Orgil’s version, the old man had been a hunter before the
Green Tara blessed him and made him into the lord of the land, Tsagaan Aav.
Katuu responded to Orgil’s tale by telling another story about the Green Tara, one
from his own hometown. “Back in the 1930s, a girl was born in Davst who had special
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gifts. People who met her believed she was the reincarnation of the Green Tara. The
government heard about her and grew angry about her activities and people believing in
religious ideas, so they sent the police who came and arrested her. They locked her up in
a little room for two months and questioned her every day. One day when the officers
came in to interrogate her they were shocked and ran away. What they saw was a room
full of the twenty-one emanations of the Tara.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TSAGAAN AVAA’S OVOO
It was late afternoon, with the sun still high above the undulating, verdant hills,
when we dropped to a level plain on the outskirts of Davst, Katuu’s sweet hometown of a
few thousand people. Saline air seeped into the SUV, bearing news of an ancient ocean,
Uvs Lake, now a mere 2000 miles of undrinkable water. We could see uninterrupted
skyline on our right and blue-black serrations of an upthrust of rock to our left, Davst
Mountain, tucking its backside into Siberia. Gers clustered in family groupings like
prairie dog villages across the salt grass plain near the beach.
Katuu insisted, despite our end of the day energy slump, that we pay some visits.
The Durbet’s requirements for food and sleep seem to diminish with each day, each mile
closer to his homeland. He insisted that we stop randomly at several gers while he
entered, seeking out elders, the ones who could tell us where the shrine to Tsagaan Aav
had stood. It grew late. Long purple shadows and red-gold sunlight reminded me that
tonight was the summer solstice. A full moon rose over the beaded chains of long
breakers on the water. I heard the plaintive sound of a train horn blowing, piercing the
stillness of the June evening. It was loud, insistent, and then a white camel calf appeared
from behind a ger with its neck stretched out to maximum length, moaning like a steampowered horn for mother camel.
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An elder was located—a thin, wiry seventy-one year old widower named
Zumbuu. Katuu persuaded Zumbuu to leave his peaceful solitude in the ger and guide us
to the site of the old shrine. Badral cinched the deal with handfuls of cookies and oranges.
We struck out into swampy muskeg beyond a copse of alders and quickly
returned to the vehicle for insect repellent. The air inside the wetland was yellow-white
and shimmering as if alive. A fog of mosquitoes swooned when we entered, but as it
turned out they were petite and not serious about their calling. As the sun slowly lowered,
we stood in a melancholy circle contemplating dry, grey, weathered boards that flattened
the rough grass. Katuu began commenting, picking up slats and delivering a speech to
honor the place where Tsagaan Aav had been worshiped half a century ago. I took videos
as he warmed to the occasion, gesturing to the sky as he orated for several minutes.
Badral said, “He’s telling the spirits about what happened here, what the government did
to the people, and why we are here.”
A bright object caught my eye nor far from the dilapidated shrine. I walked past
the pontificating professor, whose gaze was directed on nothing I could see. A caragana
bush grew ten feet away, the thorny golden caragana that people hang by the ger door to
keep evil spirits away. A blue khadag twisted itself around an outer branch. Deep inside
the bush, I could see several faded shreds of khadags. The site of Tsagaan Aav’s shrine
continued to inspire reverence.
* * *
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Katuu’s Ovoo
The place where Katuu’s mother had made offering to Tsagaan Aav posed a
problem for our research. “The ovoo is on the other side of the Russian border, and you
can see it across the fence. We just can’t go there,” Katuu said.
“We might be able to get permission from the border guards to cross over,”
said Badral.
“Worth a try. My brother, Chantuu can come with us. He knows the guards from
the years he worked in the salt mine. He had to cross the border to go to work every day.”
At the border station, Katuu came out with a thumbs up, as one of the guards
offered to accompany us to the ovoo. It depended on another official who would arrive
shortly. We took the time to visit the open-pit salt mine, the size of several city blocks.
Chantuu, in his sixties and more energetic than the rest of us, clambered around a trove of
crystalline colors, pinks, blues, grays, and pure white salt revealed in its bed of geological
sheets. Back at the border station, the bureaucratic official had arrived and given a
thumbs down on allowing us access to the ovoo.
Dismayed but undaunted, the five of us motored onward over muddy tracks
toward the ovoo. A heavy summer rain suddenly began to fall, announced by a
tremendously loud and unsettling burst of thunder. The rain quickly turned into frozen
chunks being thrown at us, slamming against the metal roof. Togtokh concentrated on
steering us through ice-filled flooded pools in the steppe grass. No rainbow appeared.
Badral and Chantuu stared wordlessly ahead. The freak storm unnerved me, along
with unfriendly borders here and to the other world where spirits used weather
for commentary.
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“The thunder is the roar from the dragon whose head is on the top of Tsagaan
Aav’s staff,” said Katuu.
“Tsagaan Aav is letting us know that he sees us coming to his ovoo,” said Badral.
I didn’t feel reassured, and it had begun to drizzle again.
A square cement one-room house monitored the Mongolian side of the border
near the ovoo. The guard had gone out for the day, so we did not stop, but we parked as
close as we could to a black barbed-wire fence marking the end of Mongolian land.
Katuu and Chantuu walked the length and came to halt at a place familiar to Chantuu.
They spoke softly between themselves. The brothers were going to Russia.
“Can I go, too?” I said.
“Okay,” said Badral.
“Really?”
“My insurance won’t cover it if you get arrested.”
“So, no, huh?”
“Up to you.”
“They might shoot me?”
“Lots of things could happen, and I would not be able to get you out.”
“I guess this should be a visit for Katuu and Chantuu’s personal memories.”
“Better that way.”
The two brothers squeezed under the barbed wire, minced through tall grass in the
neutral zone, negotiated a steel grey wire fence, then disappeared down a Russian gully.
Badral and I stood in the Mongolian rain snapping photographs. The brothers reappeared,
climbing a low hill where a pile of rounded stones was visible. An ancient burial mound
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had been re-purposed as an ovoo to Tsagaan Aav. We watched them as they clambered
all around, taking pictures of the place where their mother had brought them.
“Katuu said they don’t know who destroyed the ovoo. It might have been the
Tuvans,” said Badral.
We were looking at a part of Russia called Tuva, a province of Mongolian people
known for their throat singers. Two very wet, happy Durbets returned from the border
crossing, animated and talking excitedly.
“We have decided we are going to bring Tsagaan Aav’s ovoo home,” said Katuu.
“We can get the local people to help. We will bring the stones over the border and build a
new ovoo to show respect to him.”
The stones we could see in the photographs Katuu took were larger than a human
head, smooth and rounded by weather.
“This is not a typical ovoo,” I observed. “The stones are far too large for people to
toss when they go around it.”
“It’s probably an ancient burial mound,” said Badral.
Mongolia is loved by archeologists for its evidence of ancient civilizations in the
form of widely distributed mounds, called kurgans or kheregsüurs. The earlier Bronze
Age inhabitants left stone funeral mounds surrounded by rings from the Gobi clear into
Central Asia. They were possibly shamanic, so the present use of the mounds for ovoos
would not be incongruous. The ovoo might be relocated and the consecration the
following summer. It would be worth coming back to Davst for.
* * *
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Green Tara’s Ovoo
Our final pilgrimage visit was the ovoo of the Green Tara, from Katuu’s story of
the girl also called the Green Jurgen, who transformed into the twenty-one Taras during
her imprisonment in the 1930s. Togtokh maneuvered us into a grove that broke open to
the light blue summer sky and views of the mountain range. A bare gravel bar pebbled
out from a central mound where the ovoo rose up, flamboyantly enveloped in azure, gold,
ruby, and emerald silk scarves. I stared, fascinated by the structure, the first branch ovoo
I had been close to.
“A teepee,” Badral said. The stripped branches were propped against each other,
resembling a ten-foot high haystack.
What drew my attention was a door. A shadowed portal in the ovoo where a door
to a teepee would be. The triangular opening, about two feet on top by four feet, coyly
revealed several long, dark brown blocky objects in the shadowy interior. I squinted to try
to see more clearly, unsure if I should approach the sacred area.
Katuu circled the site, Togtokh prepared a stone for the incense offering, and
Badral came back from the SUV with offerings of cookies and milk for the Green Tara. I
began my circuits, thinking how I would miss this ritual and the team I had spent over a
week with. Katuu had halted and was bent over at the base of the cairn, opening his
briefcase. I joined him in lighting the juniper incense. The resinous scent rose to the
spirits and, like smelling salts, revived a memory in me.
I looked up just as Badral walked up onto the cairn to the door of the ovoo to pray
and leave his gifts. Now I knew going closer to the sacred center was allowed. As soon as
he backed away, hands folded, I approached the entrance to pray and see what the tree-
155
branch structure contained. A flowered plastic saucer full of hard cheese had been placed
in the doorway, and just outside there were several brown bricks of tea, more of the long
shapes I had discerned in the dark interior. A hand-carved wooden spoon for making milk
offerings had been placed to stand upright on a stone in the shadows. Beyond that lay
some tugrugs, four or five tiny brass cups, and what looked like written prayers or faded
images. Deeper inside, darkness indicated another opening leading further into the heart
of the tree-like ovoo. I felt a strong, familiar presence.
156
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