Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
One less iconic image for tourists to take pictures of when they visit Ulaanbaatar, with this statue removal. The reports say that this is the last Lenin statue in the city, but it’s certainly not the last one standing in Mongolia. Darkhan, north of Ulaanbaatar, has a few Lenins here and there, and a gallery in the Darkhan Museum is replete with original paintings by Mongolian artists illustrating an imaginary visit to confer with Mongol leaders. Darkhan is closer to the Russian border, and Russian coverage of the removal of the last Lenin in UB isn’t terribly cheerful. I think our Lenins will be sticking around for a while. Video of the removal of the statue is included in the BBC coverage of the story. Throwing of shoes is a pretty serious insult in Mongolia. Just letting the soles of shoes on your feet touch someone else, can spark a brawl without a prompt apology, so chucking old shoes at the downed Lenin was a strong sentiment of disapproval. The Soviet Union saved Mongolia from being consumed by China, and for decades it was one of the only nations to recognize Mongolia’s sovereignty, but it came at a terrible price. The Cyrillic alphabet, and the wreckage of monasteries and temples all across the country are two prominent reminders of seventy years of a complicated live-in relationship. Lenin is going up for auction — legally, not like stolen dinosaur bones. Starting bid is under $300, a good price for the budget-conscious bourgeois historical artifact collector.
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This is rising Mongolian sumo talent, Takanoiwa A. Baasandorj posing for a press junket with rising K-pop stars T-ARA earlier this summer. They have something in common – growing popularity in Japan. Takanoiwa came to Japan to train and compete in sumo, as a part of the Takanohana stable. Retired yokozuna, the highest rank in sumo, train young wrestlers to rise through the ranks. They learn more than just the sport, but how to adapt to to very regimented Japanese tradition. Some of them do better than others… at the adapting. The Asahi Shimbun reports on the changing face of sumo in Japan. As far as foreign wrestlers go, Mongolians are still the cream of the crop in sumo. They take on Japanese names, and Japanese lives. They can spend a lifetime trying to become yokozuna, and still never make it. Asashoryu (aka Dagvadorj Dolgorsuren) made it to the top at 29 and then fell, with some disgrace. His marriage to his Japanese wife crumbled as scandal grew. Mongolian “fighting spirit” is best saved for the basho. 2011 brought a huge match fixing scandal to light, and the sport is still recovering. Dwindling attendance is a problem as well. The younger generation hasn’t taken to the national sport the way the older generations did. How to sauce it up again? I’d go just to catch yakuza gambling action, but maybe that’s just me. The right-wing nationalists aren’t keen on the rising number for foreign sumo wrestlers, but it has brought in a larger international audience. One tactic in place to bring in a younger Japanese audience is the development of sumo character design for products and promotion. Collectible cards could do it, but maybe some more amazing smart phone apps (for edutainment rather than betting), or some updated video games! I would pay money for some meta video of sumo-sized gamers getting their virtual sumo on. I can already picture the Gangnam Style/sumo parody… Invisible Horse, meet Sumo Belly Slap!
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Just last week I corrected my Mongolian in-law’s 11 year old girl who showed me her bootleg Louis Vuitton hair bow. She read “VL”. She was showing off her English alphabet reading skills, but I corrected her and said “LV for Louis Vuitton”. She repeated it back to me once or twice, but got bored with trying to pronounce “Vuitton”. There’s a Louis Vuitton store in Mongolia, in an upscale shopping center sandwiched between Sukhbaatar Square and the Ulaanbaatar Hotel. Sukhbaatar square is home to a giant monument to Sukhbaatar Damdin, a Mongolian revolutionary who fought for independence from China, which later led to Communist Soviet governance. The Ulaanbaatar Hotel has been around since 1961 and plays host to dignitaries, politicians and world leaders visiting Mongolia. Out in front is a beyond life-sized statue of Lenin, who is rumored to have some Mongolian blood in him on his father’s side, and is a loved figure in Mongolian political history. The hotel is a 5 star joint that is way beyond the price range of the average tourist looking for a nomadic adventure with the convenience of a hot shower, and its typical customer is still of the elite, diplomatic variety. Economic diplomats are more common here than political ones these days. The store has been the perfect centerpiece for any story about “Minegolia” and the boom-town economy, that has been written for the last 2-3 years. When the Louis Vuitton store opened here, Mongolia was upgraded from country with lots of velour LV car seat covers being sold on the roadside, to a country with an actual boutique, complete with security guards at the door and sales people taught to size up the spending power of each customer that walks through the door. Books have been written about the fervent efforts to grow luxury brands around the globe, and studies have been done about who is consuming these items in these new marketplaces, and how they are able to consume them. The question I get asked most often about the LV store in UB is “Who can afford to shop there?”. I’ve been in the shop twice, and the only paying customers I’ve ever seen have been Chinese. Probably businessmen passing through, based on my years of experience people-watching in high end duty-free department stores around Asia. The Wall Street Journal wrote about Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Christian Dior and others working hard to build a Chinese clientele and keep them. VIP customers are being treated to perks galore. Beyond personal shopping and private tours of flagship stores, some Chinese Louis Vuitton clients were flown by private helicopter to watch a camel polo match in Mongolia. I’m not sure if this is the future that Sukhbaatar had in mind for an independent Mongolia — day-trip playground for the newly wealthy Chinese label whore *cough-sputter*– I mean, “brand conscious” consumer. This is however the future that has been projected for luxury brands for the last five years. As the strongholds of the...
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Today is the first day of Comic Con (stop by booth 1729 and give the GR crew big hugs for me!!) and it was also the first day of Naadam in Mongolia. Naadam dates back to 3000 BC. It’s a celebration of the “three manly sports” – wrestling, archery and horse racing. The horse racing and archery now include women, but wrestling is still all boys. Naadam is celebrated all over Mongolia – in small villages and in one GIANT celebration in Ulaanbaatar. The festival lasts three days, and as a national holiday, well… hello 5 day weekend! We went to our local Naadam in Darkhan, after watching the opening ceremonies of the Ulaanbaatar festival on TV. Drove past friends and family on the two lane dirt road leading to the stadium who were leaving for the day, but there was still plenty to do and see. First stop, fresh cotton candy spun onto a chopstick. Second stop, shish kabobs with sheep meat served on a piece of toast. Third stop, huushur. Eating as much huushur as possible is Naadam’s unofficial fourth wo/manly sport. There were about 100 gers set up around the wrestling and archery stadium, almost all selling the same thing – huushur. Huushur is a Mongolian empanada, filled with goat meat and not much else. They’re greasy, crunchy (deep fried) and meat-juice and oil come pouring out of them with your first bite. People usually order them by the half-dozen and share them with family and friends. For some people, huushur is the highlight of Naadam, not the games, not the tradition, just the food. Darkhan’s Naadam definitely has a county fair vibe. Admission is free – carnival games, food and souvenirs cost. Getting your photo taken sitting on a camel is about $3. Riding horses kids brought in from the neighboring countryside costs about the same. You can see it all in a day, but the main events – the races, the wrestling and the archery – take all three days, running tournament style so you can keep coming back for more huushur. We caught the vetting for one of the last races of the day. Four year old horses were racing 15 km with their grade school aged jockeys riding in all arrangements of barefoot, bicycle helmeted and bareback. We’ll be heading back tomorrow to cheer on a cousin’s horses in the races in the morning, and to pick up some delicious looking watermelon, more cotton candy, and sheep shish kabobs. Not the same as eating vegan banh mi and Thai food take-out at the GR Comic Con booth, but the wrestler’s uniforms do remind me of all-too-revealing cosplay.
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Busted and why didn’t the dinosaur bones get checked out beforehand? It sold for near 1.1 million and now it’s an issue of who gets this? Will it go back to Mongolia and be placed in a museum? Will it just get poached again? “We have pulled a lot of them out of the ground and seen a lot of others come out of the ground, and in our professional opinion it is from Mongolia,” said Mark Norell, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History who began working in the Central Asian country in 1990. (Fox News – Tarbosaurus)
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