‘Detours’ taken by Mongols on WeChat

In the middle school Mongolian textbooks there is a well-known text called “Huuchin Huu” (“A young man fallen behind the times”) written by the famous Mongolian writer D. Natsagdorj. Most of us still remember how it starts:

Hudeegin baidal shaltar boltar, chagin ularil oroo bosgo …

(“The rural village is messy and shabby, the society is full of ups and downs…”)

I was impressed by the author’s ironic way of describing a Mongolian young man who was caught in the sudden change of rural life and in the end saw a light under an ‘upside-down’ big metal pot during the Mongolian revolution in the 1920s.

Recently, one of my friends sent a short story called “Suljeen Huu” (“A young man living in the Internet”) written by an online writer, whose pseudonym name is Tatar, in which he describes a phone-addicted young man in a Mongolian village in the same ironic way by employing almost the same sentence structures as those in “Huuchin Huu.”

It starts like this (the full text is available here):

WeChat version of “Huuchin Huu”

Suljiyen ne baidal uimeen shoogaan tai, suruglegsen humus eniyed tai haniad tai. Haaltai Google haxiltai Facebook uruu haya nig hoyar hun herem haraiju orona … gar chenegin haluun yilqi nuur ood nil geju hums in setgel  ig bohinduulna… barimjiya abiya gi urbuulen hurbuulen xinjigseer uder sarig uliruulna… boljoo doyan Mongol soyol ba Mongolchuud in garh jam, delhei dahini hugjiltin tohai hedun mur bichije… nig urloo gi barana.

(Life on the internet is full of noise and hustles, the crowds are smiling and coughing… looking at one or two guys jumping out of the ‘wall’ and wandering on Facebook and Google occasionally… the heat from phone battery flowing to his face and his heart is wistfully wondering… surfing and thinking about the online debate about standard Mongolian implementation, writing and boasting in heaps and bounds from time to time….) [my translation]

The parody focuses on the young man’s “wide knowledge” including others’ secret affairs, the prize money won by celebrity wrestlers, online medicine, the “deteriorating” quality of Mongolian women, and the politics of “hateful” Japan and “evil” America. Off the Internet, this young man leads a reckless yet aimless life: in the winter he plays Mah-jong, and goes bathing in the banner centre; in the summer he frequents fairs in various towns and banners, drinks with “table girls” and sings songs about the wide open grasslands.

This satire shines a critical spotlight on a life characterized by limited information, declining morality, enjoyment of drinking and partying, pursuit of cars and beauties, and boasting about the great Mongols of the past. It shows the dark side of a society under tremendous transformation that can be found in many small towns across Inner Mongolia.

Let us look at some “detours” taken by Mongolians in the north eastern part of Inner Mongolia. Marois (2006) notes that former herders today live in sedentary house as their Chinese counterparts in this area. But they arrange their houses differently from Chinese villagers and engage in different occupancy practices. They keep their ger (“tent”) next to their house and move seasonally to graze their cattle on fertile pasture. Inside the settled-down house the honorific zone is kept at the back of the room as it is in the ger, and they locate the hearth in the room immediately behind the door. This is due to the fact that for Mongolians the fire is a purifying element. By contrast, Han villagers would locate the kitchen and the fire at the back of the house.

Marois (2006) argues that the adoption of sedentary life, fixed dwellings and other material objects are not enough to say that the herders have become sinicized. While making choices from a variety of objects modernity offers the herders, they take detours to make their choices suit their own needs and to express their distinctiveness.

The author Tatar very vividly tells about the life of young Mongolian village men. It is very hard for such men to find a wife, particularly if they do not own an apartment or a car.

But I also want to stress the adaptation made by the herders as they embrace modernity thrust upon them by the nation state and globalization. For instance, an increasing number of villagers in my hometown are buying cars and using WeChat now. The cars have increased the frequency of visits between relatives and friends, and some of them formed a WeChat Mongolian song competition group of over 100 people across several Mongolian villages.

I therefore favour the term “cultural strategizing” (Silverberg, 2007) – instead of “cultural borrowing” – to explain the processes of social change that can be observed in the lives of Mongols. The emphasis on cultural strategizing is predicated on multifaceted dialogic interactions between local and global, between tradition and modernity.

Instead of wasting their lives on the Internet, contemporary Mongols also strategically use the Internet to commodify their culture and in search of profit. On sites such as 蒙古丽人 (“Mongol beauty”), 蒙古圈 (“Mongol circle”) or Onoodor (“Today”), Mongol photography is intended to lure tourists to Inner Mongolia. Traditional costumes and Mongolian girls and women are becoming something to be gazed at, and the herder with his sheep is parading before online users.

The virtual space also allows young Mongols to experience a sense of symbolic connection with their community and a form of ethnic identity, even if one that is entwined with the manipulation of markets.

Online Mongols are beautiful and glamorous people, with an amazing homeland and culture. By contrast, mundane news such as the dropping price of lamb, the harsh weather with summer droughts and winter storms, or the high levels of pollution are rare.

The Mongols’ nostalgic imaginings and pride related to the beauty of traditional life or pristine scenic spots divert their attention from many of the realities of their circumstances.

Social media “recreate” Mongolian lives for their followers, though cloaked ones.

The question then is how to play out their identities in their desired symbolically cloaked communities? Maybe attending one of the popular Mongolian weddings to “feel” more Mongolness is not a bad idea; at least our Internet boy can leave his phone for a moment and take a walk in another symbol-cluttered event. He might meet his soul mate dressed in traditional costume.

References

Marois, A. (2006). The Squaring of the Circle: Remarks on Identiy and Change from the Study of a Mongol-Han Community in Hulun Buir, Inner Mongolia. Mongolian Studies: Journal of the Mongolia Society, 28, 75-86.

Silverberg, M. R. (2007). Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times. Berkeley: University of California Press.