Wealth

Ulaanbaatar is full of magic for the Mongols. If they cannot survive on livestock, they will come to Ulaanbaatar to survive. As for the herders who cannot move their families to the cities, 80% of their usual income goes to the Mongolian Natural Parks Commission, and there are not enough livestock to support their lives at home, so they set up yurts and wait for tourists to travel.

On the suggestion of the embassy staff, Fan Wubing and others also came to a yurt area, paid a thousand dollars, and rented dozens of large yurts.

"Hehe, this is much cheaper than staying in a hotel." Fan Wuyi's subordinate said with a smile.

"You can choose to stay in a hotel." Fan Wuyi replied.

The subordinate immediately stopped suffocating. He just went to see the environment of the hotel. Instead of living there, it's better to live in a yurt. At least it's very clean here, and it's a bit fresh.

The situation of the hotel in Ulaanbaatar is really unsatisfactory. The difference from the yurt is probably that one is built with bricks and cement, and the other is not.

In fact, strictly speaking, the yurt is not a tent, it has its own characteristics. The roof is supported by connected wooden grids and wooden poles, and then filled with felt mats as insulation materials. A set of yurts weighs about one ton, and it can only be moved with a large cart and pulled by a few cows or three or four camels. Tourists, such as those who come to Korea, can participate in the daily life of herdsmen and set up yurts with them. The roof is supported by two pillars, and the living room is about 20 square meters on average. The gate of the yurt generally faces south, so you can get the sun.

The price of renting such a yurt for a day is only five dollars. Fan Wubing and dozens of people swarmed in, but he was overjoyed by the rented Mongols, plus food and drink. Forty and fifty talents spent a thousand dollars to get it, it can't help but say that it is very cheap.

The embassy person told Fan Wuyao, “Mongolia has a single economic structure, and the available energy has been mainly dependent on imports for nearly a century. Rosneft, which is responsible for 90% of Mongolia’s crude oil supply, has raised prices twice in the past three months, each time on average. The increase has reached 20%, and the price of domestic wheat in Mongolia has nearly doubled since last year. Mongolia’s water resources are extremely scarce, and ordinary people’s living water conditions are very poor. On the other hand, there is no good urban drainage system. When the river overflows, garbage will accumulate in the city and the sanitary conditions will be poor."

Fan Wubing nodded and said, "From the place I just passed by, I can see the wooden houses and the like. It can be seen that the life of the people in this place is really not very good."

There are some rich people in Mongolia. Otherwise, the Rolls-Royce is expensive, and the Big 6 is not very common, but at the same time, the disparity between the rich and the poor is expanding at an alarming degree, and now Mongolia's economic lifeline is basically in the hands of a few oligarchs.

There is a famous villa street in Bayinborough, in the northern suburb of Ulaanbaatar. The villas there are various and colorful, all of which are European and very beautiful. Those rich and leisurely Mongolians draw pictures and design villas by themselves. There are almost no duplicates of the five or six thousand villas in the entire area.

In the villa street stretching for tens of kilometers, there are mountains on the east and west sides. There are forests on the mountains. Under the blue sky and white clouds, the roofs of various colors reflect each other. It is like entering a fairy tale world, and the ordinary Mongolians who can be here are the same as those in the city. Compared with the struggling poor people in slums or grassland yurts, they are already living a paradise life.

According to the staff of the embassy, ​​even in a country with vast grasslands like Mongolia, competition for pastures often occurs. Sometimes, nomads have to graze their livestock to the reserve again and again.

Small garden facilities can enable residents to eat healthy food during difficult economic times. Any new ideas are well received by the public. The staple food of nomads is still meat and dairy products, but at least wild vegetables and fruits have been added to the menu.

"When guests come from afar, they are willing to spend time to receive them, because life on the grassland is boring for them." The embassy staff introduced Fan Wuyao, "Their usual entertainment is Listening to the radio, most nomads have radios that can receive foreign radio stations. They also like to listen to some outside news from guests who come to travel."

The yurt where Fan Wubing lives is a family of older Mongolians. The owner is pleased to receive an extra one hundred dollar bill from Fan Wubing. According to the embassy staff, this was a ceremonial welcoming guests in the past, but today I am afraid that only the elderly know about this ritual, which means that the guests came with friendly wishes.

Then the old man’s family was humming some songs with words that he didn’t understand. It sounded very melodious and tactile, and from Fan Wu’s feeling, in such a high-latitude city, It feels that the sky seems to be very low. After living in this environment for a long time, the mood is naturally more depressing. Therefore, shepherding sheep on the vast grassland requires more throats when there is something to do. Not only does it grow up over time A nation on horseback has also raised a nation that can sing and dance.

It made Fan Wubing feel very surprised. The old man and his family can speak English, and there is no obstacle in the conversation. The oral level is very good!

Fan Wubing communicated with them for a while, only to realize that Mongolia's favorites today are tourists from Europe and the United States. These people are generous, they are not bad, they are much better than the rude Russians, and they are not like merchants from mainland China. They only know how to exploit surplus value from them, so they are studying English seriously. , Vigorously develop tourism.

The old man said that one of his sons was working with a special commissioner of the United Nations Right to Food Project. The income was quite good, but the work place was relatively far away, and it took a long time to come back. Such a large yurt was left idle. No, just rent it out to tourists as a tourism industry, and the income is quite satisfactory.

In fact, since a decade ago, Mongolia has completed a complete transformation from a planned economy to a market economy, and most local enterprises have not survived. The old man’s son followed the special commissioner of the United Nations Food Rights Project to collect information in large and small cities and towns in Mongolia and report on the hunger status of people there.

Now they are doing research in Selenga Province, which is more than two hundred kilometers away from the capital and close to the border of Mongolia and Russia, where milk powder is produced, but the interests of the surrounding herdsmen are difficult to protect, because most of the milk comes from nearby Siberia. The cows there are healthier. Milk production is also higher, and domestic companies are not competitive, and the price of their products is half higher than that of Siberian milk powder. Therefore, the workers here can only earn a bite of food, and there is no sustainable development.

Because the yurt moves around, the system in Mongolia is similar to that in Russia. As long as you don’t build a fixed house in the center of the city, if you don’t set the yurt on the highway, no one will come to you.

But many people are taking tricks to set up the yurt not far from the highway, so as to attract more passing tourists, or those truck drivers who need to rest.

There are 50,000 kilometers of highways in Mongolia. However, the hardened road surface is only more than 1,000 kilometers away, and the other road surfaces are all sandy roads pressed out by the long-term driving of passing cars. On the road leading to the western Altai Mountains, the highest place is more than 4,300 meters above sea level, and the fuel tank of the car often freezes. At this time, the old-fashioned Soviet imported trucks showed their advantages. The driver set a fire under the car to melt the gasoline.

Nowadays, Mongolians like Japanese cars. Many people make a fortune by reselling second-hand cars from Japan and South Korea. But in the eyes of those drivers who often run snowy mountains and walk on dirt roads, the quality of old-fashioned Russian cars is more reliable.

For the nomads here, life in the mountains in winter is extremely difficult. The temperature often drops to minus 35 degrees. The frozen soil cannot grow any crops. If the winter storage cannot meet the demand, many families will have to spend the winter. A large number of livestock are slaughtered here. The cattle and sheep are cut into small pieces and cooked. According to traditional customs, the bones cannot be chopped off during the whole process. While eating their favorite leg of lamb, the family may be thinking whether next winter, they should go to support a few yurts, raise a few horses, and switch to tourism.

Fan Wubing had previously wondered if he could bear the fishy smell of mutton~www.wuxiaspot.com~ because he found that when people here cook mutton, they don’t add any condiments, they just add some. It was just salt, but when the lamb was cooked, the rich aroma surprised him.

While drinking the broth, Fan Wuyao was also surprised to find that it was so delicious, without any smell.

When I asked the staff of the embassy, ​​he said that the pastures here are of good quality, and no feed is needed for cattle and sheep, so the pure natural high-quality lamb is of course the most delicious, and there is no need to use it as feed. Smelly.

"It's a pity that I didn't find two cooks with Dong Laishun, and brought all the ingredients together." After Fan Wubing heard this explanation, he felt very regretful in his heart. If you had prepared it, the innermost one would be the most delicious mutton in the world. How much better than just drinking mutton soup without any additives?

He didn't say anything there, he heard the noise outside, but he didn't know what happened, but there was something wrong with the old man's eyes, as if he had encountered a very troublesome thing.

"What's going on?" Fan Wubing was puzzled, but he still grabbed a leg of lamb and severely tore off the fattest piece of meat.