Revival of traditional Mongolian medicine: a combination of old and new

• By Kou Jie, People's Daily Online
• It is already 9pm. In a dim lab at the Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities (IMUN), 63-year-old Bayanmandula and his students are still browsing ancient Mongolian medical records, using modern technology to analyse the efficacy of traditional herbs.
  “According to historical records, there are thousands of traditional Mongolian medicines (TMM), but only a few hundred are still in use today. With the help of modern medical theory and advanced technology, I hope to discover more secrets of TMM with my remaining years,” said Bayanmandula.
  Born into a Mongolian family, Bayanmandula started to grow a keen interest in TMM when he was a child. When China’s national college entrance exam, the gaokao, resumed in 1977, Bayanmandula took it and was admitted to the Inner Mongolia Medical University, becoming one of China’s first university students to major in TMM. Ever since, he has dedicated his life to traditional medical practices.

“Mongolian medicine has been developing for thousands of years. It is a unique and precious resource in Inner Mongolia, which also mixes with traditional ethnic culture,” said Bayanmandula.

After decades of hard work, Bayanmandula and his colleagues at IMUN have successfully conducted more than 300 TMM research programmes, earning 15 patents for medical innovation, while two traditional Mongolian medicines have been approved for clinical use. Every year, more than 1,100 domestic and foreign students come to study TMM, many of whom go on to become professional TMM physicians.

Generally considered to date back to the time of Genghis Khan [1162-1227, founder of the Mongol Empire], TMM is now stepping out of a relatively small circle of practitioners to reach more people,” said Bayanmandula.

‘An empirical science that lacks a theoretical framework and data’

Bolong, a medical professor at IMUN, said: “Compared with Western medicine, TMM has relatively smaller doses, and mainly contains herbs and minerals. It is widely favoured by the public for its close connection with nature, high quality and low price.” 

For example, bone-setting in traditional Mongolian medicine is easy to practice and is not restricted by the environment. The technique at the Tongliao Traditional Mongolian Medicine Bone-setting Hospital has been listed on the national-level intangible cultural relic list.

“TMM is an empirical science that lacks a theoretical framework and data. With modern technologies such as medical statistics and modern medical theories, TMM is now becoming more systematic and reliable,” said Bolong.

“Nowadays, we are combining Western medicine with TMM, hoping the latter can provide an alternative to treat diseases for which modern medicine has limited effect, such as chronic gynaecological diseases and hemiplegia [paralysis of one side of the body],” said Bayanmandula.

The quickening development of TMM has also attracted international scholars and patients to come to Inner Mongolia. The Inner Mongolia International Mongolian Medicine Hospital, which focuses on TMM treatment, was  established in 2012 and has received many domestic and foreign patients.

It has had about 30,000 patients from Mongolia, with more than 3,700 staying in the hospital for treatment. In 2016, the Affiliated Hospital of Inner Mongolia University for Nationalities worked with a college in Mongolia to establish a branch in the capital, Ulan Bator. This one branch receives more than 1,000 patients from Mongolia every year.

“TMM and modern medicine are complementary. I hope TMM can play a more important role in the future, introducing the wisdom of Mongolian people and their culture to the world,” said Bayanmandula.

Source:People's Daily China

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China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Mongolia agree to promote education cooperation

ULAN BATOR, June 27 (Xinhua) -- China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the Mongolian government signed an agreement here on Thursday to promote educational and cultural exchanges between the two sides.

At a signing ceremony of a student exchange document, Hou Yuan, head of the education department of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, said the two countries have witnessed growing educational cooperation in recent years and Inner Mongolia is ready to promote exchanges with Mongolia in the coming days.

According to Mongolia's Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Sports, the agreement gives an opportunity to 150 Mongolian students to pursue higher education in Inner Mongolia and will further strengthen cooperation between the two sides.

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Int'l Mongolian wrestlers compete in Ulan Bator

ULAN BATOR, June 2 (Xinhua) -- An international wrestling tournament was held here on Saturday, with the aim to introduce and promote Mongolian traditional wrestling throughout the world.

A total of 128 wrestlers from Mongolia, China's Inner Mongolia and Russia's Buryatia and Tuva competed in three categories, namely Mongolian national wrestling, Inner Mongolian wrestling and Buryat wrestling in the sixth edition of the tournament that ran for more than eight hours.

In the category of Mongolian national wrestling, Mongolian wrestler Batnasan Gonchigdama claimed the title.

China's Inner Mongolian wrestler Burensain won the tournament in the category of Inner Mongolian wrestling, and Mongolian wrestler Turmunkh Begzsuren won the category of Buryat wrestling.

The winners of each category were awarded with 3 million Mongolian tugriks (1,246 U.S. dollars).

The first ever championship was held in Mongolia's capital in April 2008. The tournament took place in Inner Mongolia, China in 2009, in Buryatia, Russia in 2010 and in Russia's Tuva republic in 2011, respectively.

The fifth tournament was also held in Ulan Bator in 2012.

Mongolian wrestling, known as Bokh, is the folk wrestling style of Mongols in Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and other regions where touching the ground with anything other than a foot loses the match.

Source:Xinhua news agency

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Flight between Manzhouli, Ulan Bator resumes

HOHHOT, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) -- A direct flight linking Manzhouli, China's largest land port with Russia, with Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia, resumed Monday.

Flights between the two localities were launched on Oct. 21, 2013, by a Mongolian airline.

Due to a drop in interest for flights the route was halted during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday this year, according to an official with Manzhouli's Xijiao International Airport.

Manzhouli City, which borders Mongolia and Russia, in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, processes more than 70 percent of all the land cargo between China and Russia.

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In search of nationality

Trans. by M.OYUNGEREL

“Mongolians, let’s grow together, come back to your country,” said the President of Mongolia, Ts.Elbegdorj, at the 100th anniversary of the Freedom Parade in 2011.
To this day, a video of this invitation is on Youtube, while no real work has been done since the 2013 Let’s Gather Mongolians Project for resolving the citizenship issues of ethnic groups, such as Buryats and Inner Mongolians. The project, rather than staying in focus, talked about demographic issues.
Head of Tsakhim Urtuu Kholboo NGO D.Sainbayar gave three Hazara Mongolians scholarships to study in Mongolia during the shooting of the “Mongolians Searching Mongolians” television show in Afghanistan. One of them was Meqdad Salehi.
Salehi gained little knowledge about Mongolia from his grandparents or from some old history books in Persian. When he landed at the Chinggis Khaan International Airport, he was astonished by the welcome he received from journalists, student unions, and Tsakhim Urtuu Kholboo NGO. It surpassed his expectations and left a deep impression on him.
When asked if he wanted to live in Mongolia in the future, Meqdad replied, “I could work here after I finish my masters, but it’s hard for foreigners to live here. We are treated as foreigners. Visa issues are troublesome due to the absence of a Mongolian embassy in Afghanistan. We have to send our materials to the Indian Embassy, and this takes up lots of time.
“Although the average salary is close to that of Afghanistan, the living cost is at least three to four percent more here.”
Many Hazara Mongolians are coming to study and travel in Mongolia nowadays. There are more than 20 Hazaras studying at Mongolian International University, for instance. Before the three Hazaras landed on Mongolian soil, Mongolians were unaware or had no knowledge about these people who secretly wished to become Mongolian citizens. Meqdad was grateful that the Mongolians he met always asked him if he would continue to live in Mongolia and asked him to stay. “Unfortunately, I have to make a rational decision,” Meqdad said.
The Hazaras haven’t heard any decisions in their favor after contacting the Mongolian government numerous times about citizenship issues and demonstrating with signs saying “I am Hazara” at Chinggis Square.
The co-organizer of the demonstration and human rights activist Ch.Munkhbayar said, “The law states that anyone who has lived in Mongolia for five years, and has adequate knowledge about Mongolia can become a Mongolian citizen. This sounds like a choice, but this ‘freedom’ is not being applied to the Mongolians of the world. The law doesn’t give enough information about gaining citizenship, so it’s easy for them to come up with a reason why you can’t become a citizen.”
The implementation of this law can be seen from a series of articles by N.Alkhaa, an Inner Mongolian citizen who has lived in Mongolia for 22 years, published in Gereg Magazine. D.Narangoo, a Chinese language teacher at Orchlon School, is an Upper Mongolian, or a Khukh Nuur (Blue Lake) Mongolian, who has lived in Mongolia since the 1990s, but became a citizen only two years ago. She spent almost 15 years of her life trying to get Mongolian citizenship.
When a person from her town also got Mongolian citizenship, she said, “When we heard the President’s words, we were head over heels, as if our Mongolia was calling us. But in reality, it was very hard. Even if you get a visa, getting permanent residency is another challenge. I wish Mongolians would help us to come live in Mongolia. This is an issue after you wed a Mongolian too. For me, life is relatively nice. I have a family and a job. The people left in Upper Mongolia ask a lot of questions. My relatives are even proud they have a family member in Mongolia.”
D.Narangoo’s aunt’s eldest son is named Ulaanbaatar. The name was given because of their desire to live in Mongolia. For “foreign” people of Mongolian ethnicity, the question is usually whether to come to Mongolia, where there is almost no chance of citizenship, or whether to live in a satellite state.
D.Khavar, an Inner Mongolian citizen in Ulaanbaatar pursuing a doctoral degree at the National University of Mongolia, is facing the same issue. After seeing the conditions which were far from expectation, he said, “Mongolians are better than Inner Mongolians in the sense that they have globalized. But globalization is not helping them. The average wage is low. Although it’s in the city, the wage is equal to that in a village. If you compare the average income to commodity prices, it’s probably an even lower amount.” D.Khavar said he faced issues when it came to visas. The names they get called because of their Chinese accent is also an issue, he claimed.
Buryats have a different attitude. Since the presidents of Mongolia and Russia signed agreements for travel without a visa, many Buryats have started traveling to Mongolia. “I am happy that I get to visit without a visa, at least for a while. My grandma calls Mongolia the ‘God country’. My friends love coming here and I feel truly Mongolian here,” said Buryat visitor Nadejda Siirenova.
After the Prime Minister married a Buryat woman in 1994, the first Altargana Festival was organized. To this day, the festival has evolved into a giant event where 20,000 Buryats from China, Russia and Mongolia gather. Dialect researcher and lecturer at the National University of Mongolia G.Gantogtokh said at the Altargana Festival’s academic meeting, “The Buryat youth today are proud to sing in Buryat on stage, but they feel ashamed to talk in Buryat in their daily lives. This is the result of shaming history and culture.”
A 2010 report on linguistics by UNESCO listed Buryat as a dying language. Youngsters aren’t participating in the festival, so the age range has become smaller. Things have become different in these two years, Nadejda said.
“We grew up in socialist times, when they called Chinggis a murderer and claimed that Mongolians are barbaric and evil people. But this identity is fading. Young people are coming here, making friends and finding that those stories were not the case. In addition, these projects – like Altargana and Khamag Mongol – are doing good deeds to unite people of Mongolian ethnicity.”
I discovered during my reporting, that the Tuvans of Russia have only a few patriotic people left, while the rest – mainly young people, believe they are not Mongolian. Tuvans who are currently in Mongolia said they don’t consider themselves Mongolian. Dan-Khaya, a Tuvan citizen in Mongolia, said he was worried his Mongolian language skills were poor. “My friends can’t even say a word in Mongolian,” he said.
Human rights activist Ch.Munkhbayar said, “In other countries, ethnic groups with the same origins as the majority group are encouraged to come. They prepare agreeable conditions for them. All of them have a repatriation policy. Even China, with a large population, has a well developed, limited policy about this issue.” Ch.Munkhbayar has proposed his Repatriation Policy for Mongolia since 2006 to the government, but still hasn’t received a response.

During his speech in 2012, the President mentioned that the ratio between Mongolians declining their citizenship to the people gaining Mongolian citizenship is 60 to one. “To change this, we need to modify the laws related to foreign residents’ rights or make special laws dedicated to people of Mongolian origins. The law stipulates that foreigners allowed into the country are to not exceed one percent of the state population. This article should be altered to fit the conditions of Mongolian ethnicity as well,” Ch.Munkhbayar argued.
Although the law allows them to become citizens, people with Mongolian heritage still can’t gain citizenship due to unspecified reasons. It is easy for authorities to shut them off when the law is “flexible”, because any reason can be given since the law is too broad. Some others have claimed that they were under much pressure because government officials abuse their power and oppress them.
We should help people of Mongolian ethnicity safely and peacefully reside in Mongolia. Many people support the Let’s Gather Mongolians Project and are urging the state and President to stay true to their words.

Source: Gereg Magazine

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Divided Mongolias find unity in common ancestor Kublai

ULAN, BATOR – Eight centuries after the ruler of the greatest land empire in human history was born, the mighty Mongol Kublai Khan’s descendants are a people divided between his homeland and the China he conquered, with both claiming him as their own.

With Kublai Khan’s 800th birthday coming up Wednesday, Mongolia will launch commemorations in Ulan Bator while China will mark the date near the site of one of his capitals after he founded the Yuan dynasty in 1271.

Under Kublai — a grandson of Genghis Khan, who first began the Mongols’ epic expansions — the realm reached its greatest extent, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Korean Peninsula, the largest contiguous land domain ever.

But the Yuan emperors ruled China for less than a century, and after they fell, the roles were reversed, with the Chinese later reigning over Mongolia.

Geopolitical earthquakes in the 20th century, such as the collapse of China’s Qing dynasty and the rise of the Soviet Union finally saw Mongolia break away as an independent country, only to quickly fall under the sway of Moscow.

“Kublai Khan, being a Mongol, would have had great difficulty establishing control over China, so he had to make himself a Chinese emperor and thus found the Yuan dynasty,” said John Man, an author and authority on Mongol history.

“It’s one of the world’s greatest historical ironies that modern China gets most of its borders, minus Mongolia, from a barbarian from the North, from Kublai Khan who was a Mongol, not a Chinese at all.”

Nonetheless China proclaims itself as the world’s oldest civilization and has a tendency to coopt successful invaders, declaring them Chinese.

Modern Mongolia has a population of just 3 million, the vast majority ethnic Mongols. But almost twice as many — nearly 6 million people— live in the People’s Republic of China, where they are one of dozens of minorities.

Some divided nations have re-unified, such as West and East Germany, but despite some Mongolian nationalists’ fantasies, the country’s geopolitical weakness and economic dependence on China make a single Mongol state impossible, says D. Shurkhuu of the Institute of International Affairs in Ulan Bator.

“This is a very sensitive issue in political terms, especially for politicians in Mongolia,” he said.

On both sides Mongols agree on the glory of their shared history.

“Genghis Khan is the ancestor of ethnic Mongols and Mongolians,” said Baigali, a guide who goes by one name at a complex in China’s Inner Mongolia region billed as the mausoleum of Kublai’s grandfather.

Foreign historians reject the claim, though the site of Genghis’ grave has never been identified and remains one of the world’s great unsolved historical mysteries.

Baigali said the two peoples are essentially the same, although those in China use traditional vertical Mongolian script, while Mongolians write in the horizontal Cyrillic alphabet inherited from the Soviet Union.

“And they think they are superior to us because they are pure Mongolian and we are Sinicized,” she added, hinting at underlying tensions.

Hada, an ethnic Mongol dissident who also goes by one name and who spent almost 20 years behind bars in China before being freed last December, says his people have been marginalized by communist authorities and “downgraded …to an ‘ethnic minority.’ ”

“It is an undeniable fact that they are the indigenous people of a great nation,” he wrote of China’s Mongols in an article published online this month by the U.S.-based monitoring group Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center.

“It serves a political agenda of the Chinese to belittle the Mongolian nation, diminish national self-confidence and cause them to abandon any aspirations of self-determination,” he continued.

Beijing denies accusations it oppresses minority groups and counters it has delivered economic development and raised living standards.

Mongol herders in China sporadically demonstrate against their resource-rich pastures being infringed upon by developers and coal miners — one named Tumur hanged himself in protest earlier this year — drawing attention and support from activists in Mongolia.

“There are many Tumur in Inner Mongolia and many herders are trying to keep their land away from the Chinese government,” campaigner Munkhbayar Chuluundorj said in Ulan Bator while holding a sign reading “Je Suis Tumur,” referring to the “Je Suis Charlie (I am Charlie)” movement that followed shootings by Islamic militants at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The impossibility of political unification did not preclude cultural connection, Munkhbayar said, invoking Kublai’s grandfather.

“Genghis Khan is the only way because all Mongolians abroad believe they are proud of Genghis Khan,” he said. “They want to say they are descendants of Genghis Khan.”

Source:AFP-JIJI

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