Hey Blog! On Wednesday I went to York to see a film, so I’ll tell you about that this week!
The film was called If only I could hibernate – an appropriate title for this time of year when we all are slowing down and getting ready for winter. If only I could hibernate – but then we’d miss Christmas. Big problem. However, if you are living in the poorer parts of Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia, and it’s -40° as the norm, and you have no heating, then the advantages of hibernating are even more obvious. This is the situation the family in the film are in – living in a traditional style ger, without coal for the fire, and little food, with a genius brother who keeps winning physics competitions but is forced to drop out of lessons to provide fuel and food for the family. A rather brilliant setting for a film but a sad position for a family to be in – thankfully this is a film not a true story! The film focuses on the conflict of family life – to stay in the city and get an education, but get little money and be exposed to air pollution; or to go to the countryside, where you might get a job but be unable to learn at an institution where you can get the best quality education.
The film was entirely in Mongol, which is a language I unfortunately don’t speak, so I had to use the subtitles. I was intending to learn a few words during the film, but I had forgotten them by the time we came out of the cinema. Mum is luckier and can speak some basic Mongol – enough to get around – and apparently remembers it enough to understand what the film was saying in places. I might have to check if it’s available on Duolingo… [Ed./ Mum: Sadly not.]
The thing which attracted us to this particular film, among the film festival ongoing at the moment, was the fact that it is set in Mongolia – the country my parents met in, in fact, even though they were both there from the UK. Mongolia has a unique culture – it is sandwiched between Russia and China, and is mostly steppe landscape. It also has a long history, dating back to Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire which covered all Asia from China to Turkey, from Siberia to India. The Mongols were the greatest army in the world at the time, and had they carried on into Europe, it is likely the world would speak Mongol. There was, however, one small problem – they don’t do well with boats, as proved in the attempted invasion of Japan. This is probably the only time they actually suffered a bad defeat. However, the Mongol Empire was short-lived – after a brief succession of Great Khans, the massive empire acquired by Genghis dwindled and was incorporated into China, the Indian Mughals, and some smaller kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. However the legacy is clear – a common Indian surname is Khan, from the Mongol chiefs; Yuan, the dynasty Kublai Khan founded in China, is still the Chinese currency; and the poem In Xanadu did Kublai Khan by Coleridge is a potent memory of the idea of the majesty of the “Far East”.
I won’t tell you the outcome, that would spoil the excitement – however, I will say it does not fully resolve, so there might be another some day. In the meantime, I must say баяртай! *
*Said bayartai, meaning goodbye!