I'm on Mongolian TV!

So I forgot to post this when it happened, but the other week my school had a TV commercial done.  I speak Mongolian in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62Kg3t4KHU

Translation of what I'm saying: "Hello my friends!  I came to Mongolia from the states because I love Mongolia and Mongolian language.  Come study with us!"

Pretty standard stuff, but it was fun.

My New Roommate: also, Animals in Evenki

In honor of my new roommate, who is herself an animal, here's a list of animals in Hulunbuir Evenki.  Loans noted:

Important livestock (all borrowed from Classical Mongolian):
qɔnin: sheep
ukər: cattle
mɔrin: horse
jamaɣan: goat

If you're familiar with the Mongolian concept of tav maɬ "five herds", perhaps you've noticed that these are four of the five important animals kept by the Mongols, so it makes perfect sense that Mongolized Evenki would borrow these words.  However, there are only four here!  What about the other one?  The other animal, the camel, is not in Evenki because they live too far north.  However, if there was a word it would be something like təməɣʌn, which is the modern Chahar pronunciation of Classical Mongolian temeyen.

Other Mammals:
inakin: dog (compare Mong. nɔxɔɪ)
bɔqa: deer (compare Mong. bʊqa)
kɔskə: cat (from Russian koʃka)
guskɔ: wolf

Other Vertebrates:
dʊ'gi: bird
tamədʊ'gi: eagle (it would be interesting to see the meaning of "tamə")
kɔɮin: snake
ɔɮdɔ: fish

Bugs:
iɮasən: fly
bɔqɔsən: mosquito
umuɬ: worm

Counting to Ten in Evenki!

Let's count to ten in Hulunbuir Steepe Evenki!  I'd like to add that my being able to do this amused my informants to no end.  They would bring their friends over to hear the funny foreigner count in their native language.

1 umun
2 dzu:r
3 iɮɛn
4 digin
5 ton:a
6 nʊŋʊn
7 nadan
8 dzapqɔn
9 jɔgɪn
10 dza:n

Altaic Swadesh Lists:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Swadesh_lists_for_Altaic_languages

Descriptive Grammar of Evenki:
https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_evn_morsyn-4

QUICK CORRECTION: I did not mean to insinuate that digin "four" was a recent borrowing. This is a pure Tungusic word (e.g. Manchu "duin") but may reflect borrowing on an ancient level, or if Altaicists are correct, they may even be true cognates.

Also, sorry for the jumpy video, but we don't need fluid movement as long as the board is visible and the audio works!

Bro Drinks Airag!

My first time trying Airag, or fermented mare's milk! Also known as Koumis to the Turkic peoples.  Not bad, but definitely new!

Evenki Greetings and Introductions

Hulunbuir Steppe Evenki greetings and introductions:

ajə biʃindi -- Are you well?
ajə -- Well, good
ʊrʊ -- Bad
ima gɔrbitʃ biʃin di? -- What's your name?
nameɪ xaɣar -- My name is Khagar (mountain)
ʊrʊntʃutʃʊ -- Thank you
ʊ:tʃla:ʃræ -- Sorry (from Mongolian)
bajartæ -- Goodbye (from Mongolian)

Mailbag 1 + Evenki Villages!

Kero K Says:

1) How did you find the Evenk (sic) in the countryside? Did you just wander around and ask (in Chinese) everybody you saw if they were Evenki? How upset were the Chinese guards?
2) I remember reading somewhere that the Ket were driven northward not by the Evenks, but that they moved themselves northward to avoid being stuck inbetween the Russians and Tatars. Both groups demanded tributes/taxes from the Kets, but the Kets could afford to pay only one. Thus, they moved north so they would be completely in Russian territory. They also didn't have to worry about Tatar attacks there.

My Reply:

Mongolian Food is Awesome

Let’s talk about Mongolian food.  Usually when we Americans think of Mongolian food, we think of “Mongolian Barbecue”, recently popularized by several chains back in the States.  How this name came about I’m not sure, as it’s neither Mongolian nor barbecue.  For the uninitiated, M.B. is basically Chinese stir fry served in a Mongolian theme restaurant.  It’s the Asian equivalent of “Outback Steakhouse”...a delicious fraud:

As another analogy, imagine going into your local Mexican joint and being served Kung Pao Chicken.  That’s Mongolian Barbecue.  The problem is not, mind you, the food itself.  I love a good stir fry.  The problem is the dishonesty, or at least the benign ignorance, of calling it something it’s not.

And it doesn't end there.  One popular M.B. chain makes the claim, which is now a widespread belief, that M.B. originated with Genghis Khan’s soldiers using their shields as woks.  Preposterous.  This story was dreamed up in an air-conditioned office in Cleveland by some white people in ties.  A nomadic warrior carrying around a sack of rapidly-spoiling veggies, rice and other stir-fry implements would be slowed down considerably, and before long end up dead.  Why would you do that when you have a perfectly good food source that can walk, feed and reproduce by itself?

And not only do sheep/horses/goats/camels/cattle (the “big 5” of Mongol pastoralism) provide you with food, they provide you with clothes, shelter, milk, transport and load-bearing.  They can even get you drunk, if you ferment or distill the milk.  When’s the last time you saw a bell pepper do any of this?  Vegetables suck.  They’re good for nothing but sitting around and going bad:

Even Nancy Reagan says NO to veggies!

Not only that, but vegetables are incredibly labor-intensive.  You have to stay in one place and farm them.  Mongols don’t farm, they pillage people who farm.  Do you know what the Mongolian word for fruit/veggies is?  Tsagaan Khoolh “white food”.  In this case the “white” has some connotation of effeminacy or weakness.*  That’s right; the Mongolian word for veggies is “wimp chow”.  Vegetarians have it hard here.

Real Mongolian cooking doesn’t even use woks.  A soldier in the Mongol Hordes would be more likely to use a wok as a shield than vice versa.   Woks feature nowhere in the Mongolian kitchen.  But you know what do?  Hollowed-out marmot carcasses:

Awesome.

Real Mongolian cooking is the manliest culinary tradition in the world.  Mongolian food, by and large, requires only two things: fire and dead animals.  You don’t even need utensils.  You eat the meat with your hands and a knife.  I can’t think of a single Mongolian dish that isn’t entirely or almost entirely animal products.   You know what the Mongolian equivalent of a Thanksgiving turkey is?  Roasted sheep head.  They have it on special occasions and give it to the guest of honor.  Again, awesome.

Even Mongolian tea is badass and manly.  In the States we don’t really think of tea as being badass, more the province of hippies, Englishmen and other enemies of freedom.  Red-blooded Americans drink coffee.  Black, maybe with a little milk.  But even here Mongolians have us beat.  Mongolian milk tea is the manliest morning beverage in the universe.  Let me explain:

First, you start with a brick of tea.  How, you may ask, does tea come in bricks?  Mongols have done this for centuries.  Traditionally, the leaves are pressed and held together with COW BLOOD.* Holy crap.  Is there anything about Mongolian food that doesn’t kick ass? (Hint: no.)

So, you break off a chunk of blood-tea and boil it.  Meanwhile, you take an equal measure of milk--whole, none of this lo-fat nonsense-- some butter, salt to taste, and maybe a bit of cooked rice, if you’ve plundered any farms recently.  Mix together, and enjoy.  The resulting high-calorie tour de force is less tea and more broth.  It’s great for floating dumplings in or dipping meat.  In the latter case, by the end of your meal you have bits of meat and blood sausage floating in the tea, which improves the taste.  Then you drink it, sharpen your sword, and overthrow the Song Dynasty:

Image Sources: here & here

* Although the term does have its origins in the literal white color of dairy products--basically it initially referred to anything that wasn't the actual flesh of an animal.
*http://templemountaintea.com/wiki/temple-mountain-tea-wiki/tea/forms-of-tea-for-consumption/tea-bricks/

Who are the Evenki?

Who are the Evenki?

The Evenki are an ethnolinguistic continuum of reindeer herders across the taiga, or boreal forest, of central and eastern Siberia.  Form a cultural middle ground between the steppe pastoralism of the Mongols and the Taiga hunting/gathering of the Yeniseic peoples.  Although we refer to them as reindeer pastoralists, a more accurate description of their economy may be, to quote a lecture by Edward Vajda, “reindeer-augmented hunting and gathering”. Their world, then, is not entirely alien to the Ket, whom we’ve previously studied.  Much of their culture—for example, shamanism—while having adopted elements of pastoralism, would be recognizable to the Ket.  Unfortunately, the Ket and Evenki have not gotten along historically, and the adoption of reindeer breeding by the Evenki and others led to their forcing the Yeniseic peoples out of their ancestral homeland to the south.  In fact it is probable that the tysdeng “Stone People” against whom the folk hero Balna fought were in fact Evenki warriors.

Speakers of a North Tungusic language, which shares many features with Mongolic and Turkic, leading some to believe that they form the Altaic Macrofamily; however, this is widely disputed and may just as likely be the result of millennia of contact between the three language families.

About 3-400 years ago, certain Evenki tribes migrated south of the Amur, and continued their reindeer pastoralism in the far north of Inner Mongolia, at the very edge of the taiga.  Some of them left the forests and adopted a steppe lifestyle more similar to that of the Mongols; some of them began to speak a Mongolic variety known as Khamnigan, while a few continued to speak Evenki.  These steppe Evenki speakers were the group among whom I conducted my research.

After the communist revolution and, more importantly, the Sino-Soviet Split, the Evenki of China were forcibly resettled further from the border in order to keep them from nomadizing into the USSR, and subjected to ethnic cleansing by means of planned Han Chinese migration.  A result of this can be seen in the “Evenki Autonomous Banner” which in practice is an average Han community.  Most Evenki living there are in the remote and inaccessible steppes outside the city, and even then they only number about 6% of the total population.*  During my time in the district I encountered only one person with any knowledge of Evenki. 

Unfortunately, before I could get from this individual any detailed information, I was found by the Chinese police and escorted under guard back to the city.  While the Chinese government claims to respect ethnic autonomy and honor their cultures, it is highly fearful any actual interaction between ethnic minorities and laowai (outsiders).  Paradoxically, while it sees the Evenki (and other minorities, not least the Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongols) as a sort of living tourist attraction, they are represented to society by individuals who neither speak Evenki nor live a traditional Evenki lifestyle; indeed, often by people who are not themselves Evenki.  To the PRC government, minorities are useful only as cheerfully-dressed dancers who entertain tour groups and willingly submit to the “benefits” of Sinicization and cultural genocide.  Any academic hoping to do unsupervised—and uncensored—research risks deportation from the area, and even detention, the latter of which I experienced in the late summer of 2010.

Therefore, perhaps the only area in China steppe Evenki can be observed as a living language is the Evenki Ethnic Sum of Hulunbuir Prefecture, Inner Mongolia.  In this region ethnic Evenki may in fact constitute a plurality or slight majority*, and Evenki-style steppe pastoralism is a surviving tradition.

The Evenki Ethnic Sum is located on a subarctic steppe about an hour’s drive north of Hailar, the nearest town.  The land is shared by Daur Mongols and some Han Chinese, who form a de-facto elite living in the administrative center.

During this time I was able to compile a short wordlist with 64 entries, and compare them with Wiktionary’s general “Altaic” wordlist.  Before I post these findings, I will write a post detailing my experiences in the region, as I feel that this will prove useful to understanding the situation of China’s Evenki, and for those of my audience interested in travel stories.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evenki_Autonomous_Banner
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evenk_Ethnic_Sumu 

Bro Goes to a Mongolian Folk Healer

Hello friends, after many adventures in Hangzhou and among the Evenki of Inner Mongolia's Hulunbuir region, I've emerged in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where Blogspot is legal and I don't have to mess with VPNs to so much as read Wikipedia.

I've been getting settled nicely here, but the day before yesterday I was walking down the stairs in my building when the light went off.  Unable to see, I fell down a flight and twisted my ankle.  The next morning it had swollen to the size of a tennis ball, and I couldn't walk without using a stick as a crutch.  I went to my Mongolian class, and my teacher said not to go to a doctor, but rather a folk healer, since they were cheaper and worked better anyway.  I was skeptical, but she swore by it and was nice enough to take me to hers after class.

So anyway, we go into this guy's apartment that has a clinic-type room built into it.  The guy had me sit down on a stool, put some kind of herbal cream on my ankle, and then started kneading/karate chopping it like some kind of deranged masseuse.

It hurt.

My boss said when I arrived in Mongolia, "There's the Western way of doing things, and the Mongolian way.  Take the Western way and imagine the exact opposite.  That's the Mongolian way."  Suppose, for example, I have a car.  Do I a)get in the car and go somewhere, or b)get in the car and go nowhere?

The answer is b, since the traffic in UB downtown is so bad that it takes a half hour to drive ten minutes' walking distance.

Or, in yesterday's case, you have injured your ankle and can't walk.  Do you a) prop the ankle up with an ice pack and keep weight off it, or b) pay a large sweaty man to repeatedly strike the afflicted area and twist it around some more?  Once again, the answer is b.

The best part is, he kept telling me to relax my ankle.  Meanwhile I'm grunting and hollering and punching the wall, and my teacher is laughing so hard she can't stand up straight. 

After about ten minutes of searing agony, he told me to get up and try walking. Clearly, this man was insane.   Nevertheless, I did so, and to my surprise I was able to stand on my own, and even walk by myself.  How about that.

He sat me back down, prodded me around some more, and then put on another ointment.  He wrapped my ankle in cellophane and said to go home and sleep with a potato.  Yes, sleep with a potato.

Clearly this was a mistranslation on my part, but my teacher said yes, I was to go home and sleep with a potato.  He elaborated--when I went to bed that evening, I was to affix a centimeter-thick slice of potato to my ankle.  The potato would draw out the swelling in my ankle and I would be fine the next day.

Well ok then.

I went home, and over an hour or so the swelling went down like magic.  I slept with the potato last night and sure enough, my ankle feels great.  He told me to rest it for two days, but after that I can get back into my exercise routine.  And for all of this I paid 20,000 tugrug, or $11.

Amazing.  I never thought that folk medicine would be so effective.  Had I gone to a western doctor I would've paid 20,000 for the guy to see me, another 20,000 for pain meds, another 20,000 for a crutch, and probably another 10,000 for a brace.  Then I would've had to hobble around for the next week.

Today's lesson: don't doubt folk wisdom.