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Putting Mongolia On New York's Map; Festival Planners Intend to Show What the Asian Country Is All About

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May 11, 2000, Section B, Page 1Buy Reprints
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The Mongolians are coming.

O.K., some of them are already here: in the 1950's, thousands who fled Communist persecution sought refuge in the New York metropolitan area, making it the largest Mongolian community outside Asia.

So, here come the reinforcements. Starting May 19, New York will be host to the first Festival of Mongolia in the United States. The citywide celebration is seemingly as vast as the Mongolian steppes, offering more than 21 events and programs over several weeks. The festivities will encompass everything from Mongolia's greatest paleontological treasures -- its fighting Gobi Desert dinosaur fossils -- to archery, wrestling and, um, steppe dancing. The participants range from the American Museum of Natural History to the Metropolitan Museum, from the Children's Museum of Manhattan to the Museum of Modern Art.

But why Mongolia? Why now?

''We've been here for 40 years, and we thought it was about time for us to introduce ourselves,'' said Enkhsaikhan Jargalsaikhany, Mongolia's ambassador to the United Nations, whose mission organized the events. His father, Bayar, established Mongolia's mission to the United Nations in the early 1960's. ''With this festival we hope to start a dialogue with the Western world.''

Schuyler G. Chapin, the city's cultural affairs commissioner, who helped coordinate the festival, said that most New Yorkers ''associate the word Mongolia with dinosaurs, the Gobi Desert and Genghis Khan.''

''But now I hope we'll realize that Mongolia is a vigorous emerging nation with a proud and glorious history,'' Mr. Chapin said.

Indeed, the festival is an announcement to the world that Mongolia has declared its independence and is fighting to create a democracy. For New Yorkers, it is a chance to discover Mongolian dumplings, Mongolian vodka, Mongolian beer and, yes, Mongolian fashion. And for the region's Mongolian-Americans, the festival is a chance for reconnection with the ancestral homeland after seven decades of Russian-dominated cold-war isolation.

''While making Americans more aware of our culture, we also hope to give the Mongols who live here a better sense of their roots,'' said Dr. Sanj Altan, president of the Mongol-American Cultural Association, based in Ocean County, N.J. ''We are trying to invigorate our ethnic connection.''

For its first two days the festival will occupy the East Meadow in Central Park at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue, offering New Yorkers a window on Mongolia's nomadic history, its culture and its conservation efforts. Mongolian professional wrestlers will grapple, and archers with traditional short bows will exhibit their time-honored skills. There will be demonstrations of traditional Mongolian arts like felt making, performances of singing and dancing, and the display of Mongolian gers (pronounced ''gairs''), 22-foot-wide circular felt tents that are still the home of the nomads of Mongolia. (The Turkish word is yurt.)

''The Parks Department is happy to facilitate Mongolia's first coming-out party since Genghis Khan,'' said Henry J. Stern, the parks commissioner, who has not ruled out a sartorial encounter with the del (pronounced ''daill''), the Mongolian long robe fastened with buttons at the neck and accented with a bright waist sash.

Certainly the festival's centerpiece exhibition will be ''Fighting Dinosaurs: New Discoveries from Mongolia,'' opening May 19 in the third-floor galleries of the American Museum of Natural History. Displayed for the first time in North America will be one of the world's most famous fossil finds: two dinosaurs interlocked in mortal combat, thought to have been preserved in their dying moment.

The fossil, a designated national treasure of Mongolia, depicts an 80-million-year-old feather-covered Velociraptor (the predator made famous in ''Jurassic Park'') battling a shield-headed, pebbly skinned Protoceratops. ''It is likely that both were buried alive in a collapsing sand dune,'' said Michael J. Novacek, senior vice president and provost of the museum.

Mr. Novacek said that last spring, Mr. Enkhsaikhan offered to make a five-month loan of the fighting dinosaurs to the museum, which has had a relationship with Mongolia since the 1920's. The museum seized on this as an opportunity to create what he said was the most elaborate presentation of dinosaur behavior ever mounted, including 50 other new fossils from Mongolia, most never shown before to the public.

The museum is also presenting ''Mongolia Now: Independent Voices,'' including live performances by the Mongolian Folk Song and Dance Ensemble, lectures on the cultural traditions and history of Mongolia, and demonstrations by champion wrestlers, archers, contortionists and crafts people.

There is also a program of 10 Mongolian films and videos, as well as a 50-image photographic exhibition, ''Mongolia Observed: Photographs Present and Past.''

Across the park, the Metropolitan Museum is offering ''Images of the Mongolian Horse in Islamic Art,'' an exhibition that continues through Sept. 24. The 25 works of art focus on the now nearly extinct Mongolian horse, a small, tireless, rugged steed that furthered Genghis Khan's conquests.

Uptown, the Children's Museum of Manhattan will be host to a series of cultural programs, its Mongolia Festival Weekend, on May 26 and 27. Across the river, the Bronx Zoo will highlight the Wildlife Conservation Society's efforts to preserve endangered species in Mongolia.

There are also programs at the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art on Staten Island and the Museum of Modern Art, the Open Center and other institutions. Detailed information about festival events is available at www.un .int/mongolia/festival-form.htm.

''We hope to put Mongolia on the map,'' said Mr. Enkhsaikhan, a 49-year-old veteran diplomat and former international lawyer. Mongolia has, of course, been very much on the map -- in the 13th century, Mongolians ruled the largest land empire in history -- but some New Yorkers tend to be more than a bit hazy about it all, he said.

Mongolia, it seems, is a country nearly three times the size of France, with a population of 2.4 million, half of whom are nomads who herd goats, sheep, camels, yaks and horses in a way that has not changed all that much since the time of Genghis Khan.

Though it is being influenced by the West, Mongolia maintains a measure of cultural purity ''because the extremity of the environment has not lent itself to development,'' said Aziz Rahman, an organizer of the festival and the president of the Indo-Mongolian Society, based in New York.

A frontier land that has been perennially devastated by drought and epic forest fires, Mongolia is experiencing the tumultuous politics of a fledgling democracy. The nation is trying to overcome the effects of seven decades of Communist rule. More urgently, Mongolia is still recovering from the effects of a devastatingly cold storm that killed more than a million head of livestock this winter.

But Mr. Enkhsaikhan said that this struggling nation had much to teach Westerners. ''Nomads cannot overuse pastures or their natural resources,'' he said, ''so they have learned to live in harmony with nature. Perhaps this is a lesson for New Yorkers, and for everyone else.''

Mongolia has also suffered from nearly a millennium of bad press, because since the 13th century Genghis Khan ''has been demonized,'' said Dr. Robert D. McChesney, professor of Middle Eastern studies and history at New York University, ''and his name is now synonymous with conqueror and oppressor.''

But Genghis Khan, who dominated a third of the known world, is now viewed by Mongolians as both their George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. ''He was a unifier and lawgiver who created a postal system like the pony express, and he left a system of consultative government,'' Dr. McChesney said.

Dr. Altan, the president of the Mongol-American Cultural Association and a biostatistician for the Robert Wood Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Raritan, N.J., said that given the level of ignorance about Mongolia, the festival ''is long overdue.''

Many Mongolians faced persecution in Communist Russia because they and their ancestors served as household troops for the czars. After the Russian Revolution, many of these Mongolians found refuge in Germany, then fled to the American sector after the Russian occupation of Germany in World War II, Dr. Altan said.

An act of Congress enabled several thousand of them to emigrate to the environs of Howell Township, N.J., during the 1950's; ultimately three Buddhist Temples were established there.

Since then, Dr. Altan said, there have been enough new arrivals to increase the number of Mongolian-Americans to more than 5,000, mostly in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Some gather every year for a daylong Genghis Khan memorial ceremony. Last year, 300 Mongolians from around the country gathered in traditional dress at a conference center in North Brunswick, N.J., to participate in a solemn memorial ceremony with blessings and benedictions. Then they socialized, danced and ate Mongolian delicacies.

New York is a city that absorbs new cultures through its stomach. What, curious diners might wonder, are Mongolian delicacies?

Steamed and fried dumplings, barbecued mutton, Mongolian hot pots (rich stews) and fermented mare's milk. Mongolian barbecue joints in the United States ''are not authentic,'' the ambassador sighed.

So what does the ambassador have on a big night out? ''Sushi.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: Putting Mongolia On New York's Map; Festival Planners Intend to Show What the Asian Country Is All About. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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