Chapter 707 Big Bag

Ulaanbaatar is full of magic for Mongolians. If they cannot survive by raising livestock, they come to Ulaanbaatar to survive. As for those herdsmen who cannot move their families to the city, 80% of their daily income goes to the Mongolian Nature Park Committee, and their families do not have enough livestock to sustain their lives, so they set up yurts and wait for tourists to travel.

Following the advice of the embassy staff, Fan Wubing and others also came to a ger area, paid a thousand US dollars, and rented dozens of large yurts.

"Haha, this is much cheaper than staying in a hotel." One of Fan Wubing's subordinates said with a smile.

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

The subordinate immediately became silent. He had just seen the environment of the hotel. Instead of living there, he might as well live in a yurt. At least it was quite clean and fresh.

The situation of hotels in Ulaanbaatar is really unsatisfactory. The difference between them and yurts is probably that one is made of bricks and cement, and the other is not.

In fact, strictly speaking, a yurt is not a tent. It has its own characteristics. The roof is supported by connected wooden latticework and wooden poles, filled with felt mats for insulation. A set of yurts weighs about one ton and requires a cart, pulled by several cows or three or four camels to move it. Tourists, like these visitors to South Korea, can participate in the daily life of herders and set up yurts with them. The roof is supported by two pillars, and the average living room is about twenty square meters. The doors of yurts generally face south, allowing them to get the sun.

The price of renting such a yurt for a day is only five dollars. Fan Wubing and dozens of people rushed in, and he was very happy with the rented Mongolians. In addition, they had food and drink. It took only 40 or 50 people to do it for a thousand dollars, which is very cheap.

Someone from the embassy told Fan Wubing, "Mongolia's economic structure is single, and available energy has mainly relied 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, with an average of The increase has reached 20%, and the price of wheat in Mongolia has nearly doubled since last year. Mongolia is extremely short of water resources, and the living water conditions of ordinary people are very poor. On the other hand, there is no good urban drainage system. When rivers overflow, cities will have garbage accumulation and poor sanitation.”

Fan Wubing nodded and said, "Looking at the place where we just passed, we can see those wooden houses and the like, which shows that the lives of the people here are indeed not very good."

There are some wealthy people in Mongolia. Otherwise, the Rolls-Royce is expensive and not very common in the mainland. However, at the same time, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening at an alarming rate. Now the economic lifeline of Mongolia is basically in the hands of a few oligarchs.

There is a famous villa street in Bayimbolek on the northern outskirts of Ulaanbaatar.

The villas there are various and colorful, all European style and very beautiful. Those Mongolians who have money and leisure draw and design their own villas. There are almost no duplicates among the five to six thousand villas in the entire area.

In the villa street that stretches for dozens of kilometers, there are mountains on the east and west sides. There are forests on the mountains. Under the blue sky and white clouds, roofs of various colors complement each other. It is like entering a fairy tale world. And the ordinary Mongolians who can be here are different from those in the city. Compared with the struggling poor people in slums or grassland yurts, they already live a paradise-like life.

According to embassy staff, even in a country with vast grasslands like Mongolia, competition for pasture often occurs. Sometimes nomads have to herd their livestock into protected areas again and again.

Small garden installations can allow residents to eat healthy foods during difficult economic times. Any new ideas are well received by the people, and the nomads' staple diet is still meat and dairy products, but at least wild vegetables and fruits are now on 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 Wubing, "Their usual entertainment is Listening to the radio, most nomads have radios that can receive foreign radio stations, and they also like to listen to some outside news from guests who come to travel.”

The yurt where Fan Wubing lived belonged to an older Mongolian family. The owner was very happy to receive an additional one hundred dollar bill from Fan Wubing. The old man and his whole family dressed up to attend the welcoming ceremony and lit the bill with it. Tobacco is passed around. According to the embassy staff, this was a ritual to welcome guests in the past, but today I am afraid that only older people know about this ritual. This means that the guests come with friendly wishes.

Then the old man and his family were humming some songs in words they didn't understand. It sounded very melodious and melodious, and judging from Fan Wubing's feeling, in such a high-latitude city, It feels like the sky is very low. Living in this kind of environment for a long time will naturally make you feel depressed. Therefore, when you herd sheep on the vast grassland, you need to roar more often when there is nothing wrong. Over time, not only do you develop A nation on horseback has also raised a nation that is good at singing and dancing.

Fan Wubing was surprised. The old man and his family could all speak English, and there was no problem in talking. Their speaking skills were very good!

Fan Wubing talked with them for a while, and then he knew that Mongolia’s favorite tourists now are from Europe and the United States. These people are generous and not bad, much better than those rough Russians, and they are not like the businessmen from mainland China who only know how to exploit surplus value from them, so they are all studying English seriously and vigorously developing the tourism industry.

The old man said that one of his sons worked with the special envoy of the United Nations Food Rights Project, and his income was quite good, but the place of work was far away, and it took a long time to come back. Such a large yurt was idle, so he simply rented it out to tourists as a tourist industry, and the income was quite satisfactory.

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

Now they are doing research in Selenge Province, which is more than 200 kilometers away from the capital and close to the border between Mongolia and Russia. It is a place where milk powder is produced, but the interests of the surrounding herders are difficult to guarantee, because most of the milk comes from nearby Siberia, where the cows are healthier. The milk production is also higher, but domestic enterprises lack competitiveness, and the product price is half higher than that of Siberian milk powder. Therefore, the workers here can only earn a meal, and there is no talk of sustainable development.

Because yurts are mobile, the system here in Mongolia is similar to that in Russia. As long as you don’t build fixed houses in the city center, no one will come to trouble you if you don’t set up yurts on the road.

But many people are taking shortcuts and setting up yurts not far from the road, which can attract more passing tourists or truck drivers who need to rest.

There are 50,000 kilometers of roads in Mongolia. However, there are only more than 1,000 kilometers of hardened roads, and the rest of the roads are sandy roads pressed out by long-term driving of cars. On the road leading to the Altai Mountains in the west, the highest point is more than 4,300 meters above sea level, and the fuel tanks of cars often freeze. At this time, the old Soviet imported trucks show their advantages. The drivers can light a fire under the car to melt the gasoline.

Nowadays, Mongolians like Japanese cars. Many people have made a fortune by reselling second-hand cars from Japan and South Korea, but in the eyes of drivers who often drive on snowy mountains and muddy roads, the quality of old 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 Celsius. The frozen soil cannot grow any crops. If the winter reserves cannot meet the demand, many families have to slaughter livestock in large quantities in winter. Cattle and sheep are cut into small pieces and cooked. According to traditional customs, bones cannot be cut during the whole process. While eating their favorite lamb legs, this family may be thinking about whether they should also set up a few yurts and raise a few horses in the winter of next year and switch to the tourism industry.

Before, Fan Wubing had doubted whether he could stand the fishy smell of mutton, because he found that people here did not add any seasoning when cooking mutton, just a little salt, but when the mutton was cooked, the rich aroma surprised him.

And when drinking the broth, Fan Wubing was also surprised to find that it was so delicious without any smell of mutton.

When he asked the staff of the embassy, ​​he said that the quality of the pasture here is good, and cattle and sheep do not need to eat feed, so the pure natural high-quality mutton is of course the most delicious, and there is no need to use seasoning to remove the smell of mutton.

"It's a pity that I didn't find two cooks from Donglaishun and bring all kinds of seasonings together." After hearing this explanation, Fan Wubing regretted it very much. If he had been prepared, then what he ate at the end would be the most delicious mutton hot pot in the world, which would be many times better than just drinking mutton soup without any seasoning now?

He was sighing there when he heard a noisy sound outside. He didn't know what happened, but he saw something wrong in the old man's eyes, as if he had encountered a very troublesome thing.

"What happened?" Fan Wubing was very puzzled, but he still grabbed a leg of lamb and bit off a large piece of the fattest meat.