Three Days in May in Mongolia

Direct from the Asia Foundation meeting, about 30 of us continued on to Ulaan Baator ("UB"), Mongolia's modern capital and home to nearly half of its people.

As we approached the grey/brown landscape of central Mongolia by air, the plane took a very wide circle around the city below and eventually landed.  Only a little later did we learn that at this time of year, the winds crossing the single runway are so strong that many landings are aborted for windshear.  One more pass and we would have headed back to Beijing.  "Chinggis Kahn International Airport" in bold letters above the terminal were among the last words in Roman letters we were to see.  A big surprise is that almost everthing is rendered in the Cyrilic alphabet, even signage on major, new buildings. 

Russia made Mongolia its first satellite...in 1921...not long after the revolution and imposed its alphabet on the pronunciation of the native Mongolian tongue.  There were other displacements, of course, including the near destruction of Buddhist teachings and all but one or two monasteries.  Among the first, imposing but ugly, things you notice on the very bad road from the airport are several gigantic power plants.  These provide light, and heat, and hot water to the city through a form of physical grid unknown in America, but common in the old Soviet sphere.  Giant pipes bring warm air and hot water to individual buildings throughout the city like a system of capillaries.  One wonders how much of this is an attempt at efficiency in the very cold winter climes of the old Soviet world and how much it served as a method of control and coercion.  We're of course accustomed to every edifice supplying its own heat and hot water thru small, very local devices...how quaint...how inefficient...but how independent....and how very Mongolian. 

The life of the traditional, nomadic herder today is little changed from the days of the great Kahn, except that the ger (we call them "yurts") now has satellite TV and a small solar panel to power the electronics.  When the herders pick up their complete belongings and move to (literally) greener grass several times a year, their 21st century equipment moves with them. In any event, spring was just beginning to arrive in Mongolia (most, but not all, of the trees were first showing green buds) and the gargantuan urban heating system was undergoing some seasonal readjustment, resulting in unapologetically unreliable access to hot water the first day we were there.

The Ulaan Baator Hotel claims to be UB's first 5 star hotel.  "First" is an important part of that claim since the place was built in 1961 (Krushchev was still master of the Kremlin then) and the definitions of stardom have no doubt evolved in the intervening half century.  The hotel hasn't changed much so you can easily imagine a group of commissars making themselves at home, toasting with vodka, singing The Internationale, while they plot their next opportunity to get back west of the Urals.  Our suite (living room, dining room, bedroom, two weird closets, and a bath and a half) was, I imagined, the site of some intrigues over those early years.  Penelope was convinced that there were blood stains on the very old and patched carpet.  There are much nicer and newer hotels in the city, but none with its cachet...or location right at the center of power in Mongolia. 

The "5 Star" Ulaan Baator Hotel

Aside from the very new Government House anchoring the main square, the other buildings at this city center (Opera, banks, offices) all seem to date from the '20's and look much like the architecture and bear the colors of early Soviet style.  You could imagine yourself in St. Petersburg for a short moment...especially, again, since the script everywhere is Cyrilic.  The Government House is home to both Parliament and the President's office and, out front, a huge statue of Chinggis Kahn makes it clear where the self-recognized history of the Mongolian people begins.  His visage appears on all the money (tugrics) as well.  The Asia Foundation party spent a lot of time in this part of town, enjoying a reception by the US Ambassador, meetings with members of Parliament, Supreme Court Justices, and a breakfast meeting with President Elbegdorj Takhia.  Elbegdorj was a key revolutionary at the fall of the old Soviet satellite leadership in 1990 and subsequently studied at Harvard before going into domestic Mongolian politics and rising to be head of state of the parliamentary democracy that supplanted the old Communist regime.

Government House, Sukhbaator Square

For its vast size, Mongolia has surprisingly few people...only about 2.7million in the whole country.  That wouldn't comprise even a middling city in China now.  That stupendous land area...and few people... are landlocked between two even vaster neighbors.  Cultivating good relations with the US, as its "3rd Neighbor", gives Mongolia an even stronger hand in playing Russia and China off against eachother as the only foreign policy available.  Most countries can take for granted their access to open seas for trade and defense.  Imagine the complications of having to rely on everything coming in or going out over some other country's land or airspace.  Happily for Mongolia, China's huge supply of labor and immense appetite for natural resources could rapidly enrich the relatively few native Mongolians...or more likely, in the near term, the Australian and Canadian mining companies now at work extracting coal and copper and rare earths.  For now, however, the people are still "poor", but not impoverished in spirit.  Each person receives a small, monthly stipend from the government and is entitled to a small plot of free land, enough for a sizable family to assemble a workable homesite and garden.  But, somehow, it seems very inapt to try to endow a many centuries old nomadic people by rooting them to a particular piece of land.

On our way to the Tuul River Lodge, we were able to visit a small herder family, a strong, handsome young man and a beautiful young woman with their rambunctious 6 yr old son.  The boy was just "home" from a long stint at boarding school and a daughter, a little older, was to return to the ger soon.  All Mongolian children must attend school to age 16, most in a boarding situation in town, and spend their summers with their parents and, if herders, their flocks.  That nomadic life must be coming to an end, soon, though.  Our host was one of 11 children, but the only one still living the life of a nomad.  It's hard to imagine that the boy, now loving his freedom and the very sweet affections of his parents and riding and herding with his father, will ever actually take up that life.  The jobs in the mines or the offices in town will offer too much more comfort and ease.  But not necessarily more wealth.  With hundreds of livestock (horses, goats, sheep, and cows), the father could be considered rich by Mongolian standards...but it is such a hard life...and the long, cold winter is the worst enemy.  We learned how to tell direction from the positions of gers.  The one door always faces south, because the brutal winds tend to come from the north.  Not infrequently, the cold is so deep for so long, the dzud, that virtually all the animals die.

Double E-Ticket in Mongolia-land!

Getting to the Lodge was the greatest adventure of the trip.  I had envisioned a permanent set of buildings..."lodge"...rather it was a temporary, a la nomade, set of gers on the side of a gentle slope looking down on a river meandering among woods and greening fields.  Very pretty.  It was "civilization" after the trip over the mountain to get there.  Normally, getting to the lodge is a matter of taking off-road vehicles around and thru the river after leaving the paved road from UB.  For us, recent rains and the melt of recent snow ruled out that passage.  Instead, in old Russian military vehicles, looking a lot like something out of Mad Max, we went over the mountain, literally, no switch-backs, just straight up one side and straight down the other. We should have had headgear, inside the vehicle!  We dubbed it the "super, double-E ticket in Mongolia-land!"  Getting back, later that night as the sun was setting in a beautiful purple aura, was even more harrowing.  We were in the last vehicle to leave, a long while after others so there was no one ahead...or behind.  As we began the steepest part of the climb, now in total darkness, the engine started to smoke and gave off the smell of burning cables.  The two Mongolian drivers seemed reasonably unperturbed as the six Western passengers shared half-hearted words of encouragement and not very funny jokes about having to spend the night in old Russian hardware before a search party would venture out for us.  Happily, we had thought to bring a spare bottle of wine as a roadie.  After some consultation and Mongolian cursing and, Penelope is convinced, the application of some chewing gum, the old crate lurched back into life.



Outside a ger at Tuul River Lodge



A final note on the contrast between the modern urban environment of UB and the ancient nomadic past:  on one of our evenings in town, there was a reception at the Museum of Contemporary Art, for the who's who of the capital to honor the Asia Foundation visit.  Many of the women and quite a few of the men were wearing traditionally inspired formal attire and drank good wine and grazed on a broad array of foods and listened to a string quartet playing Mozart, followed by a contemporary Mongolian rock/traditional band.  And the art and photography forming the backdrop was worth the visit in its own right.  Hard to imagine a place further away from the sophisticated cities of the "first world" than Ulaan Baator, but that night, one would have found it hard to tell any real difference. 

Beijing: May, 2012

Travelled to Beijing with the Asia Foundation and to meet again with my Chinese friends in FPSB-China.

First, I must acknowledge the great hospitality of my FPSB colleagues in China.  As before, a party of officials greeted Penelope and me at the still awe-inspiring new Beijing Capital Airport, handled our baggage and drove us to the hotel.  For the next several days, we were treated to car, driver (Mr. Wang), and guides/interpreters to make sure we had a great time and didn't lose precious time in navigating Beijing's sometimes horrifying traffic.  Many thanks, again!



May 19, 2012, Beijing.  My translator, at left

 I had the opportunity once more to address a group of about 100 financial planning practitioners and officers of banks which furnish most of the wealth management services in China.  I also again had the pleasure of interviews with financial planning trade press.  As my hosts confided to me over dinner, the Chinese may sometimes pretend that they care little about what others think of them, but in fact they care greatly, and especially, about what the Americans think of them.  This was meant to be a comment about geo-political relations, generally, but it applies especially in China's ongoing development of the financial planning profession..

Speaking of dinner, Beijing now boasts some of the world's most beautiful restaurants, serving truly outstanding cuisine.  While guests of FPSB and, later with our friends in the Asia Foundation, we ate at four of the most spectacular restaurants we've ever seen:  DaDong, Duck de Chine, Temple (in an ancient-looking building next to an authentic Ming Dynasty temple near the Forbidden City that had been converted into a television factory during the Cultural Revolution), and finally, on our last night there, the best of them all: brand new Cuisine Cuisine.  No expense seems to be spared in the finishes, the art, the spacious private rooms (seating from about 6 to maybe 20, at single round tables; these are customary features of the high-end restaurant scene in China), the number of servers, and the quality of the food.  We observed the same thing in Hong Kong and Shanghai in recent visits.  And the diners are no longer mostly rich, older Westerners, but Chinese...young, and rich.

Jillian Schultz, Paul Slawson, Mary Slawson

The art scene in Beijing is vibrant.  With our friends, Paul and Mary Slawson, with FPSB-China provided guide and driver, we ventured to the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, run by a young American woman, Jillian Schultz, friend of our Jewish "god-son" and renowned music director, Doug Peck.   In the CaoChangdi community of art galleries, some designed by the famous (now, especially, for being repressed) artist, architect (the "bird's nest" stadium of the 2008 Olympics), and dissident Ai Wei  Wei, we found graphic art, sculpture, photography, and video to rival anything in volume and interest one can find anywhere  It was a weekday and, besides some school children playing in one of the grassy yards, we had it almost entirely to ourselves.  Despite confusing, unmarked streets, Mr. Wang eventually managed to find our target restaurant for lunch, filled with 50's American kitsch, and then insisted on picking up the bill.  A few days later, I decided to fill an unscheduled morning with the short walk from the hotel  (home to the Beijing Bentley and Rolls dealers...next door to the newly opened Maserati dealership) to Tien an Men Square and the Forbidden City.  Almost immediately, a young Chinese man approached me asking where I was from.  They often do this to Westerners as a way of practicing their English.  Quickly I learned that he was an art student and his school was on the way that I was headed.  Eventually, I purchased a four scroll depiction of the four seasons that he had done and a piece by one of his teachers. 

Nearing the entrance to the Forbidden City. 
This lavish landscaping is found everywhere in Beijing.
One of the poorer air quality days

With these inexpensive treasures slung over my shoulder, I continued on to what must be the greatest man-made tourist attraction in the world.  If only the Chinese come to marvel at the works of their imperial past, the numbers would be huge...but they come, from everywhere, in unimaginable hordes, to view what was always intended to be seen as the center of the universe.  Long before the British placed the "prime meridian" at the observatory in Greenwich, the Chinese measured everything under the heavens in relationship to the center line of the majestic imperial compound...directly bi-secting the perfect symmetry of the palace grounds and sequence of buildings.  Even though it was my third visit, I was quickly overwhelmed again by the subtle grandeur...it's intended impact, I'm sure.

Beyond the dining and sightseeing, of course, the meetings of the Asia Foundation assembled an extremely accomplished group of senior foreign service professionals, academics, and a handful of Western and Asian business people to consider social, economic, and political developments in China.  Among the most interesting for me was the rise in private philanthropy in China.  Niall Ferguson, historian/economist/philosopher, whose recent book, Why the West rules...for Now,  I had just read, would align this trend with the more general growth of "Christian" adherence and the rapid development of a "Protestant Ethic' in China.  He sees this as one of the unrecognized keys to China's otherwise notorious economic success.  Caring about the welfare of society beyond the family, being able to trust in one's fellow business relationships, and a having a high propensity to save...to defer gratification...has, he argues, helped to create the most rapid advance in economic growth in all world history.

And with that growth, continuing still today at quite rapid rates, the wealth of currently developed nations...especially the US...will likely decline, on a relative basis.  Before too long, China's economy may even surpass America's in absolute terms...the numbers, multiplied by 1.2billion and counting, have a relentless impact. Still,  it will be quite a long time, perhaps never, before the Chinese, on a per capita basis, will forge ahead of their American counterparts.  If you see yourself as a world-citizen, it may not matter much if they do.  And, for the Chinese, by the time they may get there, it also may not matter much.  I hope it does turn out that we all approach it with that non-chalance.

DUBAI, April 2012

 Las Vegas on the Gulf...in Arabic.
As part of a series of meetings with the Financial Planning Standards Board, I visited Dubai for a week in April, 2012.  Penelope was able to join me for a part of that time.  First impressions are always both very sharp and unreliable as reflective of a greater understanding, but I may never have the occassion to return, so here goes. 



Sheik Zayed Road, 5AM, with rail lines



Dubai, most outward-looking city of the UAE (United Arab Emirates, the capital is Abu Dhabi) does not lack charm...but the charms are subtle in an environment of little subtlety.  The land is barren, the sea and sky a white-washed gray much of the time, unbearable heat (I'm told) in the summer months, but still fog from the Gulf and "shamal"...a fine cloud of dust... from the desert.  The recently constructed physical infrastructure is stunning: vast roads, impressive urban rail, and countless tall...including the world's tallest...buildings with fanciful shapes, unlike anything to be seen anywhere else.  The architects were given license to play!  But, it may be a long while before they are close to being full. And the interiors are a true spectacle:  either completely "over the top" pretentious or the epitomy of elegance and sophistication depending on whether you happen to like the specific venue.

But, it is a very disciplined place, with, I sense, a strong determination to be unique, combining what it perceives as the "best" of two worlds.  You quickly notice that it is very clean...no litter...none, and no graffiti.  There are frequent, but very gentle, reminders of the call to prayer on public amps and TV's and display screens in the stupendous shopping malls show a small, discrete outline of a mosque and minaret to alert the observant. About a quarter of the men and maybe 40% of the women wear traditional garments (white or pastels for the men, black or some other very dark color for the women), but few of the women are completely covered.  Islamic sensibilities are observed and respected, but not imposed.  There are no public displays of affection and Muslim couples do not always walk together, but at a few steps remove.  Still, men, especially young, are often arm-in-arm or holding hands as just a marker of friendship.  Taking someone's photo, without permission, is not only rude; it can result in criminal penalties.

Dubai sets out to be a tolerant, Western-oriented oasis between, literally, the fundamentalism of Iran across the Gulf, to the East, and Saudi Arabia in the desert just beyond, to the West.  It appears that they are succeeding.  One feels personally very safe here.  And it is designed to make business feel very safe as well.  Ironically referred to as Dubai's "Vatican City", the DIFC (Dubai International Financial Center) is a portion of the city with its own laws, it's own governing officials, its own courts, modelled on Western notions of contract law and legal procedure.  The expectation is that from that core, general economic liberalism and a westernized commercial regime will gradually spread throughout the region. 

The Burj Khalifa, in shamal

However, there is never any question about where the real power lies.  So unfamiliar to American sensibilities, Dubai is as close to an absolute monarchy as the 21st century still observes. Sheik Muhammad bin Rashid al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE, is the ruler of Dubai (The Sheik of Abu Dhabi, its ruler, is the UAE President) and their photographs are seen everywhere, including on giant billboards along the main roads.  His comings and goings, and those of his sons and heirs, are front page news in the local paper, every day.

Most of the people are not Emiratis.  Those few tend to be very wealthy and work, if they do, in government ministries.  The many others are European, US, and Asian financial expats, and workers from elsewhere in the middle east, Africa, and south Asia. The Emiratis are surprisingly tall...and especially good-looking.  Unsurprisingly, the food is varied and delicious.  But prices in the best restaurants are beyond belief (over $400 for two, with a not very special wine).  Alcohol is available and very expensive...but only in hotels (where the best restaurants are always located).  But the taxis are very cheap, so no excuse not to go out and explore!