Urban Genghis Khan 城及似漢

Traditional Chinese | 繁體中文

 The Urban Clan of Genghis Khan

成吉思汗的城市宗族

An influx of nomads has turned the Mongolian capital upside down.

蒙古的首都被湧入的牧民們弄翻了天

Not long ago a young Mongolian livestock herder named Ochkhuu Genen loaded what was left of his life into a borrowed Chinese pickup truck and moved it to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s sprawling capital. Slender and dignified, Ochkhuu gave no outward sign of turmoil as he buried himself in the mechanics of packing, lifting, unpacking, and assembling. He may have been disappointed in himself, even shaken, but outwardly he was as smooth and focused as a socket wrench.

不久前，一位名叫(Ochkhuu Genen)鷗之谷哥能的年輕蒙古牲畜牧民開了一輛跟人家借來的卡車，載滿了僅存的家當進入烏蘭巴托這個蒙古的大都會。瘦削又躊躇滿志的他沒顯露出歷盡滄桑的模樣，只知道埋頭苦幹，機械式地裝貨，卸貨，搬上搬下地打點家當。或許他已經對自己灰心，甚至信心動搖，但是表面上還是一副事事順利，專注得像一個套筒扳手的樣子。

Within hours of arriving, Ochkhuu had pitched his ger—the nomad’s traditional round dwelling—on a small, fenced plot of bare ground he’d rented on the outskirts of the city. Around it were thousands of other plots, each with a ger in the middle, jammed together on the slopes overlooking Ulaanbaatar. Once his stovepipe was raised and the stakes driven in, he opened the low wooden door for his wife, Norvoo; their baby boy, Ulaka; and their six-year-old daughter, Anuka.

在抵達的幾小時內，鷗之谷就在城市邊緣一塊圍起來的空地上架起了他的蒙古包—傳統的圓形牧民之家，周圍還有成千上萬的區塊，每一個區塊中央都有一個蒙古包，全部在斜坡上擠在一起俯瞰烏蘭巴托市。他的炊管和木材一運到，他立刻打開低矮的木門迎接他的妻子(Norvoo)諾母和出生不久的小兒子(Ulaka)烏拉卡，還有六歲小女兒(Anuka)阿奴卡。

Norvoo also took comfort in the task at hand. She put aside her worries long enough to make sure their ger was as cozy as it had been in the countryside: linoleum floor, cast-iron stove, and cots around the edges, with family pictures neatly pinned to the wall and a small television on a wooden table.

諾母專注在手頭上的工作，暫時把她的顧慮拋開，確保他們的蒙古包可以跟草原上的一樣舒適：有油氈地板，鐵爐，周邊圍起了護套，家庭照整齊地釘在牆上，木桌上有一台小電視機。

Outside their door, however, the view was starkly different from what it had been on the steppe an hour southwest of the capital, where they’d raised their livestock next to the ger of Norvoo’s parents. Here, in place of rolling grasslands, there was a seven-foot-high wooden fence a few feet away. And in place of Ochkhuu’s cherished livestock—the horses and cattle and sheep—there was only the landlord’s dog, a black and brown mongrel staked in the yard, who barked himself hoarse at the least provocation.

然而，門外的景觀跟他們在一小時前在首都西南方的草原舉目所見的完全不一樣，蒙古包旁邊就是諾母的父母親的家，外面就是他們的牧場。在這裡取代一望無際的草地的卻是幾尺外的七尺高木柵欄，取代鷗之谷最珍惜的牲畜—牛，羊馬的是房東的狗，是整個院內一條黑與棕毛相間的雜種狗，有一點風吹草動就吠得聲嘶力竭。

There was plenty of provocation just beyond the fence, in the ramshackle slums, or ger districts, where about 60 percent of Ulaanbaatar’s 1.2 million people live without paved roads, sanitation, or running water. As in other urban slums, the ger districts are high in crime, alcoholism, poverty, and despair, which is why many people here do the unthinkable, for a herder: They lock their gates at night.

圍欄外面，破爛的貧民窟裡，或者蒙古包的區域裡都有很多騷動，120萬的烏蘭巴托人民當中有大約百分之六十的人住在沒有平坦的道路，沒有衛生排管也沒有自來水的地方。就跟其他城市的貧民窟一樣，蒙古包社區裡的犯罪，酗酒，貧窮和絕望情緒都很普遍，因此，這裡的人在做一件其他牧民都無法想像的事，就是在晚上鎖住柵門。

“We step outside the ger and all we can see is that fence,” Ochkhuu said. “It’s like living in a box.”

鷗之谷說：“我們一踏出蒙古包就只能見到圍欄，就像住在盒子裡那樣。”

Nomads were never meant to live in a box, but Ochkhuu and Norvoo weren’t there by choice. During the winter of 2009-2010, most of the couple’s livestock either froze or starved to death during a white dzud, a devastating period of snow, ice, and bitter cold that follows a summer drought; it lasted more than four months. By the time the weather broke, the couple’s herd of 350 animals had been cut to 90. Across Mongolia some eight million animals—cows, yaks, camels, horses, goats, and sheep—died that winter.

游牧民族從來都沒想過要住在盒子裡，但是鷗之谷和諾母也不曾想過要這樣子住。在2009到2010年間的冬天，多數夫婦的牲畜在連續肆虐幾年的白色暴風雪中不是凍死就是餓死，嚴寒過後接踵而來的是乾旱的夏季，為期長達四個月。當天氣好轉時，這對夫婦的350頭牲畜死到只剩下90頭。整個蒙古有將近八百萬只動物—牛，犛牛，駱駝，馬，山羊，綿羊—都在冬季一命嗚呼。

“After that, I just couldn’t see our future in the countryside any more,” Ochkhuu said quietly. “So we decided to sell what was left of our herd and make a new life.”

鷗之谷平靜地說：“過後我再也看不到這個農村還有什麼前途可言，因此我們決定變賣所有牲畜開展新的生活。”

It was also a clear-eyed calculation to improve the lives of their children. Ochkhuu and Norvoo feel no great affinity for city life, but they see its advantages. In the countryside they were far removed from nurses and schools, but here they can get free medical care for their infant son, and Anuka can attend a public school.

這也是為了改善孩子們的生活所作的明智打算，雖然鷗之谷和諾母並不嚮往城市生活，但他們看到了許多好處。在農村裡，他們的家遠離學校和醫療設備，在這裡他們可以讓小兒子得到免費的醫療，阿奴卡也可以到公立學校上學。

There are more than half a million Ochkhuus and Norvoos living these days in UB, as Mongolians call Ulaanbaatar. Many have been driven from the steppe by bad winters, bad luck, and bad prospects. And now that Mongolia’s coal, gold, and copper mines are attracting billions in foreign investment, they also have flooded into UB in search of job prospects created by the economic upsurge from mining money.

現在有超過50萬個鷗之谷和諾母這樣的家庭住在烏蘭巴托，蒙古人簡稱為UB。很多人都被荒原的惡劣冬天，壞運氣和前途堪憂的現實逼得離家出走。而且，蒙古的煤炭，黃金和銅礦資源正吸引數十億元計的外來投資，許多人都湧入UB找工作，從經濟起飛中賺到採礦的錢。

Beyond the downtown high-rises, UB often feels like a frontier town run amok, strewn lengthwise along a river valley like gravel left behind by a flash flood. Founded in 1639 as a movable Buddhist monastic center and trading post, the settlement took root in its present location in 1778. The town was laid out along one major thoroughfare, which runs along the base of a low mountain. Today that road goes by the name Peace Avenue, and it’s still the only direct way to get from one side of town to the other. From daybreak to nightfall, it’s jammed with traffic. Driving it is like getting on a conveyor belt that inches past crumbling Soviet-era apartment blocks, side streets that run promisingly for 50 yards and then end at a barricade, unexplained piles of rusted iron and concrete, and office buildings so clumsily situated and hidden from view that no taxi driver can find them.

除了市區中的高樓大廈，UB看起來就像是一座脫序的邊陲小鎮，在洪水過後沿著河谷四處散落的礫石堆。這個地方在1639年成為一個移動式的佛教寺院中心和貿易站，人們在1778年開始定居在現在的地點。這個市鎮位於低矮山腳下一條主要幹道，今天這條路就叫(Peace Avenue)太平大道，仍舊是唯一一條貫穿整個市鎮的通道，從早到晚都塞車。在這條路上行車就像是在一條輸送帶上寸步移動經過蘇俄時代那些遙遙欲墜的公寓樓，每一條支路走了大約50碼遠就會被不得其解的一堆鏽鐵和混泥土堵住，辦公樓也七零八落地建，躲到連出租車司機都找不到。

Add to this a flood of nomads, many of them recent arrivals whose skill set doesn’t include city driving, crossing a busy road, or the subtleties of social interaction in an urban environment, and you’ve got a heady mix. It’s not unusual to be waiting in line at a kiosk and have some gnarled tree trunk of a man in herder clothes—steppe boots, felt hat, and the traditional wraparound del—stomp to the front of the line, shouldering customers out of the way like a hockey player, just to see what the place is selling. If there are other herders in line, he gets pushed back just as hard. There are no fights, no hard feelings. That’s just the way it goes.

再加上剛湧進來的牧民們，很多人還沒能掌握在城市中開車，過馬路，或者在城市環境中跟人互動細緻的社交技巧，你就會感覺混亂到摸不著頭腦。很多事並不是非比尋常的，比如說，在售賣亭前排長龍時，忽然間會有穿著牧民服裝—草原靴，氈帽，傳統罩衫—像樹幹那麼粗壯的男人大剌剌地一個箭步跨到前線，像曲棍球選手那樣推開所有顧客，只為了看看前面在賣什麼東西。如果也有其他牧民在排隊，他也一樣會被狠狠地推開，沒人打架，沒人鬧情緒，社交方式就是這樣。

“These people are completely free,” says Baabar, a prominent publisher and historian who writes often about Mongolia’s national character. “Even if they’ve been in UB for years, their mentality is still nomadic. They do exactly what they want to do, when they want to do it. Watch people crossing the road. They just lurch out into traffic without batting an eye. It doesn’t occur to them to compromise, even with a speeding automobile. We’re a nation of rugged individuals, with no regard for rules.”

(Babaar)八把這位書寫很多蒙古的國民性格的著名出版商兼歷史學家說：“這些人都是完全自由的，就算他們在UB生活多年，他們的心態還是屬於游牧民族的，他們就做他們想要做的事，什麼時候想做就做。看看那些過馬路的人，眼都不眨一下就走入車陣中，不需要妥協，車跑得再快也不讓。我們是一個粗人的國家，沒有規矩可言。”

Early one Saturday morning Ochkhuu, Norvoo, and their kids returned to the country for a weekend at Norvoo’s parents’ home to prepare their farm for winter. Ochkhuu helped Norvoo’s father, Jaya, cut hay for eight hours, and by Sunday night they had moved enough hay to the barn to keep his animals alive through the winter, even a dzud. Jaya too had lost huge numbers of animals during the last dzud—his herd had dropped from more than a thousand to 300 animals—but he was determined to make a comeback, banking on decades of experience as a herder both during and after communism, which he rather misses.

某一天的星期六早晨，鷗之谷和諾母帶著孩子回到諾母的娘家過週末，幫忙準備過冬。鷗之谷幫諾母的父親(Jaya)家雅割草八個小時，到了星期天晚上他們就收集到足夠的乾草在穀棚內讓牲畜們存活，那怕是暴風雪來襲。在上一次的暴風雪中，家雅也損失了大量牲畜，從一千多頭銳減到剩下300多頭，但他決定東山再起，憑他在共產制度前後幾十年累計出來的牧民經驗，他不放棄。

“There were bad things, of course. I hated being told what to do by bureaucrats. But communism protected us from disasters like last winter,” he said. “Even if you lost all your animals, you wouldn’t starve to death.”

他說：“當然會有壞事，我很討厭那些官僚來告訴我怎麼做，但是共產制度也在災難期間保護我們，就像上一個冬天那樣，即使你失去所有的牲畜，你還是不會餓死。”

Although they supported Ochkhuu and Norvoo’s decision to move, Jaya and his wife, Chantsal, often said how lonely they were without them next door. But moving to UB was out of the question. “I wouldn’t last a week in that city,” Jaya scowled. “Too much noise, too much jangling and banging. I’d get sick and die.”

雖然他們都支持鷗之谷和諾母要搬家的決定，家雅和他老婆(Chantsal)張茶經常抱怨沒有他們在隔壁會感到孤單，對他們來說，搬去UB是完全不考慮的事。家雅皺著眉頭說：“我無法在那個城市待上一個星期，太嘈雜，太多噪音，我會病死。”

Men like Jaya and Ochkhuu are authentic livestock herders, unlike others who failed during the dzud, said historian Baabar. After the collapse of communism, when many Soviet-era factories closed down, thousands of people left UB to reclaim their pastoral roots. But “they’d forgotten everything they knew about being nomads, how to raise livestock, how to survive these tough winters,” he said. The pity, says Baabar, is that they are also not fit to compete in the city.

歷史學家八把說，家雅和鷗之谷這類人都是地道的牲畜牧民，不像其他在暴風雪中失敗的人。在共產主義瓦解後，許多蘇俄時代的工廠倒閉，成千上萬人離開UB去找回他們的田園之根。他說：“但是他們已經忘了如何當一個牧民，怎麼飼養牲畜，怎麼度過嚴冬。”八把說，可惜的是，他們也無法在城市中跟人家競爭。

All this comes at a time when Mongolia, communist until 1990, is seeking to reassert itself between the two powers next door, Russia and China, that have pushed it around for centuries. Nationalism—even xenophobia—is on the rise, and foreigners are increasingly blamed for Mongolia’s problems in the same breath as local and national politicians, who are widely considered, with justification, as deeply corrupt.

這些事都發生在1990，當蒙古的共產主義要在俄國和中國這兩強之間尋找自己的定位，自己已經被這兩個鄰居推擠了一個世紀。民族主義，甚至是排外情緒正在抬頭，外國人也跟當地的政治家一樣，一再被指責給蒙古帶來諸多問題，不需要證實也普遍地認為這些人都腐敗貪污得很。

Visiting Chinese businessmen, accused of enriching themselves at Mongolia’s expense, no longer venture out after dark on the streets of the capital for fear of being attacked by young guys in black leather channeling Genghis Khan, who is back in vogue as a symbol of Mongolian pride. Banned during Soviet times, images of Genghis are everywhere you look today, from vodka labels and playing cards to the colossal, 131-foot steel statue of the conqueror on horseback that rises from the steppe an hour east of UB to cast the mother of all dirty looks toward China.

到訪的中國人被指責消費蒙古來利益自己，在晚上不敢上街，擔心被那些穿黑色皮革衣喊成吉思汗口號的年輕人攻擊，這種形象又成了蒙古的自豪象徵。在蘇俄時代，被禁止的成吉思汗畫像在今天到處都可以見到，從伏加酒的標籤到橋牌都有，還有那個騎在馬背上有131尺高的征服者鋼雕，在離UB以東一小時路程的草原上平地而起，睥睨傲視著中國。

He’s not the only one looking in that direction. By many estimates, Mongolia is sitting on a trillion dollars’ worth of recoverable coal, copper, and gold, much of it concentrated near the Chinese border around Oyu Tolgoi, or Turquoise Hill. There Ivanhoe Mines, the Canadian mining giant, is tapping the world’s largest undeveloped copper and gold deposit in partnership with Rio Tinto, an Anglo-Australian company, and the Mongolian government, which holds a 34 percent share of the project, potentially adding billions of dollars to the national economy.

他也不是唯一望向中國方向的人，多項探測估計蒙古國正坐擁價值數兆元可開採的煤，銅和黃金，大部份集中在(Oyu Tolgoi)奧友多軌或(Turquoise Hill)綠松石山這個靠近中國邊界的地方。加拿大的礦產大霸Ivanhoe Mines正在那裡跟英國澳洲的Rio Tinto公司聯手開採世界最大還未開發的銅與黃金寶地，蒙古政府佔了這個項目34%的股份，給全國經濟注入了幾十億元的產值。

How much of that will migrate 340 miles north and into the pockets of ordinary people such as Ochkhuu is an open question. Experts at the World Bank and the United Nations are urging Mongolia to invest that money in infrastructure, training, and growing the economy, although the current government, led by Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold, took a more direct approach, pledging to grant every man, woman, and child a payment of about $1,200 from the mining windfall.

這些產值如何轉移到340英哩以北進入類似鷗之谷這些普通百姓的口袋裡還是個懸而未決的問題。世界銀行和聯合國的專家敦促蒙古政府把錢投資在基礎設施，培訓和促進經濟成長上。目前由總理(Sukhbaatar Batbold)蘇赫巴托爾巴特包勒德領導的政府做法更直接，承諾從採礦賺到的錢撥出約1200元給每一個成年男女和小孩。

Ochkhuu doesn’t believe he’ll ever see that money. But in the meantime, he needs to work. At first he tried his hand as an entrepreneur, having identified what he thought was a need in the community. He and a partner rented a room at a local hotel and then marketed it to ger dwellers, who lack running water, as a place to take a shower or a bath. He went door-to-door looking for customers. There were very few takers. Ochkhuu lost more than $200 on the deal, a sizable chunk of his savings.

鷗之谷不相信他會看到這些錢，但是，現在他還得工作，他先嘗試當個企業家，在社區裡找到他認為有需求的生意來做，他跟合夥人在一家旅館內租了一間房再轉租給缺水的蒙古包居民洗澡。他挨家挨戶地找客戶，但沒多少人要。鷗之谷損失了200多元，耗掉了他的大部份儲蓄。

Now he’s thinking of buying a used car and turning it into a taxi. He’d need to borrow the money, but he’d make a pretty good living, and the freedom of driving and being his own boss appeals to him. More important, he’d be able to drive his daughter to and from school.

現在他想要買一輛舊車當出租車，需要借錢，想到可以賺點錢過日子又可以開車自己當老闆就很合心意。最重要的是，他可以開車接送女兒上學放學。

“We may not be able to raise our animals in UB,” he went on. “But it’s a good place to raise our children.”

他接著說：“我們或許無法在UB養牛羊，但這卻是一個栽培孩子的好地方。”

Passing through the fence into his yard, Ochkhuu drags the wooden gate behind him until the latch clicks.

走過圍欄進入自己的院子裡時，鷗之谷拖著身後的木門直到鎖卡閂上。

“God, I miss my horses,” he says.

他說：“上帝，我很想念我的馬。”

 

By Don Belt

Photograph by Mark Leong

原文：唐貝；摄影：梁馬克

 

—— END ——

 

Source > National Geography Magazine 國家地理雜誌

Translated by > BlogHost :- hkTan

Word Count > approx.1820 words in English