China built the Great Wall more than 2,000 years ago to keep out invaders from the north. But the Chinese are having a harder time repulsing modern interlopers like these: long-haired Mongolian men in black, whose office decor features a wolf pelt, a portrait of Genghis Khan and a music store poster of Eminem.
So the Chinese police got nervous when they heard that Hurd was crossing the Gobi Desert, coming down from Mongolia. With their new hit CD, "I Was Born in Mongolia," Hurd, a heavy metal, Mongolian-pride group, was coming for a three-day tour, culminating Nov. 1 with a performance in Hohhot, capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
PHOTO: THE NEW YORK TIMES
"The morning we were to get on the train, the translator guy called and said `Your performances are canceled,"' Damba Ganbayar, Hurd's keyboardist and producer, said glumly as lounged in a white plastic chair.
"He said, `I will call with details.' I never got the details."
The details, according to reports from Hohhot, were that riot policemen and trucks surrounded the college campus where the group was to play. They checked identity cards, detained four people overnight and dispersed about 2,000 frustrated concertgoers into the autumn night.
In the next several days, the Chinese authorities shut down three Mongolian-language chat forums, according to the Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center, a New York-based group that tracks "Chinese colonialism" in what some call the southern end of Greater Mongolia.
"Banned in Hohhot" may not have an epic ring to it, but it is a sign of the times.
With reports of local protests almost daily fare in China, the authorities are increasingly nervous also about ethnic minorities. In late October, several days of fighting erupted between Hui Muslims and Han Chinese -- China's dominant ethnic group -- in central Henan province after a traffic accident.
During the 1960s, the Chinese-Soviet split kept Mongolia, a Soviet satellite nation, apart from China's Inner Mongolia. Today, the Chinese region is home to 4 million ethnic Mongolians, almost double the 2.5 million in the country of Mongolia. But Chinese migration to Inner Mongolia over the years has left the ethnic Mongolians there vastly outnumbered by 18 million Han Chinese.
In recent years, barriers have gone down between those two Mongolias as China has become its northern neighbor's largest trading partner and foreign investor. With Inner Mongolia's economy growing by 22 percent during the first nine months of this year, officials in the two Mongolias agreed in October to open a free-trade zone where the Trans-Mongolian Railway crosses into China.
On the cultural front, music groups from here often appear on Inner Mongolia's Mongolian language-channel. Hurd, which means speed, has done three concert tours in Inner Mongolia since 2000. It claims to be the most popular rock group for Mongolians on both sides of the border.
"In 2000, it was very Soviet-style, with lots of policemen around with flashlights, very disciplined concerts," Damba Ganbayar recalled. "Later, it became more relaxed, like normal rock concerts."
"Even so, they advised us not to say, `We Mongolians are all together!' or `All Mongolians rise up and shout!"' the keyboardist said. "People would shout, `Genghis!' But it was nothing political."
But on later visits south of the border, he noticed a growth in Mongol pride.
Encounters between Mongolians and Inner Mongolians are a bit like encounters between Mexicans and New Mexicans. Many Mongols here say they consider Inner Mongolians to be more Chinese than Mongolian. When people here travel south, they do not say they are going to Inner Mongolia, but to China.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS