Word: mongolia
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Delicate Flavor. Until Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung began their public brawling, Outer Mongolia was a country that made headlines only in the National Geographic fa magazine that some Mongols think is the only one published in the U.S.). It is so remote that only 16 U.S. citizens have visited the country in the past two years. The most recent was LIFE Photographer Howard Sochurek, who last week reported on his 30-day stay in one of the "most oddball countries in the world...
...Outer Mongolia, says Sochurek, is basically two nations. One is the timeless meadowlands of Central Asia where nomads pasture their flocks and herds just as they did centuries ago under the rule of their great hero-king, Genghis Khan. Outer Mongolia has more yurts (circular, felt-covered tents) than houses, and more cattle (21 million) than people (1,000,000). Mongols are born to the saddle, lasso their horses with nooses at the end of long poles, make a strong wine from fermented cow's milk and feast on such dainties as yak butter delicately flavored with yak urine...
...Blue Ants. The other Outer Mongolia is a newly awakened land bursting wide-eyed into the jet age. The capital city of Ulan Bator (Red Hero) boasts a finer hotel than any in Moscow. A state hospital, equipped by Czechoslovakia, is superbly run by a staff of 35 doctors (25 Mongols, five Russians, four Czechs, one Chinese). Sturdy Mongol girls tend up-to-date British machinery in a large textile mill, and the sons of nomad horsemen study physics at the state university. Russia and its European satellites have poured nearly $3 billion into Outer Mongolia. Hungarian technicians operate...
Unable to compete in economic aid, Red China sent in 22,000 laborers, who have built dams, brick kilns, a glass factory, and a 50,000-kw. power plant. The blue-clad laborers (known locally as "blue ants") were promised land in Mongolia, but when the Mongols clearly lined up with Russia, Peking withdrew 14,000 workers. Those remaining stay close to their fenced-in barracks; it is doubtful that any will be allowed to stay on after their contracts expire...
Restive Lamas. Outer Mongolia won a precarious independence in 1921, when with Soviet help the Chinese officials were driven from the country and a "Peoples Revolutionary government" was established under Sukhe Bator, whose heroic statue stands in the center of Ulan Bator. The Red regime survived several uprisings led by Mongol princes and Buddhist lamas, and in 1945, as a result of the Yalta conference, Nationalist China agreed to a plebiscite in Outer Mongolia. The Reds saw to it that the vote for independence was unanimous...