Country Driving [43]
Kublai Khan, one of Genghis Khan’s grandchildren, founded the Yuan dynasty, which was a united multinational state with extensive territory. He carried forward the traditions of the central plains of China. He encouraged the development of agriculture, handicraft, and textile industries by improving productive means as well as science and technology. Trade and navigation were well developed, which promoted the cultural communication with western countries.
The mausoleum’s central room features a row of coffins, supposedly belonging to Genghis Khan and his closest relatives. Outside the room, a Mongolian tour guide approached me, speaking Chinese. She asked where I was from, and when I answered, she smiled wistfully. “The Great America,” she said. “It’s like Genghis Khan used to be.”
I didn’t know exactly how to respond to that. Among the flocks of cadres she looked as out of place as many of my hitchhikers—dyedred hair, silver earrings, tight jeans. She was twenty-four years old, with high cheekbones and the long thin eyes of the steppe people. I was still thinking about the Great America when she spoke again.
“This isn’t really Genghis Khan’s tomb,” she said. “I work here, but I want you to know that this place is fake. Those coffins are empty, and nobody knows where his tomb really is. Anyway, according to tradition there were special ceremonial objects that contained his soul.”
She mentioned the names of the objects, but the words were unfamiliar; I asked her to write them in my notebook. For a moment she stared helplessly at the pen and paper. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I’m too drunk to write.”
She gave me an impromptu tour of the exhibits, pointing out mistakes and exaggerations. She told me that Genghis Khan had been born in what is now independent Mongolia—that detail was important to her. She believed that Inner Mongolia had become an ecological disaster, because of all the Chinese-style farming in the region. “That’s why you have dust storms in Beijing every spring,” she said. “Anyway, we’re a fallen race. We used to be great, but now we’re nothing. We don’t have a united country—there’s Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and then the Buryats in Russia. And yet at one point we were the greatest race in the world. We’re not the same as the Chinese; those are two totally different races. Mongolians like freedom, but that doesn’t matter to the Chinese. Have you noticed that Mongolians drink a lot?”
I said yes, this was something I had noticed.
“It’s because of the psychology,” she said. “It’s bad for your psychology to fall so far. And there isn’t anything for Mongolians to do about it, so we drink.”
We walked outside into the blazing sunshine. Beyond the mausoleum walls I could see flat dry scrubland, and the wind blew the woman’s hair around her face. “Of course the Mongols killed a lot of people in the old days,” she said. “But they also had great advances in culture and religion. It’s like Hitler—people might say that he’s bad, but at least he was capable of leading a country. You can’t deny that.”
“Do you think Hitler was bad or good?” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “That’s not important for me to decide. What matters is that he left his name for history. You can call him fascist or anything else you want to, but he succeeded in leaving his name. The same is true for Genghis Khan. The whole world knew him and they still know him. Osama bin Laden is the same. When he attacked America, I was happy for him and the Afghans. Nothing against America, but the Taliban were a small race of people and they wanted to get noticed. Now everybody knows Osama bin Laden. He left his name for history, and I respect that.”
She wavered unsteadily in the wind and asked if we could sit down. We found a bench