Encounter an error? Report it directly!
There is a photo at the bottom of this link that gives some idea of the layouthttp://www.retronaut.co/2012/05/mongolia-in-colour-1913/hope it helps
I would hope that Von Sterberg would have put an end to the rather nasty practice of starving women to death while being locked inside a heavy wooden box! Perhaps that could be part of the complicated scenario?
I would hope that Von Sterberg would have put an end to the rather nasty practice of starving women to death while being locked inside a heavy wooden box!
Urga the Sacred City, the home of the Gigin, the Living God, third in the Buddhist hierarchy, is not so much one city as three, all located on a high ridge above the Tola. Each is distinct, separate, entrenched. Arriving from the south, the one you reach first is Mai-ma-chin, the Chinese trading settlement, a tangle of small houses and narrow lanes hemmed in by stockades of wooden slabs and unbarked fir trees. Here are the eight or ten thousand Chinese who control the trade of North Mongolia. Apparently they make a good living, for there is a prosperous bustle about the place, and as you pick your way over the mud and filth of the streets, through open doorways you catch glimpses of courts gay with flowers and gaudily decorated houses such as the well-to-do Chinese build. But for the most part dull blank walls shut you out—or in. The Chinese is an unwelcomed alien in Mongolia, and he knows it.A strip of waste, treeless land, bare of everything save a group of "chortens," that look like small pagodas, and a few yurts and sheds, separates Mai-ma-chin from the Russian settlement which occupies[277] the highest part of the ridge, dominating everything in a significant way. It centres in the consulate, a large white building surrounded by high walls, but more prominent is the tall red Russo-Asiatic Bank close by. Other buildings are a church and a few houses and shops. The Russian Consulate also is well fortified, with the last contrivances for defence,—walls, ditches, wire entanglements,—and it looks fit to stand a siege.Before reaching Urga proper, the Mongol or lama city, which lies about three miles farther west, shut off from the others by a branch of the Tola, you pass the headquarters of the Chinese governor, and he, too, has entrenched himself behind strong earthworks. Ta Huren, the "Great Encampment," as the Mongols call Urga, which is not a Mongol word at all, but merely a modification of the Russian "urgo," a camp or palace, is a network of palisaded lanes enclosing, not comfortable houses and offices and banks, as in Mai-ma-chin, but temples and lamasseries. And well within these is the most sacred spot of all, the lamassery where dwells enthroned Bogdo or the Gigin, the Living Buddha ranking after the Dalai Lama and the Tashi Lama only.
Started by Rogerc « 1 2 » Back of Beyond
Author
Topic: Urga (Read 8356 times)
December 23, 2024, 12:00:12 PM
