Ulaanbaatar, MongoliaTuesday, February 16, 2010
Day Three and another New Year's visit to friends. The TV is often on in Mongolian homes and this time it was wrestling. This reminded me that Mongolian New Year is a big time for wrestling. Mongolian-style wrestling is quite different from anything I've seen before, and I still don't understand how it all works. One of the distinctive things about it is the "praise singers": they are the fellows who stand to the side of the wrestlers and (literally) sing the praises of each wrestler. Each wrestler has his own praise singer--they are standing to the bottom left and bottom right with the hats and red tassles.
