The San Francisco Bay Area Mongolian community celebrated their
country’s 89th independence day along with the traditional Naadam festival with
great cheer on July 10. “This is the same celebration that our people are
having everywhere around the world,” Ts. Demberel, principal organizer of
the 13th Mongolian National Day in the Bay Area, told the Oakland Tribune.

Many people in the Mongolian
community came out to the festival held at the Speedway Meadow section of
Golden Gate Park in traditional costumes. A variety of Mongolian food and
product vendors set up tents around the grounds.

The opening ceremony began with a
Mongolian Shaman Dance by the event”s head dancer. Next, the Khuk Tenger dance
group and a group of nine children from the Ger Youth Center joined in with a
Mongolian folk dance. The children each picked up a stone from the ground to
represent  the nine clans in Mongolia.
Other children stood near the dancers with buckets of milk as an offering to
the sky for well-being.

“Our children learn about
traditional folk dances and about the heritage and culture of our
country,” said E. Tuizen, Ger Youth Center Board leader. “These
dances represent our history. The lifestyle of Mongolia comes out through the
dance.”

The celebration continued with the raising
of the Mongolian flag and singing the Mongolian national anthem. Performances
continued by rock band Khuk Mongol, Mongolian opera singer B. Tsetsgee and
performers playing the Morin Khuur, a horse-head fiddle.

The festival presented the
community”s three traditional games of wrestling, horse racing and   archery.  Five teams competed in games involving sheep’s
ankle bones, known as Shagai. “The game is somewhere from 600 to 800 years
old,” said participant Frances Boyd, of Berkeley.

The game consists of throwing an
arrow-shaped bone off a wooden box to ankle-bone targets across a 6-foot
platform. Players chant during the games.

“We don”t see the Mongolian
community often so it is nice to see everyone and to get news on what is going
on in our country,” said festival attendee Batchimed Baker.

The day festival concluded with an
award ceremony for the games and a dance. The adults continued the celebration
into the evening with a disco party at Lake Merritt Dance Center in Oakland.

“Our festival is about unity
and identity. It allows us to know who we are,” said attendee Eric Sergee,
of San Francisco.

The event was hosted by the
Oakland-based Bay Area Mongolian Community Association. The group was created
six years ago by the growing population of Mongolians in the Bay Area, which
numbers about 6,000.