Writing
after a recent visit to Mongolia, a correspondent says in The Guardian Weekly
that she came to see the proud past but found that the country lives in high
hope for the future. 
Warned that drought and harsh winters had decimated herds, bringing the
nomads into squatter camps on the outskirts of the capital, she was prepared
for something akin to the wild west but found this not quite so. Admittedly,
the airport recalls former Soviet times, but the city center, while small, is
clean and boasts a number of quite passable hotels.

With a population of two and a half
million, Mongolia, it seems, also has hope. A young, well-educated Mongol tells
her that the country can build its economy by cautious dealings with China,
that the small population makes it easier for the government to manage change,
and that he plans to travel abroad so that he can return with his young family
and make his mark in the new Mongolia.

Mongolian national identity is
vested in its nomadic past, and inevitably in its heroic age under Genghis
Khan. A short distance outside the capital, in a wide grassy valley, a massive
stainless steel statue of the khan on horseback stands gazing out towards the
Ordos river of his childhood. Nearby a uniquely Mongol theme park, reached only
by four-wheel drive, provides an authentic Mongol experience, right down to the
spooky camp of the shamans, set in a rocky cleft among wind-blown pines.

The splendid gleaming presence of
this extraordinary monument, not in a city square, but in a vast open
landscape, surrounded only by diminutive tent camps for tourists, speaks much
of Mongol pride and the likelihood that among the older generation there is
also hope for the future.