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Starting school? Go by horse, of course
Print Edition
Ulijidelger never imagined he would become an Internet sensation overnight, just because of the way he took his son to school on the first day of the new semester — riding a horse.
Wearing traditional Mongolian hats and robes, one shiny red and the other Tiffany blue, the father and son rode two white horses to school through high-rises in the city of Ordos, north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Their short video clip taken by a passerby soon became one of the most searched hashtags on Weibo, with more than 10 million views.
“Although we’ve settled in the city for years, I don’t want my son to forget our tradition of horse riding,” Ulijidelger said.
Riding a horse on the first day of school has become fashionable. As an indispensable part of nomadic culture in north China, the centuries-old Mongolian horse culture is coming back to the grasslands in new forms.
Horses gradually began to decrease in importance in the late 1990s as Mongolian urban settlers abandoned their traditional nomadic lifestyle on the grasslands.
Chulu, 43, who grew up in Taipusi Banner of Xilingol League, an imperial racecourse in ancient times, bid farewell to his life on horseback in 1992 when his father insisted on selling the family’s last five horses. The mounts were replaced by a motorcycle.
The once indispensable Mongolian horses faced urgent need of conservation as their population dropped from 2.39 million in 1975 to less than 700,000 in 2007. Some herdsmen even sent their saddles to museums.
For China’s nomads, moving away from horses is a result of the changing pastoral animal husbandry with a more mechanized, industrialized and market-oriented development, said Manglai, vice president of Inner Mongolia Agricultural University.
“Horses have lost their value since herdsmen rarely make money from stock raising,” he added.
Yet thriving tourism spurs the horse industry which bulges the herdmen’s wallets.
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