|
Urna talks about her life and childhood in the grasslands |
|
Friday, 24 November 2006 |
|
My homeland is the Ordos district, a high plateau in western Inner Mongolia
belonging to China. It was here that I was born in the last winter month
of 1968 into a humble family of livestock farmers. As a child I looked
after the lambs on the sand dunes with the neighbouring children. Sometimes
we lost track of our flock whilst playing. So to gather them together
again we tossed lumps of sand into the air. In this way we sometimes caused
whole sandbanks to collapse. Later I looked after calves in the plains
of Shirdegiin Tsaidam where the thick grass grows tall. And so the first
ten years of my childhood quickly passed.
In my country it is customary for the children to attend a day-school
when they reach the age of ten. My parents now expected this of me. I
got on my horse, presented myself on the neighbouring household and began
to learn the Mongolian alphabet. Where I come from day-school means a
particular family where all the local children gather to receive instruction
in writing. Later on I went to a middle-school. It was too far away to
ride to every day, and so from then on I only got to visit my parents
for one or two days of a fortnight. The school was run with the strictest
discipline. Each morning, as soon as the sun rose, we had to get up out
of our warm beds and go to lesson. It was no longer the bleating of sheep
and lambs and the lowing of cattle which awoke me but the clanging of
the school-bell.
The years passed quickly. Soon I finished middle-school and set my thoughts
on studying. I got in the train – for the very first time in my
life – and travelled to Shanghai. There I was, a simple twenty-year-old
Mongolian peasant-girl, wanting to matriculate at the conservatory and
unable to speak a single word of Chinese! So I diligently learned the
language, took lessons on the Chinese Yangqin and was eventually admitted
in 1990 to the Institute of Traditional Chinese Music at the Shanghai
Conservatory. I was fascinated by the student life and getting to know
what was still for me the foreign Chinese culture proved to be an important
experience. During my studies of the basic music-theory I returned more
and more to my Mongolian roots.
The Ordos district has been dubbed the Sea of Songs by its inhabitants.
I am very happy to have born in this particular part of the world. In
my homeland there is no one who doesn’t know our folk music. Its
range is endless and the songs are sung everywhere in the open air, tending
the cattle, whilst riding. So it was that I grew up in a sea of wonderful
melodies, fairy-tales and legends.
my Ordos, deep in whose breast I live,
mother and father, who surrounded me with their love,
shepherds, who accompanied me on my way with their spirit …
(Translation: Renate Bauwe and Graham Waterhouse)
|
