TromboneChat

Just played a brass band concert with the Mongolian Armed Forces Brass Band in Darkhan, Mongolia. I did the usual thing and handed the trombone player one of my unit pins from my uniform, and he hands me a medal off his uniform:
But then later, after the show he hands me a beat up mouthpiece with no markings on it. I politely tried to refuse, saying "oh no, no isn't this your mouthpiece that you need? I won't be able to use it" and he says something to the effect of "it's 40 years old. Made in Mongolia. History of Mongolia." He wouldn't let me refuse.

40 years ago, Mongolia would have been a Soviet territory, so I imagine this is some kind of Soviet bloc mouthpiece. It looks like a 2G rim, V cup that is sort of shallow, maybe like a 5G depth. Maybe a .260 throat. Any ideas?

I also have no clue what the medal is that he gave me, just that it is cool looking.

FWIW, they sounded pretty good, and played a ton of American tunes. Most had only been playing for 2 years.

I'll have to ask my wife when she gets home if she has a better translation. The best Google can do when I use Russian to enter the Cyrillic and then convert to Mongolian in Cryllic is:

10 ЖИЛ Монгол улсыН ЗЗВСЗГТ ХуЧИН

330 ДугааР АНГИ

10 YEARS OF POWER IN MONGOLIA

330 CLASS

By the way, if you have three posts and want to comment on this post, please send me an email. We get an enormous amount of Cyrlic spam so I have the spam filters set pretty high basically for any cyrillic if you aren't already an active user. I'll get you squared away so I dont' accidentally nuke you lol

That's pretty interesting. I wonder what that refers to. Mongolia has been democratic for longer than that, I believe. Another thing I did not know about Mongolia before coming here -- they have a historic script but use modified Cyrillic to write their language, as the vowels are extremely difficult in the historic script. Something about needing to know the gender of a vowel in context, and writing it gendered, even though the pronunciation is exactly the same. Cyrillic did away with this, and is apparently a very good fit to write this language. It sounds to me like a Turkish or middle eastern language, and nothing at all like any East Asian language I've encountered.

The place is wild. I want to draw comparisons with other places I've been, but it's not possible. It is unlike any place I've ever been to.

Apparently the part of Mongolia you visited, formerly known as Outer Mongolia, was made independent with the aid of the Russians in the 1930s. Inner Mongolia remained absorbed by China. All of Mongolia was part of China during the Qing Dynasty.

The medal could be much more than 40 years old, since the independence from China was during the 1930s and thus 10 years would be the 1940s; possibly predating the Mao revolution of 1949.

Very interesting medal and I'm glad you are having a good visit with the Mongolians.