Choibalsan

The eastern grasslands were herding country long before any town stood here, and the Kherlen valley carried movements of people across the plateau for centuries. The place was a post on a trading route for centuries, and in the nineteenth century the settlement on the river grew into a town, known then as Bayan Tümen, with a market serving the herders of the surrounding plains.

The twentieth century made it a Soviet-facing town. After the Mongolian People's Republic was established in 1924 the settlement became the provincial centre of Dornod and in 1941 was renamed after Khorloogiin Choibalsan, the country's communist leader, on the twentieth anniversary of the 1921 revolution. Its position close to the borders with the Soviet Union and Japanese-occupied Manchuria gave it military weight: in 1939 Soviet and Mongolian forces under Georgy Zhukov fought the Japanese army at Khalkhin Gol on Dornod's eastern edge, and the town served as a rear base for that campaign. A broad-gauge railway was pushed north to the Russian border, and airfields, barracks and warehouses followed.

Through the socialist decades Choibalsan grew into eastern Mongolia's largest settlement, with a large garrison, state industry and farms supplying the Soviet market. The withdrawal of Soviet forces and the end of one-party rule around 1990 removed much of that economy at once; the town shrank, industry closed and unused barracks were left standing. Since then it has lived as a provincial capital and trade point, its hopes attached to cross-border commerce, mining in the province and the grasslands that surround it.

This is Khalkha country with a strong Buryat presence in the north of the province, communities long settled along the border with Russia who keep their own dialect, songs and styles of dress. Barga and Üzemchin Mongols make up smaller groups in the town. The border position shows in other ways: Russian is more widely understood here than in most of Mongolia, Russian cars and goods are common, and the garrison years left habits and family connections that have outlasted the soldiers.

The steppe sets the calendar. Herding families move camp with the seasons across open grassland that runs unbroken for hundreds of kilometres, and the summer Naadam — wrestling, archery and long-distance horse races ridden by children — is the event around which the year turns, held in the town and again in each district. Horses are a serious matter, and the eastern provinces are known for their long races and their riding songs. Tibetan Buddhism, suppressed in the purges of the late 1930s, has revived since 1990 and is practised alongside older shamanic custom, with offerings left at the ovoo cairns on every rise.

The battle of Khalkhin Gol is remembered locally as a defining event, with memorials, museum displays and Russian visitors who come to see the battlefields. Manners are steppe manners: open hospitality, food and drink accepted with the right hand, and an assumption that any traveller who arrives will be fed.

About 38,000 people live in Choibalsan, which makes it the largest town in eastern Mongolia and the centre of everything administrative in Dornod. Life divides between heated apartment blocks in the centre and the fenced ger yards that spread outwards, where water is carried from standpipes and coal stoves burn through a winter that lasts half the year.

Work comes from the provincial administration, schools, the hospital and utilities, from trade and transport, and from the herding districts around, where cattle, sheep, goats and horses support most rural households and cashmere is the main source of cash. Mining and energy ventures in the province and cross-border trade add to the picture, while the large Soviet-era industrial plants have gone.

The town feels quiet and spread out, with more space than people, and the population has fallen since its peak as younger residents leave for Ulaanbaatar. The recurring problems are those of the eastern steppe: dzud winters of deep cold over iced ground that kill livestock in huge numbers, droughts, grass fires in dry springs, and the difficulty and cost of a long road to the capital. Against that, Dornod's grassland and wildlife are increasingly seen as assets worth protecting.

The everyday food is Mongolian herding food: buuz, steamed mutton or beef dumplings, eaten by the dozen at festivals; khuushuur, the same filling fried flat; tsuivan, thick hand-cut noodles fried with meat and a little vegetable; and guriltai shul, mutton and noodle soup. Suutei tsai, tea boiled with milk and salt, is poured for every guest. Beef is more common here than in the Gobi, since the eastern grasslands suit cattle well.

Feast cooking uses fire-heated stones. Khorkhog layers mutton with hot stones in a sealed churn, and boodog cooks a goat or marmot from the inside with stones packed into the carcass, though marmot hunting is restricted and carries a plague risk that local authorities take seriously. Strips of air-dried meat, borts, are made in autumn and keep through winter, crumbled later into soups.

Summer is the season of the white foods, and Dornod's milk makes them generously: öröm, thick clotted cream skimmed from boiled milk and eaten with fried bread; aaruul, hard dried curd stacked to dry in the sun; tarag, set sour yoghurt; and airag, the lightly alcoholic fermented mare's milk drunk by the bowl across the eastern steppe. Wild onion, chive and steppe herbs gathered in summer flavour dumplings and stews. In town, the border position shows on the plate, with Russian-influenced soups, salads and bread and Chinese-style stir-fries appearing on restaurant menus beside the Mongolian dishes.