Darkhan

Darkhan is one of the youngest cities in Mongolia and was built on purpose. In October 1961 the government, with extensive Comecon support, laid the foundation of a planned industrial town at a site on the railway between Ulaanbaatar and the Russian border, in the valley of the Kharaa river. The name means "blacksmith", and the intention was to concentrate heavy industry and construction materials in the north, away from the crowded capital, using coal from nearby deposits and farm produce from the Selenge basin.

Factories followed quickly: a cement works and building-materials plants, a leather and sheepskin industry, flour mills and food processing, a thermal power station, and later a steel plant using scrap and local iron ore. Workers came from all over the country, and specialists from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Bulgaria worked on the construction, which is why the older blocks show designs unusual in Mongolia. The population grew from nothing to tens of thousands within two decades, and a new town was laid out several kilometres from the original settlement, which is still called Old Darkhan.

The end of the socialist system in 1990 hit a city built entirely around state industry. Plants closed or shrank, subsidies and technical help ended, and jobs disappeared. In 1994 the surrounding area was made into Darkhan-Uul, a small province of its own with the city as its capital. Since then some industry has revived, notably building materials, metals and food processing, and the city has also grown as a road and rail junction on the trade route between China, Mongolia and Russia.

Darkhan's identity is that of a working city. It was assembled from migrants from every province in the 1960s and 1970s, so it has less of a single regional character than older Mongolian towns and more of a shared pride in having been built, quickly and deliberately, as a model industrial town. Buildings and murals from that period, and the names of factories and districts, still carry the socialist-era optimism of its founding.

Buddhism returned openly after 1990, as it did across the country. The monastery on the hill above the city, with its ger-shaped temple, the great seated Buddha and a ring of white stupas, is the focus of religious life, and families come up to make offerings, circle the stupas clockwise and mark the new year. Drivers still stop at ovoo cairns on the passes out of the city.

Sport is important and closely followed. Wrestling is the city's chief passion, along with the horse racing and archery of provincial Naadam in July, and Darkhan has produced wrestlers who have done well at the national festival. Basketball and football are popular with the young, and the cold months move life indoors to sports halls, the theatre and cinema. Ties to the countryside remain strong: many families in the blocks of flats have relatives herding in Selenge or Töv and go out to them in summer, returning with dairy and meat.

About 87,000 people live in Darkhan, making it the third largest city in Mongolia, though a small one by any wider measure. Work is in construction materials, metals, leather, flour milling and food processing, in the power station, on the railway and in road haulage, and in the schools, hospital and provincial administration. Higher-education institutes and colleges train engineers and agricultural specialists, and the surrounding province has some of the country's better farmland, growing wheat, potatoes and vegetables.

The city is unusual in Mongolia for its shape: two separated centres, the newer planned town with its blocks, square and shops, and the older settlement near the factories, with ger districts around the edges of both. Heating comes from the power station for the flats and from coal and wood stoves in the ger areas, which means smoke and poor air on cold, still days, on a smaller scale than the capital's.

Daily rhythms are early and industrial: shift work, school in shifts too where buildings are crowded, markets busiest in the morning, and streets emptying quickly after dark in winter. The city's difficulties are those of an industrial town — an economy tied to a few employers, young people leaving for Ulaanbaatar or abroad, and ageing Soviet-era infrastructure — set against steady traffic on the Russia–China corridor that runs through it.

Darkhan eats the standard Mongolian repertoire with the advantage of being in farming country. Buuz, mutton dumplings steamed in tiers, and khuushuur, the same filling in flat fried pasties, are everywhere; tsuivan, thick noodles steamed over meat and then fried with cabbage, carrot and onion, is the usual lunch; and guriltai shöl, mutton and noodle soup, is the everyday warming dish. Bansh, small boiled dumplings, go into soup or milky tea.

What sets the north apart is flour and vegetables. The Selenge basin is Mongolia's wheat and potato country, and Darkhan's mills and bakeries supply much of the region, so bread, biscuits, noodles and pastries are more prominent here than in the steppe and desert provinces. Potatoes, carrots, cabbage and turnips appear regularly in soups and salads, and Russian influence shows in bread, pickles, smoked fish from the Selenge waters and dishes such as salad dressed with mayonnaise.

Dairy remains central. Aaruul, hard dried curd, is stacked in the market; urum, thick scalded cream, is eaten with bread; and suutei tsai, salted milk tea, is poured constantly at home. Airag, lightly fermented mare's milk, is sold in summer from stalls on the roads out of town. Khorkhog, mutton cooked with fire-heated stones in a sealed churn, belongs to trips into the countryside. Vodka is the usual strong drink and the national brands are sold everywhere, with Russian beers and Mongolian lagers alongside them.