My Urghar Stories

With the Urghars featuring so large in the news, what with the riots up there in China and all, it means I'm finally able to spell the name. Also, while feeling great sympathy for all those involved, am greatly enjoying reading the various accounts in all the different newspapers, especially the ones in "China Daily" - the Chinese Communist Party English-language newspaper - where the Urghars feature large as "dingbats"; savages who are destroying the Harmony of China!

I refuse to take sides, besides saying that Han always make truly awful colonists, and instead will tell you my Urghar stories since one is cute and the other is interesting.

1) Here in Hong Kong, you're forever coming across Mongolians in shoe stores. They never buy, but simply examine pair after pair, twisting and bending them, and have huddled conversations between themselves about various features. And you'll notice they're always wearing home-made shoes ... but amazing ones. Gosh, Mongolian footwear really rocks! You should see the colours, and the quality of leather, and the clever little features and other things they do to them, like embossing and stamping and really clever things like that! And they are thrilled when you notice and, if you indicate you love them, they're always so happy to show them off to you.

OK, that's just the backstory. Here's the story: Several years ago, I walk into a shoe store here to see two young men "going Mongolian" on a pair of shoes and stop dead in total astonishment! They are Chinese, definitely, but they both have red hair and green eyes. Not kidding! Vivid red hair and shockingly green eyes! They notice my face and both burst out laughing. They don't speak English so I say "China?" and they say "Mongolia!", I say "Chinese?" and they say "Yolger!"

That's the story. I would have loved to have talked to them more but we'd definitely reached the limit. However they intrigued me so much I immediately went to the library - the little one on Electric Road - and rummaged through to find something on who the Yolgers were. (Spelling it "Yolger" and indeed finding stuff on them under that name.)

And that's how I came across the wonderful book "Ancestors" which gives the history of all the tribes of Europe. This book is so good I've already taken it out half a dozen times and plan to eventually buy it ... so I really should record the details, shouldn't I! Sorry, don't have them. I will however, get them for anyone interested.

The Yolger (aka Volga, Bulga, Urghar, and other names amply demonstrating consonantal shift) story is that, 6000 years ago, they were a tribe of horse breeders up in Mongolia when the Han moved in, stole their land and drove them off by force.

This next part of their story is so like my own history - the Milesian Irish history - it kinda creeps me out because it goes: for nearly 800 years they lived in a swamp until they finally said "Enough of this crap" and sent out their warriors to find them a new homeland. That's also what happened to us, so our ancestral history says ... which kinda makes me wonder if we Milesians too aren't descended from this band of exploring warriors because it's part of the Yolger story that the warriors split up and each group searched far and wide. Maybe we Milesians are descended from warriors who said "stuff the rest of 'em" and settled down with their horses in the rich green lands of Ireland.

But the Yolger story goes that they searched until they finally came across a peaceful race of people who felt for them and gave them one of their own richly fertile valleys ... so they went back to get the others ... except on the way back they met up with another tribe and stupidly told them their exciting news ... and that tribe immediately raced across Europe and rocked up to the peaceful tribe and said "We're the Yolgers!" and thus claimed the land for themselves ... but these were a nasty parasitic tribe and thus, over the next few centuries, killed off the kindly peaceful tribe around them ... and bred themselves up until they eventually became the nation of Bulgaria ...

... which meant that when, finally, the Yolgers arrived to claim their new homeland they were driven off by the nasty Faux-Yolgers and so, broken hearted, they spread themselves out among other peoples in other lands. For a thousand years, believing they'd eventually again have a unified homeland, they tried to stay "100% Yolger" by marrying within themselves, but eventually gave up and blended themselves into their local populations which means that, over the past 3000 years, you're forever finding tribes who throw up red-haired, green-eyed youngsters: Turkey, Afghanistan, Poland, Pakistan, China ... those Yolgers indeed spread far and wide.

But my lovely Yolger boys who lead me to begin this search show that there are still Yolgers up in Mongolia. Isn't that interesting?

Which leads to my second Yolger story:

2) During one of the recent jewelry expos, I came across the Turkish stalls and, at one of them, in among the dark skinned, dark haired, very pretty Turkish girls, there was one ... I said to her "You've got red hair and green eyes!" and she says "I know. It's really odd, isn't it! My family often wonder how it happened!" so I say "It just means you're descended from the Yolgers." and she's all instantly wide-eyed and going "What? What?" ...

... and, right at that moment, the man who runs the stall and who's been standing by and listening to all this, explodes in anger and says lots of angry things to her in Turkish and the girl sheepishly apologises and turns away.

Interesting, huh? I wonder what it was that he didn't want her to know. But, after that, whenever I was in that area, she kept glancing at me, tracking me, like she was desperate to defy her boss and find out what I knew about who she was, but didn't have the nerve.

So, that's my story about the Urghar story. Obviously these guys up there in China are a tribe of Yolgers who still are in dire need of finding their very own Homeland.