More on Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan is almost immortal and irreplaceable in the hearts and minds of Mongolians.

As early as in 1661, in a story told by historians, when the Manchu emperor Shunzhi died that year, the Mongols refused an official decree to mourn.

Summoned to Beijing to explain their “recalcitrance”, a group of Darkhats said they had been ordered to remain in mourning for one emperor only, Genghis Khan, all their lives. “If we were in double mourning we would make a serious mistake regarding the Sacred Lord’s brave soul … we would rather die obeying our late Emperor’s order than live violating it.”

“The Manchu officials knew when they were beaten, and granted the Mongols freedom to follow their own ways, pretty much unmolested, for the next 300 years.” (John Mann, Genghis Khan – Life, Death and Resurrection, Bantam Press 2004)

Even Genghis’ relics were contentious as recent as during the last century.

In the autumn of 1937, a representative of the Japanese Army based in Baotou in Inner Mongolia demanded that Genghis relics be handed over to the Japanese. The Japanese figured that whoever gained access to the relics “held the key to Mongolia” and that “whoever ruled Mongol lands had a fine base from which to secure the rest of China and Siberia.”

“Suddenly Genghis’ relics, Genghis’ very soul, had become the key to empire in Asia.”

However the Japanese were warned that if the relics were moved, there would be riots, and this reportedly compelled the Japanese to back off. But the incident also prompted the Mongols to approach the Chinese nationalist for help in moving the relics to a safe place. The KMT government agreed “to move everything by truck and camel to the mountains south of Lanzhou”. The area was chosen because it was safe, and not far from the Liupan mountains, where Genghis had reportedly spent his last summer.

So on 17 May 1939, 200 nationalist soldiers arrived unannounced at the Mausoleum, to the astonishment of the locals who blocked the way. A nationalist explained the need to protect the place against the “East Ocean devils.” Panic gave way to negotiations. The nationalists promised that all expenses would be paid and that some of the Darkhats could come along. But news spread and thousands spent the night in lantern-hit ceremonies, weeping and praying as the carts were loaded. At dawn, the train of vehicles moved off, with a brief pause when an old man prostrated himself in front of one of them.

One nationalist soldier reportedly muttered to another, “given such loyalty, no wonder Genghis Khan won wars.” Across “a sea of tears”, in the words of a journalist, the carts slowly pulled out.

“Because Genghis was, of course, a Chinese emperor and the whole Mausoleum a Chinese relic, both sides in what would soon be a vicious civil war united in competing to praise Genghis as a symbol of Chinese resistance to the invader, seeing him not as the founder of the Mongol nation and empire, but as the founder of the Yuan dynasty.”

“There was, therefore, a political subtext to this apparently altruistic gesture; the Mongols had better not forget that Genghis’ conquest were not conquests at all, but a little difficulty that led to the Chinese majority being ruled, for a short while, not by foreigners but by a Chinese minority; in brief, they had better remember that Mongolia was actually part of China.”

When Genghis’ relics arrived in Yenan, the Chinese Communists praised Genghis (Yuan Taizu) as “the world’s hero” and used him as a symbol calling on the Mongolian and the Chinese people “to unite and resist (Japanese aggression) to the end.”

As Mann mused, “this was how to deal with a barbarian conqueror: confer upon him a retrospective change of nationality and turn him into a symbol of Chinese culture, fortitude and unity.”

Mann added: “It was an astonishing display, given that this was the Chinese heartland, with few Mongols in evidence. Genghis had devastated the area. Yet ordinary people fell for his magic, because he had become a Chinese emperor, albeit posthumously; also, they were ancestor-worshippers, and Genghis was certainly a great ancestor, even if not theirs. So they knelt and kowtowed with joss sticks in their hands.”