I was catching up at
The Marmot's Hole when I stumbled upon the fact that Mongolia has--well, how to put this delicately?--
vanished. What a surprise. I'm pretty sure it was there when I checked a few weeks ago. And just when we got the Mongolia blog going, too!
Seriously, though, when I first began blogging this, I had hoped that the omission of Mongolia from the
China National Tourism homepage's list China's neighbors was simply an editorial oversight or at most geographical illiteracy on the part of one of the website's flunkies:
China has shared borders for centuries with Korea, the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Burma, Laos and Vietnam.
Then again, a commenter at The Marmot's Hole noted that neither is Tibet mentioned (understandable, perhaps). Suspicions raised, I took a look through the list again. And a very interesting list it is, too (click
here for a map of the region): North Korea is identified on the list simply as "Korea." Did I miss reunification? Also,
Sikkim is counted as an independent country. Sikkim
was independent, but that ended in 1975, when a successful referrendum made it India's 22nd state. It's also puzzling that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are not named--instead "the former Soviet Union" is. Aha! Perhaps the explanation for Mongolia's nonmention is this list is that it got lumped into the "former Soviet Union" along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan--something that didn't even happen in Soviet times. While Mongolia was under aggressive Soviet influence, its independence was always recognized (cf. old Czechoslovakia, Hungary).
Anyway, I have written a [polite] e-mail to the webmaster of the site in question (webmaster@cnta.gov.cn) kindly requesting a correction with regard to Mongolia. If that goes well, I might follow up re: Korea, Sikkim, etc. I'll be sure to blog any responses.
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