Unegen Origins: Part 2.1
A discussion of our series, Unegen: The Burning Tree, isn't complete without mentioning our trip to Mongolia in 2016. I may split this post into three or four, one post wouldn't do this trip justice.
Picking up where we left off in our last Origins post, Sam and I had recently decided to make what was originally a short story into a feature film. We were both due for an overseas trip, so we booked a 2 month trip to Mongolia; booking flights and not much else.
We didn't really know what we were in for, the main reason for the trip was that if we're writing a fantasy screenplay influenced by Mongolian history and culture, then it only made sense to go there. Equipped with our camera kit, palm cards, pencils, and clothes we arrived in Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar.
After departing Chinggis Khan international airport, we saw our first gers (round, felt tent dwellings) but not in the picturesque rolling grasslands we saw online. Instead, these belonged to Ulaanbaatar's outlying "ger districts", belonging to 800,000 residents living in poor conditions. We drove past massive power plants and mountain faces that engulfed the city.
Another thing we noticed was that the roads were pretty quiet for 10 am. Our driver informed us that Angela Merkel was in town, and the government had asked everyone to take a holiday in the countryside to free up space on the roads. We stayed at a hostel called the Golden Gobi (named after the Gobi Desert), where we immediately were asked what tours we wanted to go on. We weren't sure, and responded that we'd decide later; the priority was our writing so we needed somewhere to settle down. Ulaanbaatar was pretty cool, with its Soviet-style apartment blocks and surprising Korean restaurant scene. We spent our days hitting cafes, bars, discussing the story and scribbling down scenes onto our palm cards. It had a fun nightlife, lots of karaoke bars, good food and an interesting grid layout different to anywhere we'd been before.
The Russian connection is very visible in the city; Mongolian script uses the same characters as Russian, there's was also a massive photo of the Mongolian Prime Minister shaking hands with Vladimir Putin which says it all. Chinggis (Genghis Khan) was everywhere; with restaurants and squares named after him, his face on the money and statues dedicated to him.
There was a grim nature to the city as well; alcoholism is a massive problem in the country - the first Monday of every month is a dry day. Empty bottles of vodka are scattered on footpaths, with a passed out man not far away. It's also one of the most polluted cities in the world, due to the four enormous coal-fired power plants in the city. Ulaanbaatar sits in a valley, so the air pollution lingers above. In winter, the temperature drops to -40 degrees celsius, and the ger districts are warmed by burning cow dung, releasing methane which combines with the air pollution from the coal plants. Luckily, we were there in summer, and it was very hot.
It didn't take long to realise that these hostel "tours" were the main attraction for adventure tourists. Each morning new SUVs would drop off a group wearing full Kathmandu attire, returning from the Gobi Desert or another remote location. After a few days, the staff as well as the other hostel visitors were surprised and confused that we hadn't been on a tour yet. We wanted to get out of the city, but were very reluctant to be with a group on a set-plan; we thought that wouldn't be conducive to silent hours of writing and didn't really give us the freedom we were after.
Despite our series being set in a medieval era, the modern city provided a lot of insight into Mongolian modern lifestyle, which conjured some unexpected ideas. We were playing with the idea of other realms/worlds in our story, based on the Mongolian shamanistic belief that the world is divided into three realms; the Upper, Middle and Lower. Ulaanbaatar was a mix of traditional and modern lifestyles, evident in the sprawling ger districts and reverence to Chinggis Khan, compared to the shopping malls, towering blocks of numbered apartments, and billowing power plants nestled in the valley. This is where our ideas that inspired the Lower Realm sprung up, a place of myth and wonder, being slowly corrupted by the powers of industry. We played with the idea of a powerful substance originating in the Lower Realm, a resin/oil/mineral offering great power; its corruptive energy leaking into the Middle Realm, where our story is set. These ideas are the early foundations of The Sap, brought to realisation by a lot more world-building we'd do in the following years.
To be continued....
Damien.