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Sending Mail in Mongolia? ‘Dissident.sloth.ploy’ Could Be the Address
Bryant Rousseau | The New York Times
“If you happen to be invited to a party at the United States Embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, you might address your R.S.V.P. to ‘eyebrows.conforms.zebra.’ Have a care package for a student at the Institute of Finance and Economics of Mongolia? Writing ‘during.snapper.housework’ on the parcel will get it there.
These oddly poetic three-word codes will soon act as a stand-in for the more common addressing convention of house number, street name and postal code, which never quite caught on in Mongolia, one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries.”
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Fiddler on the Front Line
Linda Kinstler | Foreign Policy
“The Ukrainian Jews pushed off their land often migrated to other villages and urban centers, under increasingly strained conditions. The turn of the century made life harder still. More pogroms, far worse than before, swept through Ukrainian cities in 1905, killing hundreds. And as vibrant shtetl culture became a thing of the past, the towns became associated in the public imagination with the villages from Shalom Aleichem’s stories: ‘dire straits, with … broken-down Jews, wooden huts, rotting shingles.’
Until now. The Anatevka shtetl is being rebuilt, this time as a home for Jewish internally displaced persons fleeing the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine. The settlement’s new founders are intent on bringing back a way of life that disappeared from the region long ago.”
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How Women Are Surviving Constant Violence and Starvation in War-Torn Sudan
Amanda Sperber | Broadly
“To say Sudan's Blue Nile state is ‘forgotten’ wouldn't be the right word. Most people have never heard of the place to begin with. The Sudanese civil war—which left millions dead of hunger and disease, leading to the secession and creation of South Sudan—isn't over in Blue Nile. Wedged between Ethiopia and South Sudan, the rebel-held Blue Nile and its sister area to the west, the Nuba Mountains, still fight against the government led by President Omar al-Bashir, the only sitting head of state wanted on charges of crimes against humanity.”
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Amid Crackdown, China's Last Liberal Magazine Fights for Survival
Anthony Kuhn | NPR
“Just days after editors ended publication of China's leading liberal history journal last month, a new edition of the magazine is out again. But the original publishers are calling this a pirate edition—and they're preparing to fight it in court.
The magazine, the Annals of the Chinese Nation, or Yanhuang Chunqiu in Chinese, is seen as the standard bearer of the embattled liberal wing of China's ruling Communist Party. The publication has made bold calls for democratic reforms and questions the party's version of history.”
