Mongolia

Greetings

Man greeting Man – A handshake or a nodding of the head one time tends to be the most common greeting. Sometimes a shoulder-hug is common between good friends. Usually the person arriving will shake hands accompanied with a warm smile to the other person.

Woman greeting Woman - A handshake is acceptable but just verbal greetings is more common.

Man greeting Woman - For meetings between men and women it really depends on age as older folks are more casual with one another but younger people – especially teenagers – often stay in their separate gender groups, as casual meeting or conversation would cause others to assume they’re in a relationship. There’s usually no physical contact made, smiling and saying, “Hello”, is about it.

Note: Friends and family don’t generally hug one another when they meet, except if it’s after not having seen one another for a significant amount of time.

Communication Style

• Mongols tend to be very direct. If they like you, you’ll know it right away; and the opposite is true, as well.

Personal Space & Touch

• Mongolians tend to always be very close to one another. In the home, on public transport, etc. Family members often sleep in the same bed (kids together, adults together).
  
• It's common to see people riding in each other’s laps on the bus, standing right next to one another in public, continuously poking their heads in-and-out of doors at hospitals, at schools, etc – that’s the norm.
  
• During conversation people‘s distance from one another relates to how well they know each other. Male friends will often place a hand on one another’s shoulders when speaking, for instance.
• Touching during conversations is not really considered taboo, except what one may call “inappropriate touching.” Avoid touching people’s legs, putting a hand on a leg would be lewd. And with the exception of very small children, you don’t see much hand-holding, even among couples.
• Overt expressions of love through physicality are not really deemed appropriate in public. It is not common to see young couples kissing in public; and even hugging for more than a few seconds is considered a bit unusual.
  
• Avoid putting your hand near someone’s face unless you really love or really hate the other party.
  
• People often crowd around to look at something and will lean on one another, and when waiting to enter or exit any kind of vehicle there’s lots of pushing and shoving – and no-one thinks anything of it.
  
• In terms of speaking, there’s a lot of gesturing and pointing, making dramatic facial expressions to get the point across, but it’s only when one means to convey something very important or heartfelt – say during a holiday, or if someone will leave for a long time (or forever), they will hold someone’s hand and look them directly in the face when speaking.
• Note: Being any distance away from people is considered “sad” or “strange” in. No one usually ever lives alone and not having someone constantly next to you, pushing you, brushing past you, sitting next to you, bumping into you, with a hand or arm on you, etc is considered very unusual.

Eye Contact

• It's best to always look people in the eye when speaking to them. This conveys honesty and is in-line with the very straightforward manner in which people speak to one another in Mongolia.
  
• When children speak to adults or someone younger speaks to someone older, it is the custom to refer to the more senior person as “older brother” or “older sister” out of respect.

Gestures

• The sign for ‘let’s drink some vodka’ is made by holding the palm of one’s hand up to the side of one’s neck in a kind-of curved circle with thumb and middle finger together at the tips, and making a clicking sound with the tongue as one flicks his/her middle finger away towards her Adam’s Apple with the neck slightly up and out.
• In Mongolia there is also the finger-rating system: a thumbs-up is “the best,” turning your hand outward with only the forefinger extended (nail-side) and the others folded down (like in a fist) means “second best,” just the middle finger outward (as you might see someone in the West doing to be intentionally offensive) means “so-so/fair-to-middlin,” the fourth finger similarly extended means “bad,” and the pinky finger up alone with the rest of the of the fingers folded down means “the worst” or “this stinks.”
  
• People will call out one another’s name, or just loudly say (or shout) “Hoi!” or “Hoosh!”

Views of Time

• Time in Mongolia is exemplified by the expression “margaash” – “tomorrow.” Counting on anything to get done now or in the immediate future is not the norm.
  
• Services such as buses and trains run late, even international air-transport tends to operate on the “tomorrow/margaash” principle.
• People tend to show up when they’re ready and not a moment sooner – and not just people: the mail, the train, the plane, your salary, your relatives from the other side of the country, etc.
• If you have a 2 pm appointment and happen to see your cousin or your neighbor’s friend, or your co-worker’s grandma on the way to where you are supposed to meet, taking an extra 30-40 minutes to talk to this person – and hence keep the other party waiting until nearly 3pm, is something to not even think about twice. It is not rude to be late – it tends to be expected.
  
• Most everyone expects people, vehicles, the mail, and anything else you can think of to be slow, late, broken, ill, or otherwise unsatisfactory upon arrival. And so enjoying the moments you have, and taking joy in the seemingly trivial, is considered the norm.
  
• People usually give their time freely, and its only when dealing with Americans, Germans, Japanese or others who are concerned with punctuality that some effort is made to be prompt – but even then, Mongolians tend to expect that those countries’ nationals should adapt a little to the Mongolian way of doing things.

Gender Roles

• Women are considered the work-horses in Mongolian society while the view of men is that they are only suited to “macho” types of work. What this translates into in reality is that most men do only one of a handful jobs in: herder, menial laborer (unskilled construction, day-labor at the outdoor markets hauling things on and off trucks, etc), soldier or policeman, or driver of a car or van. There are exceptions among the rich, of course, of whom many become business leaders or government officials of various ranks. The non-rich men who obtain degrees often become Physical Education instructors.
  
• For women, the breakdown is by where they live. In the countryside women are expected to do the majority of the household chores: cooking, cleaning, raising the children, hauling the water, chopping the wood, managing any money the household might have, mending clothes, playing host to any guests that may arrive.
• In the city, women are expected to go to college and in fact hold at least 65-70% of all lower-level professional jobs. They are the bankers, the accountants, translators, tour operators, government employees, college professors, the computer programmers, the high school teachers of non-Phys-Ed subjects, the clerks, the office managers, the employees of a variety of businesses who actually do most of the work while their male supervisors and bosses tend to spend a great deal of time loafing and talking to their friends.
  
• The uneducated women who migrate from the countryside also do a majority of the non-physical lower-level types of employment: sales, restaurant workers, janitorial, etc. And on top of all of this, the city women are still expected to do the majority of the child-rearing.
• Even though women are much more educated and skilled, they are not really allowed to move-up past a certain level – regardless of whether or not they are capable of doing the work.
  
• The big taboos for women are: a) getting an abortion; b) deciding not to have children; c) choosing to stay single/ putting career ahead of family responsibilities.
• None of this applies to foreign women – there is a whole different set of standards for foreigners.

Taboos

• Avoid pointing at a person. It’s always considered to be a repudiating or deprecatory gesture. One should use the whole hand instead.
• Putting your thumb in between your middle and index finger while making a fist is an obscene gesture. It's the Mongolian version of giving someone the middle finger.
  
• Showing the bottom of your feet is considered bad manners.
• Not being hospitable and serving at least tea and candy to someone who happens to drop by one’s home, is also considered rude.
• The Western romantic notion of “traveling on a shoe-string” is not well-received. Sleeping in the city on a bench or at the train station, wearing old-sweaty clothes around in public, unshaved men, and women with lots of body hair are all considered “unacceptable” in Mongolia. Cleanliness is important.

Law & Order

• The real legal drinking age is 22, but in the countryside the rules are more lax. However, there is strong social pressure against anyone younger than mid-late teens drinking – and basically the young person needs to look physically able to drink. Mostly it begins in the city when young kids get to college, and the countryside when young men begin their year in the army, or begin working.
• Women just do not drink as much as men, even at parties – as they tend to have the weight of caring for the entire family on their shoulders.
• Most anyone can go and buy alcohol, and often young children are sent to go purchase bottles for their parents or older siblings.
• Any drug, aside from alcohol, is considered so “beyond the pale” in, that the user would suffer extreme social ostracization. Of course there are international agreements against smuggling anything contraband into, or across Mongolia. These laws are very well enforced.

Dress

• For Men - business suit and tie, overcoat in cold months.
• For Women - pants-suit or mid-length skirt and ladies’ suit-jacket with formal blouse.

Titles & Business Cards

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• It is common to address people by “Noyen” means “sir” or “the respected" and “Hatagtai” means madam.
  
• Medical doctors should be addressed as “Emch” which means doctor.
• It is best to present a business card as it is taken as a sign of legitimacy for whatever operation you are running. Present them with either the right hand or both hands, and receive either with the right hand or both.

Meetings

• It is best to show up on time, well-dressed, and well prepared. In terms of nearly all business protocol takes its cues from the United States, England, Japan, and South Korea.
  
• Greeting people should start with the most-respected or highest-ranking first, than move to the others. Prior to the slated start time, or until all expected participants arrive, some minor small talk about the weather or inoffensive topics is considered polite (refrain from potentially contentious topics).
  
• The one who called/arranged the meeting should begin the discussion and serve to moderate discussion, keep the agenda moving, and conclude.

Gift Giving

• Gift giving and receiving in most official situations, while not considered necessary, does help to generate good feelings. It tends to be a common practice in Mongolia.
• In most cases these are just “token” gifts, something that represents the country one is from, or something the receiving party might find interesting – but NOT something overly expensive or given with the obvious aim of unduly influencing the other party. For example, if one is from New York he/she could bring a Yankees baseball cap or jacket, or if one is from Arizona he/she could bring a T-shirt with a picture of the Grand Canyon or a Hopi Kachina doll, etc.
• Gifts are to generally opened in front of people, in order to show the room that good-will has been established and that the receiver can appreciate the gesture, UNLESS the giver states that, “this is something better to be opened at home.”
• Anything extraordinarily expensive that gives the appearance of “buying” the other party’s cooperation – or anything overtly sexual in nature – is considered inappropriate.
• Gifts should be wrapped.

In the Classroom

• Most colleges and universities begins at the end of August/beginning of September. They end between early May and early June.
  
• School break is about a month long but has different starting times ranging from before New Years until closer to Tsaagan Sar.
• Men and women both wear modern [Western] designs of casual clothes and “activewear” – denim jeans pants, t-shirts, sport shoes, high heel shoes, sweats, etc.
  
• On special occasions university students wear formal shirts, jackets and slacks/skirts. Also women usually wear high heel shoes.
  
• Unacceptable attire would be shorts, sporty tank-tops, mid-riffs, fishnet stockings, unnatural colored hair (green, pink, etc), cut-up jeans, T-shirts with holes in them, pajamas (as has become common in many American universities for 8 or 9am classes), sleeveless tank-tops for women.
• Mongolian universities use the A-F grading scale, with those grades following the Western standard that for every class.
• The most common form of teaching is lecture, but some classes involve small group projects and collaborative work.

Other Observations

• Mongols like foreigner visitors and travelers, but people there are generally poor, especially in comparison with Westerners. Visitors should try to understand this from their perspective and avoid being perceived as “cheap” or ungenerous.
• For $15-$20/day one can stay in a guesthouse – with a hot shower, laundry and internet services, and access to experienced tour guides -- or at least references to tour guide agencies. They usually serve free breakfast.
• Travelers also need to be wary of thieves – and they are everywhere in the city (Ulaanbaatar), especially at the “Black Market/Naran Tuul” market. Keep your wallet in your front pocket or somewhere not easily accessible, because as stated above, there’s lots of pushing, shoving, bumping, sitting on people in public transport etc – and thieves have mastered the art of pick-pocketing, especially the small homeless children.
• There are special “non-Mongol” prices for things – it’s a simple fact of life there. But as these are clearly artificially inflated, bargaining is also a very acceptable way to procure anything you’d like; and if the salesperson on your left won’t budge, the one on your right will.
• Travelers need to keep in mind that is NOT, and ought to remember this when addressing Mongols. Knowledge of Mandarin will not be useful, and use of this language will not be understood or much appreciated.

• Finding an internship in the profession for which students are studying would be encouraged.