Mongolian Wedding by Stanley Stewart as Entertaining and Educational
Introduction
StanleyStewart is a well known writer for his travel books. He has won
various awards. He writes about travel in the broadsheet newspapers.
Mongolian wedding is taken from and account of a 1000 mile horseback
ride from Istanbulacross mountains and deserts of central Asia.
Stanley uses Mongolian words like Ger, arki ECT, for authenticity of
the piece. The passage is a lively piece; it has humored all the way
through. Mongolian wedding is informative, entertaining and amusing.
Stewart uses himself as the first person narrator. He is interested in
other people's culture and emotions. He describes places which are
remote, often dangerous and unglamorous. He uses original language
often of a literary kind. Stanley aims to educate readers by telling
us the absurdity of marriage rituals and ceremonies, "When the arrived
the groom would be obliged to search for his bride who by tradition
must hide from him"
Stewart respects the Mongolians and they respect him. You can tell
that they respect him because on Ln1-6 they warn him about themselves.
They say that the following day would be difficult, Weddings are
boisterous occasions. People can become unpredictable. He was advised
to get away early before anything got out of hand. This is the
beginning of the story and already it has humor involved in it. A
Mongolian wedding is much different to a wedding in the west.
"Biscuits, slabs of white cheese and boiled sweets had been arrayed on
every surface"……. "Plate of sheep's parts, cut with the favored cut,
the great fatty tail, like a grey glacier on a summit"
In a Mongolian wedding they pick up their bride from a Ger their
equivalent to a house and drive then in a hired Russian truck for the
occasion. A Russian truck is the equivalent of the wedding Rolls. In
the wedding Steward meets two families numbering 50 or 60 people, they
traditionally each guest had to drink three bowls of airag and three
of arkhi, both are alcoholic drinks.
For Foua, a Hmong mother, the United States was a complete opposite to the life she was use to living and right now preparing this wedding shows the skills that she possess even if they are not very relevant in her new home, “‘I [Foua] am very stupid.’ When I [Anne] asked her why, she said, “Because I don’t know anything here. I don’t know your language. American is so hard, you can watch TV all day ad you still don’t know it” (Fadiman 103). This wedding bought Foua and Anne close in a different way, it created a new level of understanding and appreciation. Anne is starting to discover what it is like to be from another country where the language is different, the clothes are different, the entire way the people live is different. Basically, the world has been flipped upside down and the people need to find their new source of living. It is never easy to pick up a perfectly settled life and suddenly decide that moving and changing it all around is exactly what we need to do. But that was not the case of Foua, her family was forced to move to the United States. This would have made it even harder to adjust. Everything is suddenly thrown at Foua and there is no looking back only forward and the forward might be a lot more difficult. This is why this wedding is like a dream to Foua, it combines her old life with her new life. Although, the skill of creating a Hmong wedding might not be useful in the United States they still create a lot of joy and this joy can lead people to understand one another in a new found way. A new joy that was found in the new life of the bride and groom, but also there was the connection between two cultures. There was a greater understanding and
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