My first impressions of Bishkek turned out to be significantly skewed from reality. Bishkek is a city of about 800,000 people, and twice that many if you include the surrounding areas of the Chuy region. But after we left the airport around 5:30, I don't think we encountered more than a dozen; one person serving traditional snacks from a roadside food stand, and eleven sweeping the streets with enormous straw brooms wearing orange safety vests. Somewhere, eleven witches are deprived of transportation. We picked up some breakfast, and then Rudi and Janysh took me on a walking tour around the deserted city, because I wouldn't be allowed to check in at my hotel for several more hours. I felt very much like a paleontologist exploring a treasure trove of relics and ruins left by an extinct society. Like many European and Central Asian cities, Bishkek doesn't really start bustling until 8:00. But once it starts bustling, the bustling is irrepressible. In a matter of a few short hours, I wouldn't be able to turn my camera in any direction without finding someone staring back at me.
The city sits at 2600 feet on the edge of the vast high plains of Central Asia, which occupy most of Kazakhstan to the north, as well as Russia, Mongolia, and parts of China. Providing a backdrop to the south are the Ala-Too mountains. The Ala-Too are part of the Tian Shan range which extends east along the Kazakhstan border into China, and Southwest toward Tajikistan to connect with another set of mountains you might have heard of–the Himalayas. These mountains are kind of like the foothills of the Himalayas, but since the Himalayas are so mind-bogglingly, mythically enormous, even the Himalayan foothills are impressive. The highest peak in the Tian Shan range, Jengish Chokusu, is about 24,400 feet, located considerably further East on the Kyrgyzstan-China border. It's the northernmost 7,000+ m (approx. 23,000 ft.) peak in the world. By comparison, Mount Aconcagua (22,838ft.) in Argentina and Mount McKinley (20,322ft.) in Alaska are the tallest peaks in South and North America, respectively. Nowhere else in the world are mountains this monumental. And these are just the runts of the broad Himalayan litter. There is an expression in Kyrgyzstan; "When God created the world and divided the land among all peoples, there was none left for the Kyrgyz people, so He gave them some of the land He was keeping for Himself." I might agree.
The main square in the city also bears the name Ala-Too but there is another name here that is more ubiquitous. Manas, for whom the airport is named, is a folk hero considered to be the ethnic patriarch of the Kyrgyz people. He has also managed to get his name on several streets, squares, monuments, government buildings, and breakfast cereals (unconfirmed). The story of Manas is derived from a 500,000 line epic poem (arguably the longest epic poem in existence), which was passed down orally in typical epic poem fashion, just like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, before it was transcribed in the 1700s. It's called, unsurprisingly, The Epic of Manas. The Epic of Manas tells the story of a young warrior from a nomadic tribe who rose to avenge his people against the brutality of rival tribes and establish his people in the region. The epic continues to include the feats of his son and grandson. Strikingly similar to Genghis Khan. The actual historical figure of Manas isn't officially documented, but he probably lived during the latter portions of the Mongol empire. Some have tried to manufacture support for the idea that Manas was actually Joseph's son Manasseh from the Bible, and his tribe originally was one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The most prominent monument to Manas sits in Ala-Too square. It was left by the Soviets in typical Soviet fashion, probably designed to make the Kyrgyz people feel like they're important while at the same time assimilating them subliminally into the Soviet system. Janysh looks upon it with a mixture of pride and disdain, remarking "All wrong. See the face? Too Russian. Too short the legs. Should be more Kyrgyz." Sure enough, this depiction of Manas looks more like Stalin sitting on a horse wearing really old armor.
Technically, the Kyrgyz people are their own ethnological group, and not really a mixture of races, ethnic descendants of any other nationality, or immigrants from any other area. Culturally, however, this area and these people represent a collision of cultural influences unlike any other. Long ago, they were nomadic and closely related to the Mongols, because thanks to Genghis Khan conquering everything everywhere, everyone in Asia is somehow related to the Mongols. Kyrgyzstan's modern influences are equally as fascinating. I cannot think of three cultures more different than those of Russia, China, and the Middle East, yet in Bishkek, I see strong connections to each. Speaking in incredibly broad generalizations, these people are culturally Russian and Asian, racially Asian and Middle Eastern, and spiritually Middle Eastern and Russian.
When the Soviet Union dissolved, there was a great movement of Russians out of Kyrgyzstan and the country was mostly left to its native people. According to Rudi, Bishkek is about sixty-percent Kyrgyz, twenty-percent Uzbek, and ten-percent Russian. The Kyrgyz and Uzbek peoples look very much alike to my unfamiliar eyes, and so almost everyone appears to me to have a mixture of Chinese and Persian descent, aside from the easily-distinguishable Russian ten-percent. Yet the memory of Soviet Russia still lingers. The grid infrastructure of the city, its many impersonal and monolithic buildings, its paradoxically spiritless vitality, and even its innumerable monuments clearly hearken back to the days of the Communist regime. Furthermore, from a developmental standpoint, it's not unlike Mexico or Kenya where I've spent significant time. The city is built up and although it's not comparable to an American or European city, it offers a moderately high standard of living. The rural areas immediately surrounding are quite poor. Most people here live on a dirt road, either in a one-room house with their family, or in a large, poorly-kept apartment high-rise. The public city mini-busses, called marshrutkas, are remarkably similar to the African matatus, the traffic is chaotic and lawless as it is in Nairobi, and they serve a national pastry here that almost exactly resembles Kenyan mendazi. The countryside, both in natural appearance and sociological development, resembles a slightly greener Mexico or a slightly dryer Kenya. It's fascinating to me that we still often think of countries in terms of first, second, and third-world; terms which derive their context from a nations affiliation with either Capitalism, Communism, or neither during a Cold War which never really amounted to anything and has been over for decades. Technically, this would be a second-world country, because it was part of the USSR during the cold war, but most Western visitors would have a decidedly third-world opinion of the country, despite it's mildly European atmosphere, and despite the fact that thinking of the world in the terms of 'worlds' really doesn't apply any more. But for the sake of simplicity, I'll say that Bishkek shares many traits common to third-world countries.
Spiritually, Bishkek is more closely related to the Middle East, but that connection isn't incredibly strong. Whereas in the Middle East, Islam has an almost unsupplantable foothold, in Kyrgyzstan, the Muslim majority is quite nominal. Overtones of Russian Orthodoxy still remain, including a general acceptance of the idea of Christianity, although most of the devout Orthodox believers left with the Russian migration. Yet because of the lingering Soviet outlook, people here generally value reason and education above religion and practice, meaning that they may not cling so tightly to their nominal Muslim faith. This makes radio an excellent vehicle for reaching them, as radio meets people on an intellectual level. Russian is still the language of conversation, because when the Soviets left, their indelible stamp remains, but the younger generations especially are beginning to return to their ethnic Kyrgyz roots, and so having a radio broadcast in Kyrgyz is crucial for the nation's youth, who represent the first generation of Christians in Kyrgyzstan.
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